Day 120 – Tuesday 17th January 2006

I woke up at 5.45am ready to climb the volcano, however when I looked outside I saw the sky was covered from horizon to horizon in cloud. I didn’t really feel up to that much exercise so it was bit of a relief, as there would be no point in climbing for 5 hours not to be able to see anything.

If I wasn’t going to climb the volcano I didn’t want to hang around on Omotepe as there was pretty much nothing else to do, so I decided to catch the boat off the island and go to San Juan Del Sur on the Pacific coast.

The ferry across from Omotepe was slightly delayed. When we got going the waters around the island were calm, however as we got further and further out onto the lake the water became incresingly choppy. About 25 minutes into the hour long crossing the boat began to list increasingly to one side due to the strong winds and the waves.

The guys who were working on the boat decided that that waters were choppy enough and the boat was listing enough for them to hand out the life jackets. I remembered the half sunken ferry of a few days before and thought this can’t be good. The usual total disregard towards safety in Central America meant that the fact that they were giving out life jackets was a cause for concern. Luckily the winds must have changed or we altered course to combat them, because we made it across without needing to use the jackets.

After making it across, the Argies and I got our bags and took a taxi to San Juan. San Juan is a popular seaside town on the Gringo Trail due to the excellent surfing possiblities nearby and the picture perfect setting in which it lies. After checking into possibly the cheapest room in town for C60 (C30=£1) we went straight to the beach. The sight of the pacific was not disappointing – San Juan is set in a cove surrounded on all sides by high cliffs. The beach itself is a 2km expanse of dark sand and due to the sheltered position the water itself is perfectly calm.

It was the sort of setting where I could imagine some 17th Century pirates sailing into to the cove, anchoring their ship and sending out the rowing boats to row ashore before burying some treasure and drawing up a map of the location to return to it at a later date. To top of the perfect beach image we had virtually the whole of it to ourselves.

After a dip, a sunbathe and game of football (still got it!) we had lunch in one of the beachfront restuarants (these probably were not here in the 17th Century when the pirates of my imagination rocked up with their treasure) and I went off to use the internet to do some much needed catching up on the blog.

The sun sets were supposed to be perfect in San Juan as it sets between the cliffs out across the water, howeverI got chatting to my sister on Skype and lost track of time hence missed it! I decided to stay for a few more days so would be able to see it the following day. I hoped!