Nicaragua

I am now traveling to the Southern Hemisphere with the end-goal of seeing the Southern Cross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_cross) and Tierra del Fuego (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_del_fuego).

I carry all my belongings in my backpack. This "backpacking" not to be confused with the backwoods backpacking of tents, lonely trails, and sore legs.

First stop is Nicaragua. I was greeted by this guy, with pick and machine gun, in Managua - reference to the armed conflict of the workers against the few powerholding, landholding elites.

Nearby is the original Catholic Church standing precariously after a series of earthquakes.

I was surprised to see boys playing baseball as opposed to soccer. Soccer is the pastime in the other Central American countries.

I headed south to Lake Nicaragua and took this boat out to the island of Ometepe. I took a seat that would have a good view of the island's two volcanoes.

The one on the left (giving off sulfurous smoke signals) is Concepcion while the one on the right is Maderas.

The boat dropped me at the bottom of Concepcion and a slow, jarring 3hr bus ride took me to the bottom of Maderas and this nice Finca.

I stayed there for the night ($2.50) and climbed Maderas the next day. The trail passed through a cloud forest with a fantasy book feel to it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_forest.)

I camped in the crater at the top and, at dusk, had the novel experience of Howler monkeys chattering in the trees around camp.

I spent the following night sleeping in a hammock back at the Finca.

I guessed that there would be an ATM on the island to withdraw money from but I was wrong. At this point I had sufficient cash to get me back to civilization (from here on defined as "place that has ATM"). But, as fate would have it, this day was a holiday and there was no public transportation. Luckily, 3 Czech guys helped me out with a loan and taught me how to travel cheap. First lesson, wash your clothes by hand.

Two of us went and climbed Concepcion volcano.

Here we are checking out the sulfurous gasses coming from the crater (perfect if you need watery eyes and a cough.)

The yellow streaks on the side of the crater are caused by the sulfur in the gas.

On the way down we stumbled into the middle of a monkey pow-wow. Dads, moms, kids, babies - about 20 of them. They kept an eye on us.

I made it off the island and headed for Costa Rica (they have a team in the World Cup - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_cup because it likely doesn't get much play in the states)