April 3 – April 7, 2018

We got an early start the next day in order to drive towards the Pacific Ocean for a little beach time. Before leaving the town of Somoto, we stopped to get some Rosquillas, a corn flour and cheese baked treat that the area is known for….sweet and savory and really yummy!

Rosquillas are amazing…savory and sweet and crunchy.

Along the way we spotted our first active volcano of the trip.  We are pretty sure it was Volcan Momotombo, and it was perfect.

What a volcano should look like!

We spent three nights at Las Penitas at Rigo’s Guest house, parked in the sandy lot. The beach was beautiful with very few people on it, and we had a nice two story palapa with hammocks to hang out in. The Pacific coast of Nicaragua is full of great surfing beaches, and although the waves were not as powerful during low tide, we didn’t end up going swimming. We walked, we read, we swung in the hammocks.

Ignore the ugly scab on my leg – ran into a tree branch in Jalapa….

We had a couple of nice dinners out, the one at Sua Grill and Chill really standing out, with their mediterranean style menu and their seaside location.

As for our accomodations, we had no real complaints about the facilities, but the staff was seemed pretty cold and indifferent. Every morning we would smile, say “Buenos Dias”, and nothing. While we were there some workers were recycling large wooden spools for electrical and communication cables, making them into funky beach chairs and tables. At one point they were having trouble getting a bolt out, so Derek approached them with a tool he thought would help. They in the meantime had gotten a machete, and as Derek watched they hacked the bolt out. In Spanish Derek said, “Ah! Nothing is better than a machete” with a smile on his face….they looked at him, then continued to work. The next day we were in the hammocks when one of the women came to see us. “Wow, contact!”, we thought. She explained that the men needed to borrow the tool Derek had produced the day before. He grabbed it for them, but still, no smile, no thank you. It’s not that we felt terribly unwelcome, certainly we didn’t feel any strong negative feelings directed towards us, but it was emotionally arid at best.

Painting of a guardabarranco, Nicaragua’s national bird, on the side of the bathroom block.

Piper, on the other hand, found a great playmate in Timmy, the hostel owner’s dog (we never did meet the owner). Timmy was a lot younger than Piper, but that didn’t seem to matter. They chased each other for hours on the beach, and would hang together in the palapa while Derek and I had some hammock time. There was one last big chase in the hostel yard before we packed up and left. Timmy, I think, was a bit destroyed by Piper leaving. And Piper? Well, she’s a bit of a “There’s a different dog in every port” type of dog, so she was already over it before we left the gate!

Summer loving…