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Sharks, a scorpion, jellyfish, biting ants, tigers, thieving monkeys, yellow snakes, spiders and a giraffe
Bull sharks swim in freshwater lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America. They swim in along rivers from the Caribbean. With its closest point only 20km to the Pacific, Granada was a very important colonial trading town. Having been sacked 3 times by pirates and burnt to the ground it is now rebuilt and taken over by tourism. 
Granada remains a beautiful city and has the advantage of international restaurants, scorching hot weather and a leafy park at the centre of cobbled streets. We relaxed a lot here, being on the road so long now we were not in a rush to do stuff too quickly. Although we did venture out on a boat tour of the lake's islands, walked around the cloud forested crater of Volcano Mombacho, and had an exhilarating canopy zip-line tour. This involved flying through the rain forest on a steel cable between 16 tree platforms spread over 1700 metres. 
We spent 2 days on a Spanish lesson refresher course at nearby lake Apoyo, a great swimming spot in a volcanic crater surrounded by thick jungle paths. The eco lodge was a bit run down but we met a good mixture of people, mainly Americans, 2 families and a couple of travellers.
I was challenged to a game of chess by the father of an undefeated 8 year old wizard and only just lost against the lad. I was annoyed that I should have been more ruthless with him. Johanna and I have been playing a lot of card games, gin rummy is a personal favourite, usually played with a glass of rum and coke with ice and lime.
San Juan del Sur is a small resort town for both locals and foreigners and quite nice too. Although not a lot of culture going on, its a good place to grab a pizza, cold beer and watch the sunset.
Johanna found a jungle hideaway in her backpack, from out of her roll mat peeked a dangerous large black scorpion just as she was getting ready to go to the beach. The same day we went scuba diving off the Pacific coast and we swam through and were stung all over by a string like type of jellyfish. Not her best day, but then the next day she had an allergic rash develop and we got her a cortisone injection from a friendly chemist.
The diving could be classed as adventure diving, after the nights rain the visibility on the dives was between 2 and 5 metres, but with a 3 metre swell and stinging faces, arms and legs made it quite a challenge. In the afternoon I had a mostly unsuccessful go at surfing while Johanna read on the beach.
We took a ferry over to Isla Ometepe on lake Nicaragua. This island is created by two volcanoes whose lava outflows have joined together. It has black sand beaches and covered in jungle. Hotel Playa Venezia was a good base for us, we met a couple of good rum buddies, sculptors from San Francisco, teachers from London and even a doctor from Finland. Johanna was pleased to meet another rare Finn.
Nearby was a small but pristine forest out on a peninsular called Chaco Verde. Full of bird life, ants that bit Johanna's foot, howler monkeys and views over both volcanoes. Swimming below that afternoon the usual cloud that hangs around the summit vanished and you could see the whirls of noxious gases pluming out of the largest volcano rising like a prehistoric monster in a mysterious land.
We hired a 150cc motorbike and explored the island along its rutted, hilly and muddy tracks. Away from the low key backpacker lodges the island feels extremely remote and cut off from the rest of Nicaragua. Passing wooden shacks, farms and driving around suicidal chickens, sleeping dogs, pigs, horses, cows, children and howler monkeys.
The bike wouldn't start on an uphill with both of us on and so sometimes Johanna would have to walk a short way. On one really quiet section I was stuck in the heat trying to make a hill start while the local village idiot stood next to me grinning. It was amusing at first, but when we noticed he was wearing a skirt and fumbling with his knickers Johanna walked off and left me. Luckily I got the bike started pretty quick and was outta there.
We came across 10 tigers and a giraffe trying to get into Costa Rica, they were heavily drugged and travelling with a Moscow circus, that is probably why they were held up in customs. After that Liberia seemed pleasantly sane. We liked Liberia because it was a normal Costa Rican town with great kebabs, ice cream and an air con coffee shop.
In the cloud forest mountain resort of Monteverde we were assualted by tourism on all sides, how they can all manage to be eco is beyond me, eco-tourism is such a misused word. I'm sure the rainforest is lovely but the town is a tourist market and we could have easily mistaken ourselves for being in the worst parts of New Zealand.
The peak tourist season coincides with the rain season which must piss a lot of people off who come for a 2 week eco adventure. It poured with rain for the whole afternoon, we went on a walk, got soaked and looked at some amazing frogs behind glass and butterflies in greenhouses then left.
But we did meet a great couple from Holland and a nice Swiss guy called Rene who was having a fresh outlook on life after surviving a horrific motorbike accident 2 years ago and was reevaluating his life with new optimism.
Food and accommodation are much more expensive here and many places you have to pay just to go see a waterfall or visit a park. The country is definitely much less poor than neighbouring countries but the majority of people must be cut off financially from the surface boom in the economy. Still Costa Rica is fascinating, they got away with social spending without interference from the USA and so education and health standards are high and they don't even have an army, which must be unique in today's world.
Johanna hit the shops in San Jose and before long we were on the bus out to the Caribbean, to the village turned low key tourist centre of Cahuita. Here our disappointments with Costa Rica were reversed, it seems you have to try a bit harder in here to get away from the excesses of tourism but when you do the country is still stunning.
We had the upper floor of a wooden house overlooking coconut trees and surf at Jenny's cabins. A great place to kick back in a hammock on the balcony, we could make homemade pizza baguette on the grill, ice cubes in the freezer and the waft of rasta sensimilla skanking by.
Just at the edge of town is the mangrove rainforest national park with surf washing up to meet thieving white faced monkeys, their howler brothers and sloths. Scary spiders and yellow snakes hide almost out of sight in the trees and crabs race across the sand between driftwood.
We crossed the sleepy border into Panama walking over a rickety wooden bridge and took a motor boat through backwaters used by the banana company to the ocean and to Isla Colon, part of Bocas del Toro, a group of tropical islands at the mouth of rivers descending from the highlands. We even saw a shark fin break the water on our way.
Bocas is a laid back place with plenty of partying going on. We met up with some good people here from both the backpacker's happy hour and the Starfleet dive shop. Judith a German Londoner, Rissi an Indian New Yorker and Ozden & Trevor two crazy fish farmers from Turkey and Essex.
We had day trips out to some wilderness beaches. At the starfish home of Playa del Drago we were not far missed by a coconut falling into the sea, I took it to our hotel to crack open, delicious. And at Wizard beach one of the most beautiful I've been to we just lay about in the shade and jumped in the surf.
The diving was quite murky but exciting all the same, some great rock walls, tunnel swim throughs, loads of huge tentacled lobster, moray eels and I unbelievably found a tiny little sea horse next to a sea cucumber.
Panama is such a skinny country that in no time at all we had gone over the mountains and onto the Pacific side. We stayed 2 nights at the weird Purple House Hostel in the city of David. As you might expect everything in it was purple, all the walls, even the plates, towels and bed linen. A bit too strange was the general consensus.
We did however make a stunning hike called the Sendero de Quetzal which goes down 1000m through cloud forest along muddy paths and even crossing a river at one point. It was pretty tough considering it also rained all day long but a good adventure I kept telling Johanna.
It was a relief to finally be in Panama City, the end of the first part of our trip. Its the most developed city we've been to so far and feels a little more like the USA with it´s skyscrapers. Its hot and has a terrible traffic problem but it has first world luxuries like shopping malls where we were able to buy hiking boots and get me a new backpack as well as Johanna finally finding a Zara clothes shop. We also met Mark from Enfield who had quit his job in finance to become a writer and we spent several evenings chatting over beer and rum.
The old town of Casco Viejo was fascinating and visiting the Panama canal was an unexpected highlight of the trip. Its incredible to see these huge cargo ships passing through such small canal locks at Miraflores and to imagine how important this 50km stretch of canal is to world trade as a ship registered in Hong Kong passed through next to a submarine.
We booked onto a small Aires aircraft to Cartagena in Colombia on August 31st almost 5 months since we set out, the plane was delayed 2 hours but just after 11pm we descended down to start the next part of our trip.
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