Costa Rica to Nicaragua

We had heard lots of bad things about this border crossing, mainly that it took hours and hours to get through as it is a major route. As we approached there were queues and queues of trucks and cars, but our taxi drove straight to the front, dropped us off, and we lined up for about 15 minutes, exited Costa Rica. We had read that the distance between the passport control offices was really far and that you could rent golf buggies, well, we didn't see any golf buggies, and walked for about 10 minutes and found the Nicaragua office. Again, a short queue and it was done. Much quicker than Costa Rica - Panama.
We had teamed up with 2 other Brits, who were heading to the same Island - Isla de Ometepe, in Lake Nicaragua. This island is formed by two volcanoes, one active, the other dormant. We stayed in the main town the first night, the only place with an ATM on the island, Moyogalpa. The 2nd night we stayed in Santa Domingo, on the thin land between the volcanos, on the beach of the lake. The next day we climbed the active volcano, Conception. We got as high as the cloud level, we were nearly blown off the side, it was sooooo windy. We were up and down in 5 hours, much quicker than we thought, so managed to get a ferry back to the mainland the same day. Our next stop was Playa Maderas, north of San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific Coast. We haggled our taxi driver down to 25 dollars and off we went. The roads soon deteriorated and we got totally lost, but eventually rocked up at the much talked about 'Camping Matilda's'. It was dark and we were shattered from the volcano climb and accepted a dorm room on the beach for 10 dollars each. We pretty much ate dinner and went straight to bed.
The next morning we woke up. Kirsty had been eaten alive by an army of big red ants in the night....oh dear! We decided that we would have to change rooms if we stayed another night. We stepped outside and were blasted by the first of many insane gusts of wind, blowing sand into whirlwinds, in our ears, eyes, nose, mouth, sand everywhere. It was like a typhoon, but it was sunny. We stumbled out onto the beach and noticed a group of people all standing around. We went over and it was a turtle, covering up her eggs - which had been taken away by the manager of the hotel for safety - she had birthed 85 eggs and was about to head back to the ocean. It was an amazing sight, she didn't seem to be at all worried about all the people watching her. Great start to the day! We got breakfast, pancakes and fruit with syrup...soon to be covered in sand. It was almost impossible to eat!
We tried to upgrade rooms, but they have a policy where if you stay one night in a room it's super expensive, so after being sandblasted for about 4 hours, we decided to make an exit and head back to the town of San Juan del Sur. Also, the main reason we had gone to Playa Maderas was for surfing...but there were NO waves. This coast is usually great for surfing because of the offshore winds created by the presence of the huge Lake Nicaragua, however, there seems to be severe windy conditions at the moment, destroying any possibility of surfing, plus no Pacific swell.
We spent the afternoon at a resort called Pelican Eyes, on the hilltop overlooking San Juan del Sur. They have amazing infinity pools and food and cocktails. Very luxurious. It costs about 250 US dollars a night to stay there, so after sunset we retired to our 7 dollar hostel instead! The typhoon style winds continue!
We are currently in San Juan del Sur, about to head to the touristy colonial town of Granada, 2 hours away.
Trying to escape the wind.