Day 20 - A day in San Juan del Sur

Last night the sound of firecrackers and fireworks existed for much of the night. Our door exited directly onto a street and traffic up and down the street was brisk, so vocal noise was high as well. At least the air conditioner buzz drowned out a bit of the noise and made sleeping at least attainable.

After an ok breakfast, I went to work on posting some photos onto Flickr and moving all the photos to our hard drive backup. The computer I was working on was an older Windows XP version and 40+ minutes into an upload I got the blue screen of death; remember those?! Well I spent the better part of the day inside this little Internet café and it wasn't sitting well with Correen. Explaining that it was no fault of my own didn't seem to make a difference either. I guess the kids had their fill of TV and their DSes. They went out for lunch without me and when they returned, I still had about 40 minutes left with the posting. Needless to say the Internet was extremely slow with the sending.

Finally completing the photo transfers and posts; we went down to the beach for sun and sand fun. The kids and I were swimming in the waves when a group of younger boys came up curious and eager to talk to us. They kept asking me to have a swimming race against them, but continued to turn them down. Tegan and Elliot played Marco Polo with a couple of expat kids that were there until everyone was tired of it and went their own way. Elliot went to the beach to play in the sand while Tegan came out and swam with me a little longer.

We joined Elliot at playing in the sand and I helped Elliot at building a castle. The mound of sand grew and then I just decided to create a Mayan temple from the mound. The tide was rising and the waves were threatening the construction. We completed the temple and got some photos of it prior to it being knocked down by someone walking by; which happened not 5 minutes afterward. We stopped by to book some surf lessons for the next day and we picked up a t-shirt from Chica Brava an all girl surf camp in SJDS. Correen and the kids booked a turtle tour for the following evening as well.

We cleaned up and made our way back to Rosita's as we took an offer to move to a room at the back of the property and hopefully quieter. We vegged out a little bit in the room before supper and then we went for the walk along the street fronting the beach in search for food. We chose one of the pizza places and it was beside another restaurant that had a live acoustic act performing. We struggled ordering a pizza as they had weird combinations of sauces, crusts, ingredients and sizes. It was very odd. The kids pizza ended up being twice the size of the one we ordered, it was a cheese pizza, but neither Tegan or Elliot liked it. Our pizza was smaller, but equally disappointing.

We hoped that a gelato dessert would help us wash down the food we just ate, but we were disappointed when they still hadn't opened. Guess they are closed on Monday. The best we could do was hit the Eskimo ice cream place down the street. It was a pretty generic feed of ice cream.

Back to our room so the kids and I can battle it out in a game of Life on the iPad. G'nite

Day 19 - Nicaragua or Bust!

5 am and we are up getting everything tidied up into our bags for our bus trip to Nicaragua. Breakfast is at 6 am and the bus leaves at 7:30 am, so very minute is critical this morning. We were in and out of breakfast by 6:15 am and arrived at the bus station just before 7 am. Our bags were loaded onto the bus and then I went to sit in the line for our tickets. 20 minutes later, I ask for 4 tickets and I am told they are sold out and have been for 4 days! Panic! We have to be in Nicaragua today, my mind whirls thinking that we could try Transnica bus or take local buses to get there.

First course of action, get our tickets so we can leave Nicaragua in a week. Back in line. I get the tickets and we are set to leave Nicaragua. Correen suggests that we stick around and find out if there are any cancellations so we could board. Then it came to me and we head outside to grab a taxi and head back to Liberia where we had been 2 days before by rental car and then take the local bus to the border and then taxi to San Juan del Sur!

The bus tickets would have cost $27 / person and the car rental including fuel worked out to $95. Within 20 minutes out of San Jose we had already passed the Ticabus we were suppose to have taken. We arrived in Liberia in just over 3 hours... traffic on Sunday morning is very light. We then take a cab into Liberia and despite all the warnings from the car rental agent we take the bus to the border. Supposedly the bus terminal is very dangerous, but we just hopped on the bus, no complications whatsoever. The best part was the bus was just leaving when we arrived so there was no further waiting. We were ahead of schedule.

The next stop was the border. 5 kms from the border is where a line of trucks started waiting for passage into Nicaragua. We received our exit stamp from Costa Rica, paid a levy to the local town, got our entrance stamp into Nicaragua and paid a $12 dollar each entrance fee. We met a taxi driver who would take us to San Juan del Sur for $40, I asked for less and he agreed to $35. He was helpful and guided us through the Nicaraguan border logistics. My eyes stung from salt because my sweat was running into my eyes while filing out the immigration papers. The taxi can was a sweet Hyundai ride with racing stickers on the outside fenders including TRD. He fed us a lot of misinformation like how the currency rate was 38 cordobas to a dollar (actually 24) and that the fuel costs were $4/litre (actually $1.20/litre), he also told us that a house costs $30k, I suppose it would be more like $10-20k.

He drove around the town a little trying to locate the hostel which he didn't know where it was. Correen spotted it up a street from the beach. We made it to SJDS in good time, our room wasn't even ready yet. We did a walk down to the waterfront and had lunch and when we arrived back to the hostel Rosita showed us a room on the street that would be ours during our stay. Rosita gave Tegan and Elliot a package of Christmas Oreo cookies, in a typical grandma style. She was very affectionate towards our kids and it was cute to see.

We all went to the beach for a swim just before the sun was setting.  We sat and had some dinner at a restaurant on the beach.  Once Elliot was finished eating he went out onto the beach and joined the local boys and girls in a game of futbol.  It was over 30C out and Elliot was running as hard as he could.  Tegan even went out to participate in the game.  When the kids returned, Elliot was bright red in the face from the heat and exercise.  The bay is of a horseshoe shape and it is loaded with boats of various size anchored a few hundred metres off the shore. The beach gently sloped out into the bay and they waves were gentle for a famous surf town. We ended up having some gelato, but it wasn't just some gelato, it was great gelato. After enjoying a cone of yummy cold gelato, we went to our room and just watched shows on TV until we went to sleep.