Fun Exploring Northern Costa Rica

Northern Costa Rica is rife with beautiful beaches and incredible scenery. We are traveling with friends Tom and Ann on Leonides so the other people in the pictures are they. The mystery man inside the kayak shell is Ron,. Enjoy!

Onward to Costa Rica

Finally we left Nicaragua to continue our travels south. We never thought it would be hard to leave our summer hideaway, but saying good-bye to our new friends was difficult. We will always have a place in our hearts for the people and friends in Aserradores.
We sailed overnight to Secret Cove, a development in southern Nicaragua and anchored for a couple days. Then across to beautiful Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica for 8 days before getting a good weather window to cross the area of Papaguayos to check in at Bahia Cocos. (Heavy easterly winds caused by weather in the Caribbean.) We found friends from the Marina Puesta Del Sol there and enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with them at a local restaurant. Barb and Gary on Hurrah, Jeff and Stephanie from Musetta.

Nica Friends

While here in Nicaragua we have enjoyed getting to know several people who live in Aserradores, many of which work here at the Restaurant and some who are just members of the community.
Raul, now in Managua, Marcio the chef, Joe and Eleda the owners of local restaurant "fritanga" the Marias, Jose, Jose and Eugenia, Nielsen, Senar, Walter, Guillermo, Cesar, Pedro and his family, Nohemy, Pedrito, Samir, la Nina, Ricardo, Paulino, Lionel, Estrellita, and lots more. They are wonderful, wonderful people. We will miss these smiling faces, our students, our friends.

We Have Visitors!

Brian and Nancy Sperry flew down from Boulder, Colorado to see us. After spending an extra day in Managua due to luggage that failed to get on their same flight, they spent the better part of a day driving and getting a bit lost in Chinendega, before finally rolling into our marina just before dark. They managed to get a hotel room at the local surf camp and we proceeded to have five action packed days of fishing, sightseeing, and shenanigans that only friends who haven't seen each other in a while can tolerate! We have affectionately referred our get togethers as "Band Camp" as in American Pie, the movie. Here's to another Band Camp in Ecuador!

Inland Travel Part II

We are back to the day to day routine after our two week bus trip through Honduras, Guatemala and a quick run through El Salvador on the way home. We happened to start our trip just as Hurricane Felix came on board. We sat out 2 days of rain in San Lorenzo (up Gulf of Fonseca) Honduras, a place where we could have spent this rainy season. We stayed at the Yacht club and met up with a fellow cruiser Dale, of sailing vessel Parrot Bay, who has the only boat there. He has started chartering and giving tours.

From there we took a chicken bus (so named because you will see people with live chicken and even pigs aboard) to Tegucigalpa, the capitol of Honduras and saw the Center of the Americas monument for peace on a hill in the city.

Then we caught a Headman Alas bus, luxurious, serving snacks and juice, showing movies. The road into Copan Ruins was temporarily closed so we were forced to go on to the coastal town of Tela on the Caribbean coast. The brochure boasted a Garrafuna (black Caribbean people) population but we mainly saw Honduran Latinos. The sea was murky from Felix so we just hung out walking the beach and enjoying the local cuisine.

Now on to Copan Mayan ruins on Alas again, their security measures reminded us of US airports, complete with metal detectors and frisks.

Copan ruins was located in an incredible mountain setting (no humidity and cool nights) smaller than Chichen-Itza but with different hieroglyphs and carvings and an incredible re-creation of a buried tomb painted and decorated with life size masks and carvings. Diane and Ann took a tour of an exotic bird place with Toucans, Makaws and Parrots, letting them hold them on their arms. After three days shopping, eating and touring we left with a present for Barb and Gary for watching Kiira and a new straw hat for me. We then took an express van to Antigua Guatemala.

Now Antigua is the place to see, churches and monasteries and dwellings from the 1600 to 1700s, and the woven goods and coffee plantations. This town also sports its own active Volcano on the edge of town. We ate dinner in an art gallery/restaurant where the owners were artists and Mayan shamans. One of their sons was the chef and the other the other was and is the light weight boxing champion of Guatemala. This town is restoring itself from an earth quake with many of the cathedrals waiting their turn since the restoration project is quite immense. Many of the monasteries have converted to hotels and restaurants and markets for woven goods, jewelry and clothing. Somewhat a yuppie town, it still boasts the cleanest Mercado we've seen as well as a city block sized crafts pavilion with purses, blankets, hammocks, leather goods, wooden carved pieces --- you name it, it was there. We never tired of looking at the various crafts and the color combinations of the Mayan peoples.

Our time was up but Tom and Ann moved on to Lake Atitlan S.E. of Antigua for some Spanish lessons and on to Chiapas to visit some family. We took a mini van to Guatemala City to catch a Tica bus to San Salvador and on to Managua Nicaragua. No security checks on the Tica bus’s. Passing through the mountainous highlands of El Salvador and Nicaragua by bus, we caught up on our movies seeing at least two each day. The mountains are the place to be in these countries. Dryer air and cooler temperatures; Lake Atitlan and Antigua Guatemala being the best, even over Oaxaca ,Mexico. And if you like Volcanoes, we saw and passed over a dozen on this trip. One should Google Earth over Central America just to see all the Volcanoes.

Inland Travel to Honduras and Guatemala

Leaving Puesta Del Sol in Nicaragua, we headed by bus to see some sights in the neighboring countries to the north. First picture is of friends Tom and Ann, of Leonides, taking the pedi cab across the border to Honduras. Second picture is view from where we stayed in San Lorenzo. The next is a view from Tegucigalpa, capitol of Honduras, a dugout canoe on the beach in Tela on the Caribbean coast, and then a marimba band in a hotel in Copan.

Summer in Nicaragua

The lazy life!

Days here are lazy, we really have no major goals from day to day so we try to get a little exercise by walking on the beach, swimming or bicycling. We were able to rent a couple of bikes from some local Nica friends for a couple months, giving “us” wheels and “them” a little income. The roads here are rough rock and gravel like a Colo. Mountain road then throw in a little mud clay. Once you get out to the new in-process black-topped road to Chinandega what was a two hr. van ride when we first got here, is now only 45 minutes.

We go in to Chinandega every other week for groceries and supplies, eat a meal out in the Marina restaurant and a local fish camp restaurant each once a week. Ice cream is a treat in town and at the marina on those special nights when a cruiser leaves to head north or south. A lot of days we take a lunch out to the beach palapa, take a 2 to 3 mile fast walk on the beach, eat our lunch and spend our day reading under the shade enjoying the sea breeze.

Two to three days a week we spend a couple hours teaching English to the restaurant staff and on Sundays we teach Pedro our favorite local Nica. We have really become closer to the community here by helping. We also got involved with a rain water recovery for drinking project donated by a fellow (lady) cruiser. That gave us great satisfaction.

The boat collects a lot of mildew and we try to keep up with that. The batteries stay charged from the two solar panels alone unless we watch a movie or do something else on the computer and have to run the engine for a half hour or so to recharge. Staying on the dock has been a wonderful, if expensive, convenience and helped to keep us sane. Tom and Ann sail their canoe a lot and we some times join them sailing in our Klepper. We have taken some fun trips into the estuary, sailing as well as paddling.

The rainy season so far has not been terribly bad unless a low pressure system is coming in. Then the air is still and humid for a day and night and quite uncomfortable. The temperature seems to stay anywhere from 78 to 85 degs. and the humidity usually 70% to 80%. Over 72% is uncomfortable unless there is a breeze. Enough of this boring shit. Life in the tropics………Looking forward to our first visitors south of Mexico, Brian and Nancy Sperry!!!

One if the many Butterflies that are found in the tropical rainforest. This one landed on a plant while we were hiking around the crater of Volcano Mombacho. We stayed in the dormitory --we were the only people there--and did a night hike to see the red eyed tree frogs, then in the morning, hiked the 2.5 mile rainforest hike with a guide and it took us 3 hours!!! The trail was full of steep ups and steep downs.