Islands & volcanoes – Day 88 (8153 miles)

We are ready to head inland, the coast has been lovely but now for something different. We spent a couple of nights in San Blas, only just off the coast and a good spot to visit an island called Mexcaltitan. Do you know, it took me days to be able to remember the name of that place, as if it’s not long enough I would add an extra syllable or get the correct ones in the wrong order. I have come to the conclusion there are too many syllables in many Spanish words, it would be so much easier to learn if they were shorter!

Anyway, back to San Blas, it is surrounded by mangrove swamps, which is interesting but to us just shouted EVEN MORE INSECTS! We stayed in a small hotel as we’d been advised that the sand flies in the one campsite were vicious.

We did risk a picnic lunch by the water one day, watching the Pelicans hanging around hoping for left overs from the fishing boats.

There was torrential rain at night which left the cobbled streets a muddy mess each morning. As always the locals just dealt with it and weaved in and out of the mess the best they could.

Just some colourful street art.

Had to cheat here and use a downloaded image to show you the classic shot of Mexcaltitan. It is a man made island and legend says it is the birthplace of the Aztecs and from here they set out on a pilgrimage in 1091 which led them to the founding of the ancient city of Tenochtitlan. It’s all there on Wikipedia.

We braved the insects for a nice ride through the mangroves.

It wasn’t too bad when we were there but at the height of the rainy season many of the streets do flood and the locals get about by boat. The soil on the island is so high in salt that they cannot grow any edible crops but obviously they have access to a lot of freshwater fish!

John took the above photo in the museum and asked me to include it in the blog. I couldn’t really understand why? However always the engineer he explained the significance was that one of the roof beams was being held up, although not very well by the ladder!

Waiting to sample the local fish.

This is the Laguna del Santa Maria del Oro a lake within an extinct volcano. We took a steep wiggley road that dropped 1300 ft to a campsite on the shoreline.

It was a lovely spot, and we spent the afternoon relaxing by the lake.

But the power of nature and all that. It was about 4 hours later that we found ourselves dripping wet in a thunder storm and Juanita under a pile of branches!

I caught this flamboyant caterpillar reading our Lonely Planet, must be planning a trip.

After fixing up Juanita we set off to visit the active Volcan Ceboruco although it hasn’t erupted since 1871! Well we couldn’t stand too much excitement after the other night.

We were visiting as a quick stop off on the way to another area so had a fairly long journey to do. I had told John there was no hiking involved and it was up a 15km cobbled track. All true but I suppose I had underestimated how long it would take to travel 30km on what was at times very bumpy terrain. So there and back added 2 hours to our journey time that day, oh well, it was interesting to see.

Nothing too serious, sometimes when we are going very slow, over bumpy ground, for a while and the temperature is over 35c we can smell petrol inside the van. John was looking for signs of a petrol leak in the engine bay and could see fluid of some kind. To take a better look the battery had to come out. Luckily what he could see turned out to be water, the engine bay was still drying out from the storm. Some Googling that night revealed other Delica owners finding the same thing, something to do with the venting system. I might have that wrong but John is asleep so I can’t check! Maybe he’ll do a techie blog on it sometime! Just for you Richard?