Pop quiz asshole...

Two days and two 10-hour bus journeys bring us from Panama to the Nicaraguan border. Scruffy characters walk through the crowds waving huge wads of Nicaraguan currency, offering you ¨good exchange price¨, the temperature reaches a thousand degrees, and even a soldier with a gun can't control the queue as fat women with elbows and old men with black eyes crush to get through immigration on the Costa Rican side. On the Nicaraguan side our bus driver collects everyone's passport in a plastic bag, along with a few dollars, disappears for twenty minutes and bingo! Welcome to Nicaragua...

Border-based mayhem aside, so far Nicaragua has been amazing. Looking out of the window as the bus cruised north we saw Lake Nicaragua and the two island volcanoes in the middle of it. A delicate ring of low cloud circled the volcano summits.....as if gentle Jesus was blowing his smoke rings down from the heavens!

Inside the bus the film 'Speed' (yep, bomb on a bus) blared at full volume. Woody and me have come to the conclusion that the drivers want to make their passengers as uneasy as possible. Our bus films so far have included Ice Cube chopping an anaconda in the head with an axe, a trumpet player being shot in the neck in Vietnam (in super slow motion), and a little boy being run over by a combine harvester. And Chris Klein. It's all very surreal, but when the window views are this good, they could show anything. Maybe that's why they do...

We rolled into Granada as the sun set and we were blown away. It's an absolutely beautiful old colonial town. Brightly painted buildings, exquisitely crafted churches on almost every corner, and horse drawn carriages clattering up and down the cobbled streets. Costa Rica and Panama are breathtakingly beautiful countries, but because it's so old, it feels like the beauty of Granada has just a bit more depth and personality and soul. I think that's why it's so instantly likeable.

When the two favourite sports of a nation are boxing and baseball, maybe you'd have a feeling that it's a nation that revels in violence (like if someone can't punch you to death, they can always go and get their baseball bat). Combine that with a difficult, violent past and high levels of poverty and perhaps you'd get the impression that these things would be reflected in the people. We've found the Nicaraguans to be a friendly, smiley, helpful nation, maybe even slightly shy compared to the more outgoing Costa Rican Ticos...

Last night we had a few beers on Calle La Calzada - kind of like Barcelona's La Rambla but with more dogs. We met some interesting people - like Horus Heavens who passed his guitar around and played and sang songs, or Tommy O'Shea (you couldn't make it up) the owner of an Irish bar, or this old Catalonian guy who used to be a musician until he had his fingers chopped off by General Franco.

It was here that we had our first encounter with the Nicaraguan street kids. They sell sweets, chewing gum and cigarettes, and if you're not careful you'll give them everything you've got. One little girl shyly came over to where we were sitting, quietly said hello and fumbled a wee pack of chewing gum onto our table to see if we wanted to buy it. She was barely the height of the table, and her wide brown eyes made it impossible to say no. It was very scary to think that she was just a little girl and was out on the streets after dark selling these things. You could probably go mental going over the various permutations of why she has to do this, where she sleeps at night and who looks after her.

The boys are much more boisterous - breakdancing in the street, jumping into our photos, and hugging Rachel. We spoke to one wee guy, Miguelangel, who asked us about Scotland and giggled as he tried to pronounce our names (although he did better than our bus driver - ¨Rash el Wood Hard¨ and ¨Tot a Lan Weh Teh For¨...) We had no change after the little girl, but Miguelangel took two sweets out of his wee basket and gave them to us anyway. At the risk of sounding like a cock, it is a humbling experience. It's strange how the kind act of a little kid can make you feel so bad...

With that in mind myself and the Universal Crowd Pleaser that is Woodward have a meeting on Monday with a woman to see if there's a possibility of volunteering in a kid's shelter. Granada might keep us for a while...