#23: Christmas and New Year's Eve, but where was the fiesta ...

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Gari and myself travelled out of Honduras just before Christmas and arrived in Leon, Nicaragua's second largest city. We then stopped in Grenada for a few days and took a bus to Costa Rica's capital San Jose for New Year's Eve. Both our Christmas and New Year's Eve destinations: rather disappointing; Grenada: fantastic.

Across the border to Leon

The most unpleasant border crossing of my life so far - high midday heat, a crush of collaborating subhuman tricycle taxi drivers and sweaty t-shirted money changers crowded out the very air we tried to breathe. Nine dollars entry fee and an hour plus wait for a stamped passport only piled on the sense of an omnipresent con. Then, ten minutes into Nicaragua an official boarded the bus and demanded a dubious dollar from each foreigner. We reached Leon unimpressed and exhausted.

Leon was hot, slow, and while there was a nice atmosphere over Christmas, not a lot happened. We walked the streets, bought Christmas presents for each other, and had brief chats with locals in the town square. I remember just feeling really tired in Leon, unsure where to take my travels next, wondering if I was running out of backpacking steam.

Grenada, the gem of Central America

O Grenada! This is by far my favourite city of Central America. Admittedly, the morning I first arrived, I wrote:

"Feel tired, very tired. Walking around Grenada's bustling and quiet streets, I keep thinking - all the same! Feel a chronic lack of interest in exploring - feel like I've seen every pretty colonial building, every fat bellied money changer, every donkey pulling a cart in so many places I don't even see them when I look at them. No idea of how to stop being tired. We have been travelling a bit faster than I would usually, and I should really pause for a couple of days somewhere. A change of scene and activity for a while would be great - looking forward to climbing volcanoes and hiring kayaks in Costa Rica."

But soon after the above was penned, I wrote out my article about diving in Utila in an internet cafe and cheered up immensely. Writing does just seem to relax and invigorate me; I composed myself, sent the email out and went to meet Gari.

Grenada is a very special place. More tourists than Leon, but this country has so few tourists that is hardly a big concern: this is no Nicaraguan Antigua. Instead the happy town bustles along with little regard for us visitors: even the specially built "Tourist Zone" on the shores of the beautiful Lake Nicaragua is almost entirely peopled by Nicaraguan families lolling in the sunshine. We hired a small boat and its captain took us among the archipelago of tiny islands off Grenada's "coast" of this immense freshwater sea; we envied at the bespoke floating mansions of Nicaragua's elite on their miniature rocky kingdoms. Actually, one of these mini islands cost only around 50 or 70 thousand dollars, according to our guide, a reminder of how far Nicaragua is off the map.

People in Grenada seemed to really enjoy living in this city, understandably. It was a place where time seemed to slow down, particularly when under a palm tree's shade in the city's exquisite main square. Days could have rolled by frictionless for me, only needing a novel or a writing pad and money to buy icy fruit drinks to keep me cool. Grenada was hotter than anywhere I had been for a while, though each day I adapted better to the strength sapping sun. The old and beautiful houses all seemed to open up to a central courtyard, whole inner walls sometimes missing to provide better ventilation. Nicaraguans leave their doors open all day it seems, only locking a separate metal door of bars if worried about security, so we walked past peering in like nosy neighbours, noting their family photos and sofas. The most incredible thing we noted about these houses was how many rocking chairs Nicaraguans have — rich or poor, each living room was filled with enough rocking capacity to comfortably seat most of China. In the happy evenings, families sat chatting, babies contentedly undulating in their mother's rocking arms. And at night, Grenada's temperature was perfect, a warm breeze percolated every street, keeping the night long lived and exciting. Admittedly, with another bout of dodgy shitting, I went to bed early most nights.

I liked Nicaragua a lot, and would probably come back here first of any of the Central American countries I have been to. The beaches are supposed to be fantastic, I suspect few if any tourists visit many of the out of the way places and on the Atlantic side are the apparently idyllic Corn Islands.

Something about Nicaragua that made me realise how far away from England I am: the moon was the wrong way round. The bright crescent started at the bottom of the moon, like a silver smile, then slowly filled up to the top. Last night, looking up at the Costa Rican sky, the collection of gray craters on the full moon are gathered on the left like a monumental C, as though the man on the moon is resting his head on one side.

San Jose, Costa Rica

Into orderly and developed Costa Rica, a computer scanned our passports and we were across the frontier. This was immediately a different world to the other Central American states to the north — smarter cars, English spoken widely and cutlery is served in a hygienic polythene bag. Our bus drove to the capital, San Jose. San Jose is an enjoyable, varied town, life goes on with almost no preparation or interest in travellers, leaving the visitor free to explore at their own pace.

New Year's Eve was a fantastic disappointment. Hoping for a wild Rio-esque street party, instead we got a Saturday night out in Portsmouth. We wandered around the huge fairground at Zapote on the edge of the city, but it was clear that few people were staying to celebrate midnight there. We went back to the centre, had a rest and wandered the streets — they were empty too. With a growing sense of confusion and not a little worry, we tested the nightclub district to the north, El Pueblo Commercial — that was largely empty as well. Our taxi driver explained that in fact most Costa Ricans celebrated New Year's Eve at home with their families, then around 2 or 3am headed out to a nightclub. Well, the rest of the night was OK and dismal. When the nightclub district did begin to fill up with young people, there was no carnival atmosphere, merely that depressing, "spent three hours getting ready, so only my friends can talk to me" attitude familiar from many nights out in London. It didn't do much to inspire us, and we went home rather glumly.

But the happy ending was that on the second day of the new year, I bought my ticket to Asia. I dithered around, trying to find a cheapish flight to Bangkok, and was quickly reaccquainted with the byzantine nightmares of booking long distance tickets. It turned out that a travel agency here had a cheap ticket to Hong Kong one way ($750 / £408, via Amsterdam), and when I had Internet browsed my way to realising Chinese New Year was coming up on the 22nd, I knew that was where I would be going. Five more days in Central America, then I cross the world by plane to the Far East.

Been excitedly planning the next stage of my travels, think I will make my way to Vietnam after Hong Kong, and travel down the county, across Cambodia and into Thailand... 2004 looks to be a strange year, a whole year of travelling.

Questions? If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our Central America Insiders page.

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