Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

We got up this morning in the Hotel Azul in Leon, Nicaragua.  It was a nice place to spend the night.  We went and had breakfast in the mid morning.  We were the only ones having breakfast while we were there.  Breakfast was good and a little different than usual.  The girls were very happy to have a chance to have waffles.  They rarely get to do that unless we go to Kathy’s or Cafe Isabella.

After breakfast we checked out, loaded up the Yaris and set out on a drive to explore northern Nicaragua.  We started by going north up to Chichigalpa.  We turned off of the highway to go see the town.  The Flor de Cana factory is located there and supposedly they offer a tour.  We drove around down and around the factory to see how things were there.  We tried to look into the tour but it did not look like the kind of thing that you could just show up to so we decided that with the kids and the effort of trying to deal with a non-standard tour that it was not going to be worth the effort.  Hopefully when the girls are older we will return and do it.

We drove on to the north to Chinandega.  It was really surprising when we arrived there to find a huge, modern traffic circle and very high end businesses everywhere.  It was not at all what we were expecting to suddenly find in rural Nicaragua.  This was the most modern city, by far, that we have seen here yet.  We drove through town, which was a bit confusing as these things always are as nothing is marked anywhere, and thought that it looked really nice.  Chinandega is one of the biggest cities in the country.

The whole drive from the moment that you are out of Leon all the way to quite a bit north of Chinandega is just gorgeous farmland.  It was a beautiful drive.

After Chinandega we came upon El Viejo which is a good sized city for Nica and seemed very affluent.  We skirted the city to the west and continued up north.  Our goal was to drive to Patosi, far up north on the peninsula, where there used to be a ferry to El Salvador, but it was shut down years ago as we understand it.

We drove all the way to the end of the highway on Route 12.  The highway ended abruptly in a huge mud puddle, which was pretty surprising as the highway was an excellent two lane black top until then.  Then…. a big dirty puddle.

We turned right onto 265 which makes it sound like a road, which it was not.  This was a dirt path with big rocks and wash outs, basically a farm trail through a flat field area.  That this was a labeled road at all was a bit crazy.

We drove several kilometers, as far as we could.  There were several spots where we had to drive through very slowly to keep from bottoming out the car or just getting stuck.  Eventually we came to a wash out through which we could not progress.  That was depressing.  We were just minutes away from opening up onto the Bay of Fonseca and potentially having a view of Honduras across the water.  But there was no choice, we had to turn around. The crappy Toyota Yaris was not going to continue along any further.

So our dreams of reaching the northern most point on the peninsula were shattered.  We turned the car around and made our way back to pavement and began heading south.  We did not want to go on to Managua tonight.  So we decided to explore more of Chinandega province.  Dominica did some searching while we drove and found a marina out in Aposentillo along the coast.

We did not have anywhere else to go and it sounded like it might be interesting so we decided to investigate.  They sounded like they had a restaurant and we had nowhere to get lunch and it was getting into the afternoon so why not.

We turned off of the highway north of El Viejo and traveled down a bricked road for quite some ways before it turned to dirt and stone much like the road from earlier today.  We were beginning to wonder how it could be possible that there would be anything of interest down this road and, more likely, what the chances would be that we would even be able to get through on the car.  Once we were starting to get pretty worried we ended up seeing another car similar to ours coming towards us and that gave us hope that they had made it from somewhere up ahead.

Suddenly, at the end of this dirt road, there was a guarded gate.  We pulled up and the guard asked us if we were there to go to the restaurant.  We looked at each other and shrugged and said yes.  So they let us in lo and behold we were driving into a luxury resort in the jungle!

This was completely crazy.  We could not believe what we had found.  It looked like a Disney resort or something.  There was nothing for so long that suggested that there would be anything like this out here.  We parked and walked around.  Infinity pools, beautiful bay front hotel rooms, big banquet hall, tiki bar on the water and more.  Wow.

We checked with reception and they said that they had a room tonight but only for tonight as they are fully sold out tomorrow.  Weird, we did not see a single person around.  How could they be full tomorrow?

The rooms were $200 USD a night.  Not cheap at all.  So we asked to look at a Junior Suite.  The room was pretty amazing.  A king bed on an upper level and a few steps down to a pull out couch on a lower level all looking out a huge open door and window wall to a large patio with views over the bay or actually not a bay but the estero de Aserradores.  So we took the room.

So tonight we are staying an El Hotel y Marina Puesta del Sol.

We got a discount on the room because we have to check out at eight in the morning tomorrow so that they can get the room ready for the big party that they have coming in.  But we get to use the facilities as long as we want, so we figured that that would be a good trade off.

We walked down to the tiki bar out on the water and relaxed and ordered some late lunch.  It was only about three thirty at this point, which is partially why we decided to go for such a fancy resort evening since we would get to spend a lot of time at the resort for just one night’s fee.

Our late lunch was basic but good.  Dominica, Liesl and I each got a fish sandwich.  Luciana got fish fingers.  It was nice and relaxing out on the water.

After lunch we went to the car and a porter carried our luggage up the stairs to our room.  That was some heavy luggage as only Dominica can pack.  That poor porter.  Dominica packs luggage like she has 1915 steamer trunks going on an ocean liner.

The room was awesome and the bathroom was actually the highlight.  It was so big with two of its own closets, a shower with multiple heads and a bench, three mirrors, etc.  And everything in dark wood.  So impressive.  Totally modern.  Nothing that you would expect in Nicaragua.  This is so out of place.

We got settled in which took no time at all.  Then we walked to reception and requested that the shuttle driver come get us and drive us through the jungle to the Pacific Ocean beach area that they have.  We want some beach and sunset time.  Liesl loves sunsets and both girls love the beach so this is perfect.  It was getting late and the sun was getting low since it sets around six here so we had to hurry.

The driver picked us up and whisked us through the jungle.  At the beach side there is a huge pavilion set up, another infinity pool, changing rooms, a bar, etc.  We walked down to the most amazing beach ever.  Dark sand that was easily fifty percent deeper, from edge to ocean, than in Panama and almost twice as much beach as anywhere I’ve been outside of Central America.  Just a huge, flat, smooth, beautiful beach.  And all ours.  No one on it anywhere.  It stretched out so far in both directions and just no one.

So we played in the water until the sun went down.  It was one of the most beautiful sunsets ever.  So magical to get to have this with the family.  The sunset and beach alone justify staying in the resort.  No wonder the name of the resort is the “Hotel and Marina Setting of the Sun.”

We stayed on the beach for a while after the sun had gone down.  The girls were having fun digging sand pits that would fill with water in which they could wash their hands and feet.  They are so goofy.

The whole time that we were there we only ever saw one group of three people walk from way down the beach to where we were and go into the pavilion and apparently catch a ride back with our driver.  Other than that we were totally alone except for the resort employee working the pavilion.

We thought about using the infinity pool there but wanted to let the staff go home.  So once it was very dark we took the truck back to the main resort area, asked them to light up the main pool and went swimming for a while.

The water was incredibly warm and there was tons of really shallow space so that Luciana was able to go in without floaties and had half of the pool available to her!  She had to go without floaties because the ones that we brought with us are defective and they could not stay inflated.  So we got very lucky here.  We had a very nice time swimming.  This was Ciana’s first time in a pool like this and had a lot of fun being able to venture all over.  It was also the first time that the girls got to see an infinity pool so they learned about that as well.

After swimming we retired to the hotel room.  We just wanted to relax.  The girls turned on their iPads and hung out on the couch.  They love the couch and the levels of the room.  They also love that a gecko lives in the room and periodically runs across the wall over the balcony door.

I took a shower and while I was in there the front desk called up to let us know that the restaurant was going to close at nine but that they would deliver us dinner!  How awesome.

We could not decide what to get from the hotel room, so I walked down to the tiki bar and ordered dinner there.  Then returned to the hotel and we relaxed for a while until our dinner was delivered.

We were not super hungry so we just got one order of fish fingers that the girls shared.  Dominica and I split a whole, friend red snapper (deboned.)  We also got pineapple flambe for Dominica and me and a caramel flan for the girls – which they were not interested in.

After dinner, which was very good, it was straight off to bed for all of us.  We told the girls that they needed to get to sleep early so that they would be able to get up and go to the beach tomorrow and to swim before we have to leave the resort. So they were happy to put down the iPads and drift off to sleep quite early and without any complaints.

This was a very successful family day, if a bit of an expensive one.  We are very glad that we opted to come to this resort.

This morning the Miller family left Matagalpa to drive back out the way that we came into town two nights ago but this time in the morning sun so that we were able to really get a view of the area.  We would have never guessed what gorgeous farmland was out there from our night time drive.

The drive down to Sebaco from Matagalpa was very nice, coming down from the high mountains.  Sebaco is a beautiful town, which I had guessed from the drive through it two nights ago.  It looked pretty nice even in the dark.  One of the first places where we’ve seen super broad streets with protected biking areas on either side.

We fueled up in Sebaco and turned to the west to take route 1 to route 26.  This area is a high plateau, wide and flat between the mountain ranges.  A totally gorgeous area, just the most amazing farmland.

We drove for a few hours, the going is very slow on these roads.  But it was a wonderful day and we all enjoyed the drive.

As we got closer to the west we got to see more and more volcanoes around us.  There was one, at first, far off in the distance.  But eventually we saw about seven of them.  Two we were extremely close to.  One was clearly smoking quite a lot very close to us.  We stopped a few times to take pictures.  It was all amazing.

We got to Leon around noon.  We had made no reservations but had looked ahead to see where we would likely want to stay and knew that the Hotel Azul looked to be very much our style.  Not cheap but not bad, something on the fancier side and a bit of a change of pace.

Getting into Leon starts off as the most gorgeous approach through tree lined avenues but once you are into the city it is very run down and dirty.  It has a certain charm, but only so much of one.  Mostly it just seems to be unkempt.

It did not take too much work to find the hotel.  We parked on the Avenida Central and I ran in and booked the family suite.  It was a staggering $100 a night, a small fortune in Nicaraguan terms, but it seemed really nice and we did not know where else would make sense in town.  But we could not get into the room for a few hours.  So we decided to leave town and drive to the coast until it was ready.

This proved to be more challenging that it should have been because Google maps, again, steered us completely wrong and took us out of town on a road that, while it went it the right direction (after Google took us the wrong way down a one way) ended in a culvert a few score meters shy of the intersection that we needed so while a 4×4 or someone hiking could get through, a normal car could not.

We ended up driving through some weeds and along a dirt trail and made it to the road that we needed and continued on to the coast.  The drive out of Leon was interesting as it was lined with amazing mansions in what must have been the equivalent of a Leonese suburb.

The drive through the county to the coast was nice.  At the coast we got to the beach at Penoloya.  Nothing special there.  We found a place to drive to the beach itself, parked in a lot by a bar, sat down and got drinks while the girls played in the sand.  The water was too rough to let them go down to the water.  We walked down but could not go in.  Nearly all of Central America has dangerous surf on the Pacific side so you really need to be cautious.

By the time that we returned to Leon our room at the Hotel Azul was ready.  We got into the room which had three beds and was in the back corner past the pool  The public area is lovely with a pool right in the middle like our house, all lit in blue (or course) with a cool swinging lounge chair that the girls were very excited about.

Dominica and the girls were tired, so they relaxed for a bit and I took a long walk around the city and took some pictures and got the lay of the land.  Leon is famous for its old churches but has little else to offer.  It is not an “activity” city. It has some restaurants, bars, and other normal things but little to draw in a visitor.  This is Nicaragua’s second largest city.

Once I returned I showered, dressed and we went out to find dinner.  We discussed this for quite a while and could not figure out what anyone wanted.  Leon is a bit famous for the restaurants downtown being overpriced and of low quality.  So very little that was very enticing.

Dominica did manage to find the sister ice cream shop to the one in Matagalpa that we had sought yesterday evening and so we started our dinner by going there and getting that out of the way before anything went wrong and we did not manage to do it.

The ice cream from Kiss Me was very good.  They had a neat selection of flavours.  Dominica and I were adventurous; the girls got vanilla.  That’s how we roll.

We attempted to have dinner at a Polish – Sri Lankan restaurant that was well reviewed but after finding it, it turned out to be closed.  So we just went to the local Chinese place which was perfectly good and we enjoyed our food.  It was not too expensive and, in reality, I am sure that the girls enjoyed their food far more from there.

After dinner we just returned to the hotel and were off to sleep.

We are in Matagalpa this morning at the Matagalpa Inn on the south side of town next to the Tip Top (major Nicaraguan fast food chain) and across the street from Pollo Estralla (literally Chicken Star.)  I got up before the kids so headed out to walk around town and get a feel for the area.

I took the highway north and then the first bridge to downtown.  The walk along the highway was nice as there was a good sidewalk there.  Mostly the walk when by many pulperias and fix it shops for different car components.

I did find two universities on the walk.  Universities down here are so wildly different than in the US.

Turning downtown was a major change.  Once you leave the highway the center of Matagalpa is very nice.  A broad tree lined boulevard leading to downtown with a full city block dedicated for a very nice playground.

I walked around downtown a bit getting to see the cathedral, central park and getting a good feel for what the city is like.  Then I returned to the hotel so that we could do breakfast as a family.

We had a nice breakfast in the hotel and then decided, based on my reconnaissance, that there was little of interest for the kids and not very much to see so that it would likely make more sense to do some driving first thing today and go see Jinotega right away especially as that is the city that we are more interested in.

So we got in the car after breakfast and drove north out of town through Molina Norte and up the mountains.  The drive from Matagalpa up to Jinotega is a very quiet, mountainous road that is pretty slow going.  The distance is short but the time is long.  The whole drive was stunning, though.  It was the best thing that we have seen in Nicaragua yet.

There was surprisingly almost zero traffic the entire way.  This seemed odd as these are two large cities right next to each other and this is the only highway that connects to Jinotega.  Everything that Jinotega gets or ships has to come in and out on this road.

We drove around the city on the highway first to get an overview then looped back and came through on the central avenue.  Once past the central park, which every city here has, I pulled over and parked and we walked back to the park.

At the park we found a very large playground that the girls were very excited about.  This was much safer than the one in Granada near our house, although we still had to be quite cautious as the large slide, for example, has dangerously ripped metal on it!  We probably spent an hour on the playground and the girls made some new friends too.  It was a very nice time.

The weather in Jinotega is what it is all about.  It is always cool up here and often misty.  Instead of the high eighties and low nineties it is the low seventies and at night it can even get down to sixty!  A very different bit of Nicaragua!

We did a little walking around after the park and stopped at an Eskimo ice cream shop for treats before getting back in the car and driving back to Matagalpa.  That was a fun break.

In a city like this, especially with the girls, there is very little for us to “do” when we are out and about.  It is not like European cities loaded with museums and parks around every corner.  There is generally a central park, a few churches to see and just residential calles.  That’s it.  So other than getting a quick overview of town and hitting the playground we really had nothing to do.

So back in the car and we returned to Matagalpa and our hotel.  The drive was awesome again.  Just such an awesome area.

In Molina Norte, just outside of Matagalpa, there is a new housing development going up with mortgages starting at just $240 USD per month.  I have no idea why they put prices in American dollars when this is an area where Americans and tourists never go.

We got back to the hotel and did some searching for what we might want to do for dinner.  Dominica decided that she really wanted to try this highly rated ice cream place and then get dinner somewhere nearby.  It was an area of the city that I did not know and would have been a very long walk had we gone by a major road.  Google showed a foot path taking me into the city so I volunteered to go for a walk and see how the area looked.

I walked north and then Google sent me down to a little dark walkway in the mud.  It quickly went along the river bank in a really bad shanty town area by the back fence of the university.  This was certainly not a place that I should be walking and definitely not at twilight. It is a really good thing that I came alone, this would not be a place to bring the kids.  I only came down here because Dominica insisted that Google showed a bridge.

Not only was the area far too dangerous to be shown as a place to go, but there was no bridge there whatsoever.  This was just a dangerous dead end.  Thanks, Google.  The area was bad enough that a guy there laughed at me (in a friendly way) and talked about how I had ended up in the wrong place for sure.  So I walked back out.

I ended up doing a ton of searching for a bridge that I had seen from the river bank that was not on any map that we had, Apple or Google.  I eventually just followed someone who looked like they might be going in the right direction for me.

I ended up going down an unlit concrete set of stairs without a railing by an old building that descended down to a different layer of town and dropped me in a dark, dirty ally from which I stepped out into a poor area of the city and walked a few blocks till I found the river and turned left to go north towards the bridge that I could now see.

The bridge was an old metal footbridge going over the Rio Grande.  There were a ton of people going over it.  It seemed so strange as it seemed to be in the most out of the way place but it seemed to be a major thoroughfare for everyone walking across the city.

I walked through the city to the southern park and discovered that there was a huge street fair going on tonight.  The streets were just full of people heading to the fair.  The park that I was heading to was so packed that I was barely able to get through it.

I was not able to find several of the places that Dominica had sent me out to find.  Some were blocked by the fair and some I just could not find.  They were setting off fireworks in the park too which was so loud that my jaw actually hurt from how loud it was.

I finally made it back to the hotel long after it was dark – which meant that I had done all of that walking through the city, over the bridge and up that odd stairway by the building in the darkness.  All very odd.

Once back to the hotel Dominica decided that she wanted nothing to do with walking out there.  So instead we drove downtown to a Mexican place that was well rated.  Dinner was okay there but nothing special.  It did not warrant the good rating that it had, that’s for sure.

Back to the hotel and to bed.  We are going to move on tomorrow to Leon.

 

 

I got up this morning nice and early and did my usual morning routine of posting and writing.  I get much of my best work done on the rather early side.

We talked this morning about what we might want to do this weekend and decided to look into renting a car, possibly, to go travel this weekend.

Around one I walked down to the Hotel Plaza Colon where we have discovered that the Dollar Rent a Car is hiding.  There is no signage, you just have to know that it is inside.

You have to go into the Hotel Plaza Colon and ask at the front desk and they point you to the Dollar desk which is hidden in a back room and is not visible even if you walk around the hotel a bit.  It is a handy location for people staying on the plaza but impossible to find if you do not know already where it is.

I asked about a car and they provided one to me instantly.  And, of course, it is another awful Toyota Yaris.  At least it is white so not so hot.

The rental was just $38 per day after the insurance and tax and everything.  So I drove it back to the house and surprised Dominica with a car.

I did some more writing for a while while Dominica worked on getting us packed and ready to go.

We did not manage to leave the house in Granada until nearly five.  So it was getting dark by the time that we were on the road.

Our goal tonight, which we did not decide until pretty much the last minute, was to head up into the mountains to Matagalpa.  We really want to see what it is like up there and get a break from the heat too. The mountains are where we are most interested in potentially spending more time long term and really want to see what it is like up there.

We had to start by driving up through Masaya and up to Tipitapa which is the same route that we took to get from the airport to our house in Granada when we first arrived in Nicaragua.  Once through town, though, we were off in the darkness to new parts of the country which we had never seen before.  Unfortunately it was dark so early that we really saw nothing whatsoever of Nicaragua on this drive.  So we did not really learn much about the region other than what little bit we could see in the headlights and quite about about what driving is like.

Driving in Central America is always a challenging experience but not really all that bad.  There are tons of people and animals and non-road worthy vehicles present at all times but unlike Panama there is not a continuous stream of people running across the highway.  A step in the right direction.

The drive was interesting and it was clear that we drove up into the mountains and across a high plateau before heading up even farther.

The hotel that we found was the Hotel Matagalpa Inn for just like $50 per night for two big beds right in town.  The hotel was located right as you enter town and right on the highway so that it was incredibly easy to find.  We drove right to it needing no directions or map.

We got into the hotel without any problem.  We might be the only people staying here tonight.  The room was nice and lots of room.

No one felt like going out tonight so we ended up just staying in since it was late and dark.  We tried getting pizza but nearly everything was closed.  The front desk called around and found us a place that had closed but was willing to open back up just to sell us a pizza!

We ordered a pizza but it was going to take nearly an hour since the ovens were off and they had to fire everything back up again.  So while we were waiting for that I went out to explore where we were.  I went across the street to Pollo Estrella (Chicken Star) and got some fries for everyone.

Pollo Estrella is a smaller Nica chain, much like Tip Top.  They setup is very strange and worth a trip to experience.  A huge outdoor area and waitresses but fast food fried chicken and fries.  The fries were good.

I went over to the Uno gas station on the corner and picked up some snacks and drinks and returned to the hotel.  We just hung out in the room and waiting for the pizza.

The pizza ended up being amazing.  We really loved it, especially the mushroom and veggies pizza that Dominica and I got.  Delicious!

We were off to bed early so that we can explore the mountains tomorrow.