Surf Nicaragua

After some time just basking in the warm sun and doing pretty much nothing, we got ourselves to book a surfing lesson. Our teacher would be a local surfer legend from Peru. And for the price of 20$, his 3-hour lesson was well worth the price! Pretty much the whole group stood up after the first hour, and in the end would stand up almost every try. And Riikka was the star pupil! There are no pictures of this, since we were both in the water at the same time. The next day we'd planned on renting a board on our own and go practice on the secluded Playa Majagual, but by dinner I - Matti - started to get crazy chills, totally lost my appetite and realized I had either had way too much sun or I was getting sick, or both. Later that night my skin was burning red, brain all messed up from the fever and what not. This continued the next day, and the next. There was little else to do but lie down on the bed/hammock, shaking. At the end of the second day we decided it's time to leave the beach, go back to the civilization and find a doctor.

And, when we got back to San Juan we paid a visit to a local hospital, where the doc would tell me that I had - drumroll - Dengue fever. Now, there are two versions of Dengue and I'm lucky to have the "classic" one, while the nastier one makes your skin ooze blood and other nice stuff. There's no vaccination for it nor a proper treatment, so what you apparently just do is wait it out, popping Panadol or similar to keep the fever down. Should be gone in 3-7 days but who knows. Needless to say this will wreck a week's travel activities pretty well. And here's something I wasn't expecting - the medical care in the Nicaraguan hospital didn't cost a dime. Even the medicine was free. Whoa! Way to go Nica!