A hot city

Well today i want to talk about a nice city which is called Leon (Santiago de los caballeros) or colonial city

Well if you are planning visiting Nicaragua you can not dismiss this beautiful city which is called Leon

First you will be arriving in Managua's International Airport (As i always say only airport in Nicaragua)

Well first of all you have to options to get to the bus station that takes you to Leon

First you can take one cab and tell the cab driver to take you to estacion de buses de la uca (Uca bus station) the bus station is located in front of the uca the trip will take around 30 minutes to get to La uca by taxy (in this trip you have to pay around 5 dollar per 4 person (150 cordobas Nicaraguan currency) or 3 dollar if you are travelling alone so my advice is to take your family, friends or your partner with you

You have the second and cheaper but no recommendable which is take the public bus and go in it to Estacion de buses de la uca (well the public bus is 2,50 cordobas per person (8 dollar cents) but for this you need to buy a Public Transportation Card or in spanish (TUC) if you decided to take this option the travel will take around 1.10 hours to get to estacion de buses de la uca (this option is not recommendable for foreigners sometimes in Nicaragua people think that foreigners bring a lot of money and they can try to steal your stuffs or even hurt you) so first option is the recommendable

Once you are in Estacion de buses de la uca you have to look for your right shuttle (usually shuttles in the last row are the ones who are heading to Leon)

Once you are in your shuttle it is recommendable to look for one seat do not look for transportation tickets in this case the driver will be in charge of collecting the money you just have to sit and relax the trip is around 60 cordobas (2 dollars) per person

*In this place there are 2 cooperatives that offers the service of transportation to Leon I would recommend to take the last row cooperative (they offer the service with Air conditioning as you may know Nicaragua is a tropical country so every single day in Nicaragua no matter the season of the year that you are traveling in, the weather will be sunny and it will be really hot so choose the second option)

once you are in the shuttle the trip takes around two hours to get to Leon so be patient is not too long

Once you are in Leon i would recommend you to take a cab from the bus station (you can go down from the shuttle in any place the shuttle is passing by but i would recommend you to sit and wait until the last stop which is in the bus station) so once you are in i would recommend you to take a cab to your hostel

In leon cabs have a fixed price wherever they go so do not pay more than 25 cordobas (around 80 cents dollar) per person. If one cab driver says something different than this price do not ride the cab

So once you are in your hostel you can relax and rest for the night

If you want to have a beer this is the right city to take one for two reasons

One the weather is so hot so you need at least to take two beers per day to survive this trip

and second everybody drinks every single day in this city no matter what day is you will find enough people in the pubs to drink so no matter if it is monday you can go to a pub and you can have a great time there (i am pretty sure that once you get to one  pub no matter the day it will be full of people)

There are many pubs but i would recommend the followings

Barbaro: which is just one block away from the central park (cathedral) this place has great prices and it is air conditioned so you do not have to worry about the bad weather outside (by the way prices are a little high but the place is good)

Snake: which is basically a pub you can go and have a great time in a great place with great prices you can have a beer for 1 dollar and buy cubetazos which are basically buckets with 5 or 10 beers for around 8 dollars and enjoy them with your family (No air conditioning in this place so you will need to keep you cold)

Soleras: if you want to watch a football match this is a great place to do it. In this place you can get beers for around 8 dollars the bucket of 10 beers so do not worry about the price just enjoy the match and have a great time (No air conditioning in this place so you will need to keep you cold)

Well after knowing all this great places it is time to go and know about the culture and touristic places

You can go and hire a tour operator to make a trip

There are many different places to go but the most recommendable for me are:

1) Cerro Negro volcano: a young active volcano where you can make snowboarding basically my advice if you are taking this trip is to take a lot of water and take a lot of sunscreen with you

You can go by yourself to this volcano but it is better if you hire a tour operator because in this way you do not have to worry about the road which is really confusing and is not the best road it is a road with many rocks so if you are going by yourself make sure that your car is a 4 WD especially if you are going after 12 pm because you will be getting back like 5 pm and if you get stuck there it will be very difficult to look for help at that time

But we are going to suppose that you are going by yourself and you already got to the main entrance in that place so first of all you have to rent the proper equipment (Gogos, gloves and suits) so after that you have to drive straight ahead to the volcano boarding once you got there you have to hike up on foot. Just leave your car there. Do not leave any valuable inside so the hike up takes around 50 minutes once you are in the volcano top you can enjoy the view and then you have to dress up and get ready to board down. Get dress properly with the suit otherwise if you fall down while you are boarding down you will get really hurt

Once you are in the bottom i would recommend you to take the suit off because that city is really hot by the way the price is 30 dollars

2) Telica twilight: well in this kind of thip is better to hire a tour operator because the way to get to the volcano is really tricky and you can get lost really easy but it is worthy to pay the 55 dollars that cost this trip because you can enjoy the twilight and the lava in this volcano. Make sure you have enough water and sunscreen

3) Isla Juan venado: in this tour you can go by yourself in a regular car the road is really good and you will not have problems getting there in this tour you have to get into a boat and you will have a tour guided showing you the nature (basically the birds) and in this tour you must take a lot of sunscreen, water and sunglasses otherwise you will not enjoy at all because the sun and the weather make it difficult to enjoy it without that. In this trip you will have time to take a shower in the beach so enjoy it by the way the price is 40 dollars per person

Well guys i hope this information is useful for you

And if you are planning to visit Nicaragua do not miss this tour

We are waiting for you

Sincerely

Leon, Nicaragua