We had to be up very early this morning to make sure that we could be up, packed and out the door by eight. So the alarm was set early but most of us were restless during the night. Although the room was awesome and the sleep that we got was fine.
I decided to get up early because I wanted to see the sun rise over the bay as we had a rare spot where our hotel room looked out over water to the east. When I went down to go out to the deck I found Luciana already awake. She said: “Look daddy, the sun is coming up.” in a little, quiet voice.
Dominica got up not too much later and Liesl woke up to see the sun come up too. So everyone got to watch it, it was a very special morning. This is the first time that Liesl and Luciana have seen a sunrise!
Dominica and I sat outside for a while and the girls used an iPad in bed. But we were all up so early that we ended up leaving the hotel room by seven thirty, a bit earlier than we needed to, just because we were all ready to get moving.
We turned in the room key and then went down to the water front tiki bar for breakfast. We had a nice, big breakfast. Both girls had pancakes. Dominica and I have huevos rancheros. It was all very good. And the orange juice was amazing; they must have just squeezed it. There was enough breeze coming off of the water that even though it was really hot we did not feel like it was all that hot. It was really nice. Maybe we are adjusting to Central America.
After breakfast we got the shuttle over to the beach and spent some time at the ocean. First we walked the beach. The girls played in the sand. I walked some and encountered a lot of sea snails which was pretty unique.
Then we swam in the infinity pool by the ocean until it was time to go, about eleven thirty.
Back at the main complex we ran into a woman and her son there that we ended up talking to for half an hour. So it was half past noon when we finally managed to leave the resort. Later than we had intended by a bit. So we are in a time crunch to get back to Granada as we believe that we need to be there by five to drop off the rental car.
The drive out the long dirt road, then the long brick road took a while. Then onto the highway and off to the south. There is always traffic and always a truck or two that is determined to go 40 kph or slower, so you tend to get stuck in some crazy traffic for seemingly no reason on a regular basis.
We stopped to get gas in Chinandega but the Uno was out of gas. We had to run across the traffic circle to get gas and to put air in the back right tire that had gotten low. After doing that Luciana needed snacks so back to the Uno which had a mini market. I ran in and stocked us up. Then back on the road.
We drove past Leon again and through Managua approaching it driving along the lake. This was our first time seeing this region and our first time actually seeing any of Managua, although there was not very much to see. We do not know how close we were to downtown or what we might have missed. But we drove through a lot of the city.
It was an interesting drive even though we did not get to see anything but the fringe of Managua. The drive from Managua to Masaya was interesting as this was a very different approach to Granada than we have seen before and it really gave us a very different perspective. We could not see that in many ways with Masaya directly in the middle that the Managua metro area was engulfing Masaya and you can barely tell where they switch from one to another and the gap between Masaya and Granada is very small. This explains why Masaya is so large. The country’s first (Managua), third (Masaya) and sixth (Granada) largest cities are growing into each other and are already starting to form a single metro area.
We raced to the house and dropped off our luggage and got to the Dollar rental lot with only minutes to spare. We dropped the car off directly with Carlos who was waiting out back and then went up to check in at the office. It turns out that the race was a waste of effort as we needed to have dropped the car off by one. We could have kept it until the morning. At least it is dropped off and dealt with. Now we don’t have to think about it tomorrow.
Once the car was dropped off, Carlos drove us to a gas station so that we could fill up and not get charged. Then he dropped us off at home. They are very nice and Dollar, we will use them again. It was a total of $200 for five days of rental.
It was pushing six by the time that we were home and it was getting dark. We were pretty tired. I logged in and posted for a little while. Then Dominica wanted pizza and Luciana wanted to go to the corner store. So Luciana and I walked down there and bought Kinder Sorpresa but she got a potty emergency and we had to race back home rather than looking for food while we were out.
Dominica felt like pizza so sent me uptown to go to Pizza Vale. First I hit La Colonia and got a few small grocery items. Then over to Pizza Vale and ordered dinner.
We watched some of The Nanny and had pizza. Then off to bed. We were worn out.