Pit stops in Hawaii aka paradise. (Part 3)

Ocean breeze blowing with Diamond Head Mountain in the background.

          On the last day of my trip and my last day in Hawaii, Tony's roommates were nice enough to take me around to check out some of the island and see a stunning sunset.

Extreme boogie boarder. 

My Hawaiian tour guilds. 

       One of the cool place they took me to was the lava tube, which is a tunnel that was crated by flowing lava long ago and now you can walk through it.  From this location you can clearly see how the island was crated by volcanic activity.  Just by looking at the landscape and the rock walls you can imagine how and where the lava was flowing and then harden.  

       The last place they took me to before my flight that night, was the China Wall to see the sunset right behind Diamond Head Mountain.  The color of the sky, the refection of the sun on the water, the cool breeze; everything was just so perfect.  I guess this is way Hawaii is called paradise.

Hawaiian sunset and Diamond Head Mountain.

Click on the links below for:

Pit stops in Hawaii aka paradise. (Part 1)

Pit stops in Hawaii aka paradise. (Part 2)

Living around Volcanos

The next day that we were in Nicaragua we went to Leon Viejo(Old Leon). Leon Viejo was founded in 1524 and was the country's first capital until 1610 when the people that live there moved to the new Leon. At Leon Viejo there are only ruins now, all you can see is the bases of the house that once stood there. But you can see clearly see the lay out of were the streets, houses, stores, churches, monasteries, and schools used to stand. We waked to the top of hill were the fort that was the defense of Leon Viejo. It was clear why they would build a fort there, from the top of this hill you are able to see all round you clearly. The view is so great you could see the lake of Managua as well as five volcanos that surround this area.

After learning about old Leon we went to the new Leon. There we ate honered by the mayor of the city and then had free time to relax, go site seeing, buy food or what we need, use the internet, or make international phone calls our live ones. Some thing that really caught my eye was that in between the buildings you could see the volcanos poking out, I had never seen a volcano even more them so close to a city.

Durning the free time I went to used the internet to get in touch with my family and did some site seeing. As I walked out of a church I seen this little boy riding a statue of this leon, reminded me of a Greek or Roman myth and I just had to get a shot of him.

Last days of Costa Rica

8/4/10

The next day we went on our way from San Jose to go see an active volcano, Arenal. In the middle of the trip we was all woke up when we had to stop because the one of the two buses had gotten a flat. We had to get off and wait about a an hour for the bus drivers to change the tires, I had never seen an tire of a couch bus being changed. It was pretty cool to see the bus drivers change such a big tire in so much heat.

Once we got to the Arenal we could hardly see it because of the clouds but the group still set up for a group shot. Little by little the clouds started to go away and we could see the Arenal and then out of no were the ground started to shake and then came a huge roar and a the volcano shot tones of smoke into the air. After the whole hip about seeing this great event we started on a hike trowed Arenal's base.

Once we had seen the volcano from this rocky base we started a hike threw a different path that led us into a jungle. As we walked the path we seen huge bugs, heard and felt the volcano and seen this huge tree named Ceiba. Later we would find out that the Ceiba was very important to the Mayans. They believe that it represented the three levels of the universe; the top that went up into the sky was the heavens, the bottom; the roots went into the ground was the underworld, and the mid-section; the trunk was were humans were. Every where we went we was told over and over about this tree, that's how important it is to understanding the Mayan culture.

As we hiked I started to get tired and hungry, so a friend offered me coca leafs telling me that it would take it away and give me energy. He told me all I had to do was chew the leafs and make sure I didn't swallow, so I did just that. After a few minuets I wasn't tired or hungry, had more energy, and my mouth was a little numb.

Threw out the whole trip I learned a lot about my fellow group members. The image below is a friend from Uruguay making mate(ma-te). Mate is a tea from Uruguay and Argentina that is made by pouring hot water on herbs that you drink in threw a special straw. There was also a friend from Paraguay that also made the same tea but instead of hot water she used cold water and it's named terere.

After checking out the Arenal and the great hike we went to were we was going to sleep, this was a sport complex with the volcano in the background. Here we had to shower out side and sleep inside in tents on a basketball court.

Later that nigh the bus drivers took us to see the lava glowing in the dark as it flowed down the volcano, but when we got there we really couldn't see anything. So I took the chance to play with my flash off the camera and got some cool shots. The next stop that night was to go to a stream were the water was hot because it is heated by the volcano, this was really relaxing.

The first thing we did as soon as we got on the buses in any country was fall asleep. We just couldn't help it, it could be noon and sunny out but we would still all fall asleep. So in Costa Rica I was on the bus and just happened to wake up and look over my shoulder and see my friend from Spain, Javi sleeping with very beautiful light on his face so I just had to take the shot of him sleeping.