World Nicaragua Rivas San Juan del Sur

Poco's great adventure 2009 - 2010

More of San Juan Del Sur Jun 13, 2009

We checked into our new home. We don’t know the name of it, but we are calling it Casa Verde (green house). When we were as Casa Oro (Gold house), the lady of the house waved us over and told us to come and look at her place. She was very friendly and welcoming. Mi casa es su casa. She showed us around. A balcony looks out over the street. A seating area serves as a living room. A small kitchen makes it possible to cook. Our room is small, and the bathrooms are shared. However, there are only four rooms. This is quite different than Casa Oro, which is filled with young surfer dudes, who really don’t keep the kitchen that tidy. So we moved into our room, which is $15.00 a night, and then headed off to get some groceries. It is really quite inexpensive to eat here, but sometimes you just want a home cooked meal. We went to the market and purchased a pineapple, mini watermelon, cabbage, green pepper, onion, garlic, carrot, and tomatoes for $4.00 We then headed to the “store” and added 6 eggs, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, spaghetti, butter, two packages of spices, and a 26 oz. Bottle of Nicaraguan Rum. Our stop at the store cost us $8.00 including the rum. Later this afternoon, we are heading to the butchers, to see what we can find for meat. When we arrived back at Casa Verde to unload our purchases into the fridge, the senora of the house brought us up a plate of lunch, and fresh juice. Lunch was a tomato and cucumber salad, and pescado (fish) in a tomato sauce. It was very nice, and a very pleasant surprise. We don’t know yet if it was a gift, or we will get charged for it. Not too worried though, because a fish plate here probably runs between $3.00 - $4.00. By the end of the evening we hat met the other guests of casa verde. There is an English couple, a Finnish couple, and two more young Israeli men fresh out of the army. Everybody wanted to cook at the same time so there was a bit of a rush in the kitchen. The Finnish couple told us they were heading down to “the Pier”, a Canadian owned restaurant and bar to watch game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. By the time we arrived the game was half way through. The crowd consisted of Americans and Canadians, with a few Brits with little understanding of hockey. They were however, able to grasp the concept of a sports playoff game. It was all a little surreal watching the Stanley Cup in a thatch hut bar on the beach in a foreign country. We wandered home enjoying the warm breezy night. Many people filled the streets. After arriving back at Casa Verde, it was time for a quick nightcap from our “expensive” bottle of rum, and then off to bed. Fortunately we have a fan in our room, because the air was quite still, and the only window leads into the hallway not the outside. As seems to be quite normal, we don’t sleep all that soundly in a new place, so we woke up at different times during the night. Without an outside window, it is difficult to tell the time, and we were quite surprised that it was 9:00. Cory went for a shower to discover all the water had been used up. Oh the adventures of travelling. We booked a shuttle to take us to Remanso beach for the day, and booked our bus tickets to San Jose after deciding we would leave on Monday morning. After a quick stop at the bakery where we purchased a picnic lunch we were off for the day. Remanso beach is like many of the other beaches here and it is popular for surfing. Cory and Elaine didn’t take the camera with them because they were worried about it being stolen. Apparently men with machetes will kindly ask you for you belongings. (or so we’ve been told) Of course they did regret taking it, and there was an area where it would have been safe if they had taken it. So unfortunately I am now assigned the task of describing the “photos” to you. A picture tells a thousand words; hopefully it won’t take me a thousand words to tell a picture. First picture we didn’t take was the waves crashing on the rocks. Picture this (haha) if you will, a small bay that is part of the Pacific Ocean. Where the bay ends and the Ocean really begins there are some rocks, and as the waves crash upon them the splash is huge. It is white and very intense and rises high into the air. Picture number two is the beach itself that is sprinkled with many rocks, and as the water flows back out into the bay; it forms little patterns and channels for diverting the water. This would be an artsy Zen photo. For the next picture, we would have asked someone to take a picture of Cory and Elaine frolicking in the waves, having fun and laughing as they bobbed up and down. What you would see in this very detailed photo is waves crashing very quickly, one after the other. If captured at the right angle you would also see the undertow and the overwhelming force of the water as it drains some people of all their energy as they get carried further and further out. In the background you would see beginner surfers trying to master the waves. You might also see some really strong swimmers providing boogie boards to people too tired to make it in to shore. Another picture probably would have been of them eating their goodies from the bakery, chicken sausage rolls, ham and cheese strudels, and chorizo (sausage) pasties. And then of course the token picture of me buried up to my neck in sand, and probably one of me with the roaring, crashing waves behind me. It was another physically exhausting way to spend the day, and after our shuttle back to SJDS, the aromas of the chicken on the BBQ called to us, and we went for a huge dinner of chicken, rice and beans, salads, and plantain chips. Back home at Casa Verde we hooked up with the Brits and the Finns for our own little party. The Finnish man, whose name we never got, entertained us endlessly with stories that had everybody laughing. Turns out he works for the Finnish TV and makes kids eco documentaries, and was on a working holiday. He is always thinking and would like to do a show called the world’s weakest man, or open us his own deluxe ice cream shop. In his spare time he invents recipes and as he told us some of them are mouths were watering and we all wanted one of his creations. Elaine was the first to call it a night and as we drifted off to sleep listening to the sounds of laughter. What a perfect way to end the day.

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