tacky beach town nicaragua style

another no photo day! Our last night in Omatepe was beautiful, we returned the bikes we rented in the dark to a shack down the road and walked back by moonlight. Omatepe is filled with wandering livestock, everywhere, on the beaches and roads. so last night we saw someone hearding horses by motorcycle in the dark which was amazing--a huge cloud of backlit dust with 6 or so galloping horses coming stright at us.

In the morning we got up very early and repeated the crazy commute that we took to get here..highpoint being that on the boat back we drove around a huge cloud of newly hatched flies and when we landed there was another cloud. yes, I did inhale flies.

We moved to San Juan Del Sur which is kind of a really tacky dirty beach town except nicaraguan style. We wanted to leave immediately but stayed as we had planned to hike and see petroglyphs which we couldn't find, our directions being ridiculously vague. so a somewhat disappointing day but we hope to move on tomorrow morning to a nicer beach town.

Omatepe update with no photos

So yesterday we got up ridiculously early (for me,) and took the crazy
schoolbus to the crazy taxi to the crazy ferry, where I burned the
crap out of all my exposed skin, to the crazy falling apart old car to
the beautiful, beautiful island made of 2 volcanos in the huge
freshwater lake with the only fresh water sharks in the world in it
and the beautiful little hotel on a lagoon with monkeys.
We are both thrilled in spite of the fact that I look like a crazy
bright pink foreigner covered from head to toe and walking like a
bound foot chinese lady because of climbing the volcano 2 days ago. No
photo on this post as we had to walk down the beach to another hotel
to use the internet.

We watched monkeys for a long time yesterday and K convinced the baby
to come down right over our heads. I think he speaks monkey as well as
all the other languages and he definitely speaks dog, he says a few
words to all the circling strays and they run away immediately. It´s
very strange.

Big volcano

We got up early and climbed a volcano--we could have
taken transport to the top but instead slogged up and up into the
cloud forest(cool and refreshing) except I had to keep stopping to lay
down and catch my breath. It was steeper than subway stairs. Lot of
butterflies and we walked through a coffee plantation on the way up
(the only reason I made it to the top was free coffee with cane sugar)
it was completely awesome and worth it as shown by the view. Came back
to Granada by typical Nicaraguan bus service which is old US school
buses converted that you have to run to catch--I love them and think
this would be great for the mta to learn from.

First day in Nicaragua is mostly about the fruit

We flew in much later than planned last night to Managua, due to
various passport mishaps(someone forgot that his passport expired!)and
our pilot in Houston got stuck in traffic from a flood on the
interstate--I didn't realize they have flooding problems in texas.


While panicking on the plane about where to stay, we were very excited
to meet a lovely woman from the Rainforest Alliance who gave us a ride
2 hours to Granada in her car! Stayed in a fairly hideous and
reasonably unfriendly hostel for the first night and promptly moved on
in the morning.

Granada has beautiful architecture, all photos are on my
camera...bright colors, a crazy mercado and a ton of bicycles and
stray dogs.

We are eating all kinds of fantastic fresh fruit, the mango smell like
perfume and we ate a fruit that looks like a potato and tastes like
caramel.

I have my feet in a pool while writing as it's still in the 90's at
night.