Set A Course

Last stop. Heading off the ferry we headed towards the west coast, San Juan Del Sur is a fishing village making a transition to a tourist destination. The transition is clearly not complete. On one hand, we could buy super fresh fish really cheap, on the other, pay $45 for lunch at a beach bar. Fortunately, the latter rarely happened.

The drive was typical for Nicaragua with an occasional traffic jam consisting of cattle crossing.

After some pretty full days, the goal for the next couple days was to: get groceries, find our contact,  find the house then just chill. We had nothing planned outside a day of relaxing and a horse ride through some jungle and beach. This gave Cleo some time to catch up on some school work and generally do little.

This house required us to have a four-wheel drive to get to and from. It didn’t take long before the reasons were evident. The roads are all unpaved, steep and rutted.  But well worth it. The view of the Pacific was awesome from the house high up on a mountain. When they have walls, these houses are open allowing big breezes to blow through. And in the morning, very early in the morning, howler monkeys wake us with their bark echoing jungle.

Here we spent time just hanging out, grilling fresh fish and playing cards. Debbie had started teaching us how to play Uker in Ometepe. We finally managed to learn it by San Juan Del Sur and spent a number of hours playing. Day two Cleo had plenty of work to so spent much of the day at the house. Debbie, I and Olivia explored an awesome beach. These smaller bay beaches are beautiful and unpopulated with warmish water and good waves.

Day three we had reserved time to visit an ecoresort and ride horses for a bit then hang at the beach. The place was a little refined for our taste but was a great way to spend the last day before a day of travel home. After riding horses through the jungle, up to a mountain over the look and back down across the beach we read, swam and enjoyed drinks and lunch. The beach was post-card perfect with almost no one else there. A much-needed break.