29th of july

wild life keeps bugging me even here! in esteli a lizard hopped on my shoulder when i was standing by our room door in a hotel. this american guy that was there said that the lizard spotted a friend on my shoulder. on utila i got a temporary tattoo for 2 weeks and surprise surprise the tattoo is in a form of a lizard :D

the next day it was high time to head to leon. when getting a taxi in esteli marianne experienced one of those "lima caused taxi phoby attacks" when we got in a car where there was one extra person. it is rather justified but well luckily esteli and leon are not managua, so taking a cab here is relatively safe. managua is going to be more of a nervrecking experience, especially because we just heard a story of two foreign girls who got robbed in a taxi in managua that same day :S.

however, our journey towards leon continued. we hopped on that bus to the village of san isidro and were suppose to jump off somewhere there in order to switch to another bus that would go straight to leon. on the bus to san isidro there was a tv (incredible) and some 80´s best hits and well the sun was shining and it was very relaxing. it was relaxing until the moment we were told that we had just missed our stop. no way!so, what else was there to do but to jump off (or more like crawl off that bus with our heavy backpacks) and run for the next vehicle that would take us back to that crossroad in the middle of nowhere. this bus was a REAL chicken bus, not so much because of its yellow colour but more for the fact that the people on it had chickens and turkeys that were alive sitting on the floor, big buckets of onions and what not and we had to watch out in order not to step on someone´s precious bird. the chicken bus ride was not entirely over however once we got off that bus and sat by the road in the middle of the day waiting for the next bus. some 40 min later we hear the good old noise of the approaching vehicle and naturally take ourselves there with all our stuff. this new bus is even worse than the previous. it happened to be one of those "ordinarios" which take you on an almost free trip through every single little village on the way. the views from the window were nice (especially the volcano reaching all the way to where the clouds are), but the road that we were driving along was honestly life threatening. i have never ever had a bus ride of some 3h that would be as bumpy and overall crazy as this one. marianne would not take her eyes off our backpacks tucked away above the seats and that despite the fact that it was insanely difficult even keeping yourself in an upright position or even seated on that bench because with every bump you literally fell off your seat. that was some real rural nicaragua experience there for 3h. once finally in leon all we wanted was to find our hotel and crash there.

the first impression of leon was slightly intimidating. there are sandinista red and black flags on many houses and almost every pole and tree is painted in red and black. the whole city in fact is oozing revolutionary atmosphere still and it shows everywhere. a striking difference when compared to honduras. when it comes to leon´s colonial style architecture - it´s wonderful. the city square is beautiful and spacious. it looks a lot like spain (obviously) but with central american touch. there are quite a few tourists wondering about and it is lively and safe in the center at night. big advantage in our opinion!leon is a nice place to chill for a few days and we were going to explore it the best we could.