Crossing Nicaraguan border

After a boring night in Los Chilles, literally the most dead boring place I've ever visited, (it's just a border town people pass through) with the exception of this guy who ran the local shop (Gary) who spoke perfect English and entertained me, I got up early to go to immigration office to get my passport stamped and get my boat ticket...there's only one boat a day at 1pm so you have to be there early to get your ticket. It's basically a bus ride through the jungle, on the San Juan River. We had to stop off once at a military immigration point where they did some rudimentary checks. Basically I could have had anything in my bag and they'd never have known. They had big guns tho so I didn't argue!

Getting to nicaragua was cool. There was this river side immigration point that you get off at and the queue up to go through, where they stamp your passport and you pay $12 to enter the country...the sign above the immigration office, that you read as you dock, says: "Nicaragua is the land of Christianity, Socialism and solidarity" (I think!)

The sunset over San Carlos was beautiful that evening:

In the distance is one of the islands and to the right is Ometepe, the Volcanoe.

Heidi

I love San Carlos, its a sleepy little town but has a great vibe to it. I instantly made friends with a woman called Heidi, who lives in Germany, but is originally from Chilli. She was in Nicaragua for 2 months to work for a charity and teach some of the local people life skills, her speciality was to bake bread. She was a fantastic woman, instantly friendly and happy to help and advise. She also invited me for dinner that evening, so we went to the one restaurant on the river front that served nice, clean safe food. The waiter in that place was also really excellent, although almost too good. Like I would be trying to talk to Heidi and he would just come up to us and start chatting!

By the end of the evening our table l, that started with me and Heidi, had multiplied by 4, it seems Heidi is the centre of that expat community! We were joined by 4 other Dutch people (doctors and psychologists also working in the town on different projects) and a few random Germans...what amazed me a a the total lack of backpackers! It's as if backpackers just don't go that way! Everyone was over 35...it's like all the backpackers are too scared to go to Nicaragua. This is the very reason I sacked off Thailand and came here, because I wanted to a trip away from the tourist trail.