Nicaragua

I've been in Nicaragua for the last few weeks. I didn't have any expectations for the place but so far it's been awesome. Some of the nicest beaches I've see along with volcanoes every 30km.





While I was in the city of Granada I wandered with a bucket of paint into a poorer part of town called El Enredo. It is filled with old colonial houses with people that have no money to maintain their upkeep. It's a great place to cruise around taking photos and most of the locals are really nice.





I started talking to this guy Gorge (pronounced Horhe) and told him that I'm looking for a wall to paint. He started banging on his neighbors door telling them that I was going to paint their wall. Then ran into his house and grabbed his machete and started cutting down all the small trees for me. His wife came out with a bucket for me to use as a roller tray and I went and got us all some beers for their effort. Everyone over here spends most of their time sitting out the front of their houses. I actually spent more time talking with the locals than painting. The guys in the pic were trying to get me to paint a massive weed leaf next to a Barcelona Football Club logo. Instead I used up my scraps doing a really quick piece for the locals.


This kid was the worst window washer ever. He can't even reach the window.

Daily Sight

I've seen up to 6 on a bike with pets and bags of shopping.

Costa Rica

I'm in the process of traveling through Costa Rica as fast as possible. It's really expensive and full of American Tourists but very beautiful at the same time.

Panama

I finally made it to Central America. Panama has a lot more of an American feel to it compared to the places I've been in South America. Even the crack heads here harass you in English. I was really happy to see that they sell lots of paint in the supermarkets. They even have Rustolium.

The buses in Panama City are crazy. They are jazzed up old American school buses




After a couple of days I left Panama City and went the the second largest city in Panama, David. It's a bit of a hole but I managed to find a run down petrol station on a main road to paint. I was about to start when this old guy came out of nowhere. He told me that it was his house and he'd lived there for the last 6 years. He was cool with me painting it so I got us a couple of beers and had a good chat.





He started a fire and was cooking some strange stuff in some old paint tins. He told me that is was traditional food from Panama and he wanted me to dine with him. I've been crook so many times on this trip that I know when to turn down a dodgy meal. His hygiene levels had a bit to be desired. After a while a couple of his mates showed up and we all hang out and had some beers in the heat.

Darien Gap

I've had a very interesting start to 2012 by being stuck in the Darian Gap which is the jungle that joins Columbia and Panama. There are no roads, a bunch of guys with machine guns, a few small towns and no banks which means no cash. I caught the worst boat trip of my life where I was stuck at the front of a speed boat where the driver tried to catch air off every wave. It was awesome for the forts 10 minutes but after 3 1/2 hours of jolting it gets a bit much. The boat ride ended at a little town called Capugana. There are no cars or motorbikes in any of the towns in the Darian Gap this one has a local cab which is a horse and cart.


For some reason almost every house had a sound system like this and they always had it cranked up to 10.


I moved to the next town called Sapzurro for new years. This place is even more isolated and even smaller. There are no banks for about 90km and after about a week the cash was getting low so I decided to move on to Panama. Just before I set off a really powerful Paramilitary guy got killed right near we were staying and the whole area was locked down. The streets were filled with Paramilitaries armed to the teeth. No one was aloud to open their shops or set off in a boat. So I ended up having to trek up a mountain to sneak across the border into Panama with a couple from Copenhagen and then we tried to bribe our way on to a plane, which didn't work so we got stranded in a really hostile town for 2 days with next to no cash. We even made fishing reels and tried to fish for our dinner. The people who lived there were a bunch of pricks. They hated us for being white and kept trying to screw us over. Out of nowhere a French guy lent us $200 before he jumped on a plane. It saved our asses. Without him we had no way of getting out of there.





Every time we tried to walk more than 3 blocks from in any direction, a Military guy would stop us holding his big gun with his finger on the trigger and tell us that we can't go any further because we might get kidnapped.



These missing person posters were everywhere.

This was the Air Panama office. They didn't want to help us at all, but I managed to score a whole lot of confiscated gas for my little stove. We used it to cook all our meals.

After being stuck there for a couple of days a couple from Argentina and a girl from Amsterdam showed up in the same situation. After asking almost everyone in town we managed to all get a boat to Panama City the next day. It was great to cruise past the San Blas Islands. There are over 400 islands. Some only have one palm tree going out of mound of sand.

Today I read about the Paramilitaries online and found out that they are pretty much the new drug cartels in Columbia. They are responsible for thousands of deaths where they almost wipe out whole towns using guns, machetes and chainsaws. If you're interested there is a lot more info on them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitarism_in_Colombia