5th March 2005

We have now turned up in a the nice little city pof Granada, still in Nicaragua. The best part was seeing that we are staying in a posh hotel complete with swimming pool, not sure what the hotel made of us when we turned up all dirty with our backpacks (everyone in the group was desperate for a laundrette - which thankfully we found, nothing beats the feeling of clean clothes, ok maybe you lot didn't need to know that).

One thing that has struck us all though is how much Japanese influence there is here. Our tour leader has explained that Niacaragua voted against banning whale hunting and coincidently Japan dropped the debt and pumped in lots of money to this country.

Went up another volcano yesterday but this time we just drove up to the top in the mini bus, where's the fun in that. I wasn't even scared once on the climb up.

We also got pulled over by the police and charged $1 each for going through a town. Lee our tour leader did argue over this but it's hard to win an argiument when the police have AK47s pointing at you.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.