Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday. The roads were a complete mess this morning. So much sand and muck swept onto them from the torrent last night.

Walking the dogs this morning was hard because of how messy everything was. They were pretty tired and not looking for the longest of walks since they had such a long and stressful night last night. They truly hate storms. Mia shakes and runs around and just cannot sit still. Clive hides and plays dead when he is not shaking like crazy.

After the morning walk I joined everyone for breakfast. Amos comes down early to hang out. Ivonne sleeps several hours longer than he does. She does not normally make an appearance until nine thirty or ten. But he comes down closer to seven. We had our coffee. For breakfast I had fresh fruit like papaya, pineapple, and mango, some yoghurt and a little granola.

Paul and Dominica went into León today to do party shopping. The dogs were more than happy to come into the office and just collapse. They are feeling the stress and need more sleep. They are so funny, their routine is so set in stone. Up at five thirty. Talk two to three miles. Come back and hang out with everyone in the restaurant for two hours. Be restless for a while. Then settle down. Then Clive will bark that it is time for real naps. Then I take them into the office and they both just climb on the bed and totally pass out until about two o’clock unless they get disturbed.

So I actually had a decently productive day it being nice and quiet in the office. I really enjoy the quiet and lack of interruptions. The hardest part is that the dogs need me quite a lot of the time.

It is hard to believe that Dominica’s big party is in just two days. And Allen arrives in Nicaragua in just four.

Tonight we just all hung out in the hotel lobby. We had dinner and visited before calling it an early night. The restaurant was quite busy. It is a Monday night on a post-holiday week and we had a very good turnout. The word has gotten out, we are the place to go.

Sunday. I took the dogs out for their walk this morning, but we had not gone even a mile before people starting setting off morning fireworks! So it was a full sprint back to the hotel with two terrified little dogs that were nearly pulling me off of my feet the entire way back. That was no fun.

The hotel was pretty busy even first thing this morning. We had a lot of tables for breakfast. We started out on the edge of the beach instead of at our usual table because some drunk girl had wandered in off of the street and passed out at our table. So we sat on the beach while she was removed. Then we moved to our own table because it is a lower priority table that we use so that we don’t take up the premium spots on the beach when the guests start to file in.

Sua, the giant restaurant just up the street from us, is still closed today, which I really can’t believe. Being closed Monday through Thursday is no big deal, even they probably don’t make any real profits for those days. And Friday is a shoulder day. Being closed on Saturday was bold, it would be seriously scary to be closed on a Saturday. But Sunday, on a holiday weekend. My gosh, that is huge. This is the busiest day for a month or two, at least. Being closed today is the worst possible timing for them.

Saeed came by this morning looking for someone to drink with. So I joined him as he ordered bloody Mary’s and I got mojitos. Eventually Dominica and Paul were drinking too. There were tequila shots, whiskey shots, it was a very relaxing morning. We hung out until nearly noon.

This afternoon I worked on my final DuoLingo achievement. The “Finishing #1 in Diamond League” badge, the hardest one to get. It has taken me about a year of trying to finally get that one. I had to put in about three hours of completely focused work on DuoLingo today to make that possible. It feels great to finally have all of that done and out of the way. Now I just need to finish the stories and lessons without any specific goals.

The hotel is so busy today. Totally sold out, but that is easy with the very few rooms that we have. But the restaurant had over fifty patrons in it for most of the day. That’s insane. That is standing room only around here. I hid in the office as much as I could all day. There is no way not to just be in the way with that amount of stuff going on.

This evening a storm rolled in. And it was a big one. Really bad timing with us having a full restaurant as the roof on the beach side is just awful and useless in a strong rain. It is the first big thing to get replaced once we fully own the hotel. But the challenge there is that we really want to move that to two floors instead of just one because we desperately need the additional seating capacity as the restaurant has just gotten to be crazy. The challenge, though is that it will then mean that there is a restaurant right off of one of the hotel room private balconies. We have not figured out how to deal with that problem, yet.

The storm was really intense and really terrified the dogs. We had to spend about eight hours trying to keep them calm. They really do not handle the intense storms here well.

To make the evening even more exciting, the new septic system failed from the massive onslaught of the biggest rain of the season and we actually had things flowing the wrong direction. So it turned into a plumbing emergency during a huge storm. Not a great situation.

And then, just to make things harder, the power went out. Not surprising as the storm was incredibly intense. So intense that we were afraid to go to generator power for quite a long time before there was so much lightning.

The staff worked so hard today, we got them pizza from Puesta and I got salmon toast for Luciana. Josue and I had to go pick it up in the pouring rain while wading through several inches (up over my ankles) in sludge running down the road. The water on the road was up to our hotel entrance level.

It was a wild night. Our maintenance team, not just Wilbur, was here much of the night figuring out what to do. There is going to be a lot more work going on tomorrow, for sure.

One of the big problems that caught us tonight is that the new roof is not on yet, nor the gutters put in. Because of that all of the water coming down in that space is going straight into the septic system instead of running into the street like it normally would. That is a high priority item for tomorrow.

Saturday. Today is Amos’ thirty first birthday.

Dominica was up at three this morning and ended up with insomnia so decided to just get into the kitchen and get to baking since she has cakes that need to be made this morning anyway. Around four she accidentally woke up me and the dogs. So we were all awake after that point.

By one this afternoon our new septic tanks were in and operational! I cannot believe how fast this crew works, and doing everything by hand. It is insane how much labor goes into this process. I took the dogs out for a walk just before one and as I was heading out Wilbur showed me the caps getting ready and the water already going into the new tanks. They had to put in the new drainage pipes this morning.

The hotel was quite busy today. It is great. Overall I would not say that the village is overly busy. But it is not slow. We had a good crowd all day, though. We were easily the busiest place in town (other than Suyapa, they really aren’t in the same league.)

We visited a lot earlier in the day. Then I put in some hours in the office writing and watching the dogs.

A lot of the evening was hanging out with Amos and Anahi. We even sat out on the beach and got to watch the sunset. I almost never actually get to do that.

Late this evening Amos had a big group of friends come in from Managua and we sang happy birthday and did cakes.

Friday. Walked the dogs for nearly three miles. Did not get started until almost six.

At ten this morning a local fisherman came by with a 27.5 lbs yellowfin tuna! We are very excited. Tuna is available from time to time now because the estuary is open now so tuna fishing is happening again. We are so excited. You do not get tuna just every day, and especially not a yellowfin. This is high end tuna. And thankfully Darwin was here and knows how to prep the tuna was starting cutting it up right away outside. So we are having tuna for dinner tonight! It is just under two dollars per pound here. Street price from a fish monger is generally between eight and fifteen dollars per pound for non-sushi grade tuna. So the price for us here is fantastic. And at that price it gets delivered!

https://i.imgur.com/ytwhOci.jpg

It was Grand Central Station in my office this morning. I never had a moment to even think about looking at work stuff until noon. I really need an office that is not also the room in which everything happens. Every bit of people talking, people eating, showering, getting dressed, taking care of the dogs, and on and on happens where I need to be working in absolutely, unbroken silence. I’m not too distracted by the maintenance sounds outside, they are clearly outside and it does not normally interrupt my concentration. But the people in the room, any people in the room, make me unable to focus on my writing and other critical, highly focused activities.

I have been so busy this week that I have been unable to schedule any of my Spanish activities. So instead of having four days of one thing per day I am doing three classes just today! My afternoon is quite busy, and quite stressful.

This evening, after work, we hung out with Amos and his friend that came in from Managua and Ivonne. We did not stay up late, though. We went to bed around eight thirty! Everyone was feeling quite tired.

Dinner was tuna steaks and it was amazing. The lemon sauce was just fantastic. All so good.

I did my regular Spanish stuff (Drops, DuoLingo, MemRise) before falling asleep a little after ten.