After saying goodbye to my mom in San Jose, we headed back up to Nicaragua with a plan. We were working our way back north to Guatemala to celebrate Semana Santa in Antigua. There were a couple of Nicaraguan destinations we missed out on with mom, so we hit them up on our way through second time. This roundup covers both legs of our Nicaragua journey. Anything posted in bold &#91read more]

It’s not every day that we pass up the opportunity to explore something for ourselves in favour of a guide, but the Cañón de Somoto seemed like a good place to splurge. And we’re glad we did. Somoto Canyon The Cañón de Somoto, located 15 km north of Somoto, Nicaragua, is a beautiful 3 km long gorge cut into solid rock by the Rio Coco. At places, the granite ridges &#91read more]

Estelí is located on the Pan American highway in the north of Nicaragua near the Honduras border. We skipped over this place the first time through on our way to Managua to meet up with Ashley’s Mom and her boyfriend Terry. When we skipped past it and nearby Somoto the first time, we were about 80% sure that we would be headed back north to Utila and scuba diving, so &#91read more]

We met up with my mom in Nicarauga, and made a speedy path through the country.  We might have lingered longer, but our C-4 visa which covers Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua was just about expired after our lengthy stay in Utila, Honduras.  We had to get to Costa Rica to reset it, but even so, we left the Nicaragua on the last possible day, taking in as much &#91read more]

Aside from horseback riding we didn’t really do much on Isla de Ometepe.  Our time on the beach of San Juan del Sur was quite similar… a few days of relaxing and catching up on the blog at each place. On Isla de Ometepe, we stayed just outside of the town of Merida at a resort with highly overpriced but good food.  The town of Merida is quite small and &#91read more]

One of the things that Mom and Terry wanted to do on their journey with us was go horseback riding. Now, given my propensity for falling off things and my slightly irrational fear of riding horses (stemming from my first ever attempt to ride by myself – I was about 13 or so – when my trail horse took off at a gallop along a busy highway and I couldn’t &#91read more]

Spending a little over a year saving up cash and selling everything we own before this trip taught us several lessons. One of the most important was the value of money, and the rate that its value diminishes when you buy new things. We sold a tonne of stuff before we left home, much of it lightly used, and all of it at prices far lower than we paid for &#91read more]