San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

Black sand beaches, tidal pools and breaking surf surrounds us around here. Surfers from every corner, overtanned Brits, natural Californians, one amazing guy from New Mexico with a tattoo across both of his knees (admittedly done whilst incredibly drunk) in gangsta font that says on the right one ¨Save the¨...¨ and on the left one ¨...world dude!!!¨

There is the trio from Oxford who played their instruments on the black sand beach while twelve of us drank beers, then got stung by a sting ray. There is the rock skipping contest, of which my traveling partner is disarmingly good at, and the Nica local who says I look like his ex-girlfriend and then teaches me the word for cool. The bumpy path here is only 8 KM from town but it takes more than a half an hour because of the horrible state of the road, a boa constrictor stopping taxis, and when seventeen school children in uniform scream out as we pass, joyfully jumping on the back of the open truck just to get a ride. The air smells like burning wood at night, there is no fog and the sunsets are saturated orange, waves crashing, everyone hugging their knees on flat rocks, perfecting Spanish, perfecting the art of downing buckets of rum and Coke until 4 AM and then jumping up at five to catch the chicken bus, to sleep while standing like a horse would, walk across a border with our bags sticking sweat to our backs, our feet are dusty, our fingernails are dirty and we only have one week of wonderful discomfort of sandy beds and random conversations left...