Ometepe and beyond!

Hola amigos! I've been too busy hanging out with my momma to update my blog, but now as I sit here by the pool on my last day in Central America I figured it would be a good time to recount my adventures! 

After San Juan del Sur, Siw and I headed to isla de ometepe home of two spectacular volcanoes. Most people climb one or both of the volcanoes, but the hikes are between 8 and 12 hours in 40 degree heat aka not my idea of fun! We chose to look up at the beauty from the beach haha our experience of ometepe wasn't bad, the scenery was spectacular, the waters of lake nicaragua were warm and soothing and we met some lovely people. There were just all of these small things that didn't work out too well, which when compounded, seemed like the end of the world haha needless to say, we were pretty relieved to take the ferry back to the mainland. I'm glad that I went to ometepe but I think that a bit more research and planning would have helped us immensely! 

Once we reached the mainland, we were going to spend the night in Rivas and head to Costa Rica the next morning. Well, the taxi driver told us that the border would be closed the next day because of semana Santa, the week leading up to Easter that everyone has as holidays. So, off to the border we went! We left Nicaragua and headed into Costa Rica, had one last street food meal eaten at the bus station and within an hour, it was time to say bye to my travel buddy Siw as I was headed to Liberia and she continued on to San Jose and then Panama. The trip wouldn't have been the same without her and I am so lucky we crossed paths! It was sad saying bye, but as soon as I got off the bus I had to deal with the fact that it dropped me off on the side of the highway. SO RANDOM! I found my way to the hostel I had booked and settled in. The plan was to stay in Liberia for the week until my mum arrived on Saturday. There isn't much going on in liberia so I took the public bus to Tamarindo for two days and checked into a hostel there!

Those two days I had chillin in tamagringo, as it is affectionately known, were really awesome because I got to check out everything before my mum got here and got readjusted to being in a touristy area with shops and restaurants that aren't overrun with chickens! Haha 

I met two cool people from Toronto, Steph and Aurimas and we rented a surfboard one day (which I waxed with PINK wax!) and hit the waves. It was so much fun! Then we had sushi and they continued on their trip. I'm heading back toToronto this weekend and I think we will meet up. 

One thing about costa rica is that everything is super expensive!  It was such a shock coming from Nicaragua so I'm glad I ended my trip here! Since tamarindo was so busy for semana santa I wasn't able to book a room Thursday night so I headed back to Liberia until Saturday when my momma came!!!

We checked into our beautiful hotel and have been relaxing and eating great food and hangin out together! It's so nice o get to spend some time with her since I haven't seen her in two months! And it's nice to not be in hostels anymore haha

One day I went diving with pacific coast dive centre which was awesome! It was great to be diving again and although I didn't see a manta ray, we saw some beautiful fish and eagle Rays it was amazing! 

We also went one night to a beach to watch pacific green sea turtles nesting. It was such a magical experience, out there with the bright stars and no lights to see these four foot long turtles come out of the ocean, find a good spot to dig their nest, and then watch them dig through the sand and lay the eggs. It was just so cool and something I will never forget in my whole life! So special that i got to see it with my mum! 

Today is our last day in paradise, we are hanging out by the pool, going to have one last dip in the ocean and having our "Friday night pizza" tradition at the Italian restaurant at our hotel. Tomorrow we are on the same flight at 1:30 but I'm getting off in Toronto and she is headed home to Ottawa.

Central America has been so good to me, and a piece of my heart will always be here, in every wave, piña and beautiful sunset! I definitely recommend travelling in Honduras and Nicaragua for backpacking and Costa Rica if it is in your budget is so beautiful! 

Now on to a new adventure as I look for my first "real" job in advertising, and hopefully a big move to Vancouver or back to trusty T.O!!! 

stepping on stars

I am so far behind on this thing, I will try to remember everything I've done!! 

We made it to Grenada where the highlights included: 

- a super nice hostel called the oasis that had a pool, free pancakes and bananas!

- taking pictures of all the crazy coloured walls and doors

- climbing to the top of a cathedral and getting a 360 view of the city

- drinking juice in a bag

- getting hopelessly lost in the local market

- buying some lovely had made jewlery 

Grenada was awesome, a nice change to a city after being by the lake. 

We left with jack and Alice on the chicken bus to rivas, where they headed to isla de ometepe and we took another bus to San Juan del sur. Once there, we hopped on a beach shuttle to stay for a few days at playa Maderas. We stayed in perma tents aka "the doghouses" at Matilda's right on the beach! It was so cool and we heard the waves crashing at night. We watched the sunset, and as it finally went down, the bioluminescence came out. It looked like there were fairy lights in the waves! Every step you took on the sand was stepping on stars. It was so amazingly beautiful and something I have wanted to see my whole life! I feel so lucky to have seen it :)

The next day I rented a surfboard with Nicole, a girl we met there, and we took turns going for some waves. It was so fun! Then Siw and I headed back to San Juan del sur for the next four days. 

In San Juan, we went ziplining, watched amazing sunsets, and went to the pub crawl called Sunday funday! It was hilarious, all of these people getting hammered and bopping around in the pool haha I was a sober spectator but the people watching was the best lol we went to three different bar/pool/hostels including the beautiful "naked tiger hostel" up on the hill with an epic view of the sunset! We also went ziplining which was really fun once I got over my initial nervousness. 

We also got tattoos yeeeewwww!

I also ate a poutine and had a Caesar at the Canadian bar called the loose moose, how cool is that?! 

After a lovely four nights in San Juan del sur, we were ready to move on to ometepe, which I will leave for another post.... 

Really looking forward to coming homeeeeee on April 11th! ( sick of all my clothes now and living out of a bag hehehe plus I just miss you all!!! ) 

Loads of love!!! Xx 

on the road again...

hello my friends! it's been a while since i've dusted off the ol' blogger login and written a post. i've been home for about 4.5 months now, working at a cafe, coming home and looking up random flights on skyscanner to see where i should go next. and finally, the research has paid off. my itchy feet are finally gonna get scratched! i'm off to central america! 

the first little while i was home, i was super bummed, not knowing what my next move was. i couldn't find a job, i had no money, and the mean visa man kept saying i owed them my first born child. so i finally got my current job, where i learned to make delicious lattes (today i had an eggnog latte and it seriously changed my life and appreciation for christmas :P) and i decided that when i had enough money saved up, i was going to go to new zealand for a year. 

hmmm... have you looked at the price of a flight to nz?! not cheap man. so i decided maybe not. meanwhile, my good pal sarah, you may remember her as one of my trailer park sistas from margs, was cooking up a plan to go do her divemaster training in utila, an island off the coast of honduras. i never really thought about travelling in central america before, but one google image search of utila, a mention of the massive whale shark population, and i was in. 

so i booked my flight! leaving ottawa on february 7th for san pedro sula, honduras. i will stay one night in this *ahem* ...fairly dangerous town from what i've read, and then take a bus to la ceiba and then a ferry to utila, which will be my island home for a month! i'm stoked to get my dive ticket, work on freediving, see wicked sea creatures, and obvssss to be reunited with my lovely mermaid! after that month, no plan really, but i definitely am going to head to the pacific side for some surfing. no return ticket yet, but upon googling, we found that it is around $200 to fly home from cancun, mexico.. so i'm thinking i will try to head up that way :)

if anyone has travelled in central before, hit me up with some suggestions. i am excited to have a really open plan, basically i'm just going to come home when i run out of money lol. so ya i'd love to hear anyone's advice, what they liked, what they didn't etc. etc. and maybe some tips on where i can buy pepper spray bahaha 

anyways, that's it for now! looking forward to updating my blog while on the road again :) 
¡Hasta luego!

soph xx

we put the 'holiday' in working holiday visa

indddddoooooooo!!! these last few weeks have been so epic. i've finally gotten my first taste of asia, and let me tell you, it tastes damn good. besides all of the beautiful beaches, rolling waves, badass scooter rides and serious shopping, there was some of the best food i've ever eaten in my life, and cheap to boot. i will never look at rice the same way again after having eaten nasi goreng (indonesian veg fried rice) so many times. we ate amazing seafood and fish that was literally caught 3 hours ago in the bay right in front of us. indo is also a veggies best friend with so much tempeh and tofu on the menu. i am obsessed with tempeh, it is so good, and although its not a really popular food in western culture, i definitely encourage everyone to try it.. so tasty! we also ate this stuff called water spinach, im pretty sure its a distant cousin of regular spinach that was delish as well. standard dinner was rice, veggies and tempeh or fish. i could really eat like that all day everyday. then for dessert, it was either a coconut smoothie, or a pineapple cut so that you could literally just eat it like a popsicle just holding the stem! i was in heaven. all for 5 bucks or less depending on where you went! 

so typical of me to start off a story with a description of the food bahaha we left margs on march 23 and flew to denpasar, bali. we left the next day and flew to labuan bajo on the island of flores. bry did 4 or 5 days of some serious scuba diving, and i did 3 days of snorkelling. it was one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen. the corals were massive and colourful, i literally felt like i was in finding nemo, especially when a family of clown fish (Marlin, Coral and Nemo) came out of the anemone right in front of me! i saw beautiful parrot fish, trigger fish, rainbow wrasse, about 8 or 9 turtles and a black tip reef shark! i had such a blast and there were many laughs to be had, especially by the second day when they gave me a snorkel guide who couldn't swim and could barely speak english lol we pretty much stayed in LBJ not really exploring that much, as you basically just go there to dive. One of the days we went to Rinca Island in Komodo National Marine Park and got to see komodo dragons! It was super cool and I'm so happy that we made it there :) 

Then we headed back to Bali to meet up with Emma and Christina and some of our other friends from Margs were there as well so we all went out for dinner and drinks and it was so fun! one of the days we were there it was Hindu new year called Nyepi. They had a ton of these really big floats shaped like different bad spirits in the streets the day before and we went to look at them.I took tons of pics on my phone but it broke so i lost them all booo! anyways the next day, they took all the floats down to the beach and burned them,which is supposed to ward off the bad spirits for the upcoming year. We didn't get to see any of that though, because another tradition of nyepi is that you aren't allowed out on the streets. we were all locked in the hotel and served one meal that day. at night, we had to turn off our lights and they brought us this one tiny little candle to use, so we all sat in bed and watched pretty woman lol it felt like a high school sleepover bahaha 

then we headed to lombok on the fast boat. i was pretty hungover for that journey, so it wasn't the most enjoyable, but i knew a bed was in my immidiate future so it was ok haha then we got a drive to kuta beach where we were staying and found a little guesthouse run by this cool dude named jerry. we rented scooters and drove them all around, to the surf breaks, random beaches, drives into the countryside. i was getting pretty good at driving, but then had a mishap going down a dirt road after a massive rainstorm. mud + scooters + potholes = not good. i wasn't super confident after that but i didn't let it stop me. my friends from toronto alex and britt who are travelling asia together met up with us for a few days too! it was so cool to see them again, and we had a really great time together. I tried surfing a few times, saw a dead seasnake, manouvered my scooter around herds of buffalo on the road, saw rice paddies and made friends with a cute little guy named tom who was selling bracelets to save money for school (so i'd like to believe) we were in lombok for 10 days and i absolutely loved it! definitely reccomend everyone who goes to indo for holiday to take the boat to lombok, it is awesome. especially if you're looking for a more exploring/off the beaten track type of holiday. 

emma flew out of lombok, while bry, christina and I headed back to Bali to fly out the next day. By coincidence, our friend from high school and Bry's long time next door neighbour Kail was in Bali with his friend. They changed their boat to the gilis for one more day so we could meet up. we got dinner and ended up having one more night at skygarden in kuta. this place is nuts, it's like 8 nightclubs in one building. they played really good music and we had so much fun dancing and getting caught up on the last few years. we got home at 5:30am and the guys had to get up at 6:45am for their boat to the gilis! i slept until the last possible minute and then we headed to the airport. they put christina on an earlier flight so we had to say bye to her right away which was sad. i'm so happy she came on the trip with us it was great to meet her :) 

now bry and i are in darwin, living at a hostel on the main street downtown. it's weird to get used to, but i'm liking it so far. i managed to get a job at a restaurant, making the drinks and i just had some waitress training today. it's pretty intense, hopefully i don't mess up too much! i really like darwin so far, it reminds me of halifax actually so that's pretty cool :) 

anyways that is my massive update on the last few weeks of life so far! everything's good, i'm stoked that i've been to asia, glad to be back in aus :) 

surfin' WA

we made it to margaret river!!!! yesterday, we picked up my car steve, whom we named after our awesome mechanic. the repairs cost almost 800 so it was a bit shocking but it had to be done, and to get a car for 1900 i still feel pretty good about it. 

we packed up, removed those ridiculous stickers from the windows so i could see my blind spots and had one more lunch at the old shanghai food court in fremantle. indian food, of course! then we hit the road to margs 

took about 4 hours and we got there! it is so so lovely here, i think im staying forever! even the roads, they are sort of red and the trees grow so big and bend in so they cover the road. i felt like i was in jurassic park lol 

as soon as we parked, bryanna took me for a little drive to show me some surf beaches and OMG i have never seen anything more gorgeous in my life! i was speechless. just google some pictures and you will go nuts. i took a few with my iphone but it doesn't really give it justice. 

then we went for a drive around the town and i saw a field of kangaroos in the distance! i actually cried i was so excited lol!!! the town is so small and cute and i'm really excited to explore! there are a ton of surf shops and cool health food stores and an awesome library. i'm so stoookeddd!!!

then we went back to sue's (the lady we are staying with, she is so rad) and had some thai veggies and rice YUM! had a little singing time with patch her adorable dog, and a snuggle with tiger her kitty :) hit the hay! 

today we woke up, had some brekkie and went to see a few more beaches, and meet up with a guy who had a board for sale on gumtree (basically like craigslist in aus) he lived a bit out of town near a bunch of vineyards. we pull up to his house and there is this massive bright yellow board. 7 ft, super wide, lots of foam for buoyancy. i'm like dude, this thing is amazing. AND I BOUGHT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i had been wanting to decorate whatever board i ended up buying with some pineapple designs, and this really suits my vision! i named the board "the big pineapple" and i am literally so stoked i jumped up and down when i got him! the back has some ugly paint on it but i'm just going to sand it off and make it wicked somehow. YAAAA so tomorrow we are going surfing for sure. its probably going to be super windy/rainy/cold but we have our wetsuits so who cares!!!! and i got it for $200 so altogether with my wetsuit i paid $300 to start surfing. YESSSS!!!!!

the big pineapple in bry's car

beyond excited! then we went into town, did some groceries for lunch/dinner tonight and i got some wax for tomorrow for my board. when we got home we all rearranged a bunch of stuff in our room so there is more storage etc and it is very cozy and homey now! i love it :) now just doing some laundry and vegging out and stuffing our faces because tomorrow bry and i are both starting a cleanse where we only drink green smoothies. im going for 3 days and she is doing a week. i think this will be a really good start and then i'll get back into gluten free and vegan diet, eventually trying to eat mostly raw. ahhh so excited! 

tomorrow we are going surfing in the morning, then going to the market to buy lots of veggies and then i'll probably work on my resume a lot. going to start looking for jobs next week, after we go on a little daytrip with sue on tuesday :) 

everything is sooooo great! i'm looking forward to surfing, getting back eating healthy, finding a job in the vines and doing lots of gardening! i'm going to go read my book and have a cuddle in my bed with tiger and our electric blanket  WHOOO (its still winter here and its freezing lol) 

miss everyone lots!!! we'll get some good pics surfing tomorrow for sure!

xoxo soph

technical difficulties

so yesterday we had a mission: go bring my car to the mechanic and then go to supre and buy pants and sweaters. we were both going to drive so that once i dropped my car off, we could just hop in bry's and be on our way to the store. did it work out that way? of course not! lol

we drove to the first mechanic and i was feeling pretty good about driving actually! we parked and they said they had no room to look at my car today. on the way out, one guy came out and told bryanna that her car was leaking coolant. wtf, this definitely did not happen yesterday! so we continued on and found a midas.

i did basically the dumbest thing, i went in and was like omg i bought this heap yesterday, i don't know what i'm doing i know nothing about cars please help me. HAHA dumb. but the guys seem ok and said they would take a look, not do anything yet and we wouldn't have to pay so we left our cars there and walked back into town (40 min walk but it was a beautiful day!) then we got back, ate a wicked lunch of indian food and ended up taking the free cat bus to supre, which is this really cheap clothing store and its amazing. i got some pants and a sweater so thats good cause it's cold!

got back to the hostel and had a nap. bry was woken up by her phone, it was midas. they continued on to give us the shit list of what is wrong with our cars. hers is some sort of belt or something, and mine is a ton of holes/leaks in the exhaust and head engine or something that basically the cops would pull me over for and put a yellow sticker on the car aka not road worthy. COOOOOOOOOL. they said i got ripped off on buying the car and it was definitely not worth the 1100 that i paid for it. ooops. well, good thing we negotiated, she was asking 1600! hahaa no. 

so we basically freaked out for a while, i thought about buying a ticket home, etc etc. lol then we decided to go for a drink with bryanna's friend anthony who lives here in freo. he's super nice and we talked about surfing and how awesome australia is lol he said that he would come with us to the mechanic tomorrow (aka today) take a look at the mechanics report and help us out with deciding what to do. this is a huge relief because i literally know nothing about cars, except for what my step dad emailed me back when i told him about the weird noises lol so that made me feel quite a bit better. and worse comes to worse, i sell the car, lose out on a few hundred dollars and learn a lesson about buying used cars off gumtree lol not the end of the world. DRAMA!

anthony also said he would take us surfing this weekend! i'm seriously super scared slash excited but with bryanna and him in the water with me i think it will make me feel a lot better about it. ahhh sharks, stay away! lol

so that's the update with me. just waiting for anthony to come pick us up to head to the mechanics and see what they say :S taking it one step at a time haha so it looks like we will be staying here at this hostel for at least one or two more nights, which is alright. it will all work out and will be a funny story to tell later on down the road :P

i'll keep you guys updated on the situation! :)
looooove
soph xoxo