Joe has been out running two mornings in a row because the weather will finally allow it, but he has to do it between 5 and 7 am or else it's way too hot. So yeah, we're finally starting to cool down around here, which has been awesome.
Hope everyone had a fun Memorial Day yesterday! I celebrated by wearing my hair down all day. I haven't had my hair down for longer than 5 minutes since arriving in this country - it goes up in a bun as soon as my shower is done and stays there until my next shower. I would normally feel like I was being kind of mean to my hair to constantly have it in a bun, but I haven't seen any long hair here that isn't in a pony tail or a bun, so I feel better about it :) I did, however, decide it was probably about time to let it dry out all the way and make sure nothing was growing in there. It never did dry out all the way, but at least it was creature-free! :)
We had an absolutely marvelous time with Joe's parents and brother, Tom, during their visit! They flew into Costa Rica Tuesday morning and we saw them around 5 pm later that day. And look what they brought us! A blender for fruit smoothies, ziploc bags, splenda packets, garbage bags, and TUNA! What a treat! Tom also brought us a nice long network cable so Joe and I can both work on our computers in the same room! There is an internet jack in our kitchen and one in our bedroom, so Joe usually spends his time at the kitchen table, and I spend my computer time sitting on our bed. With the length of this cord I could work down the street if I wanted to :)
They spent all day Wednesday and Thursday with us and we had a blast! I didn't take many pictures because they had a real camera instead, so I wasn't planning on blogging about it until I got some of their pictures to include, but I changed my mind and decided I would write about our adventures and stick in the pictures I took and then fill in later with their better/more abundant pictures. Deal?
When we saw them first sitting outside of their hotel after they had checked in, they looked absolutely exhausted - probably a combination of an overnight flight, a super long day on buses, and the draining heat and humidity. It had taken a few more hours to get from the border to Granada than they had planned, and they were tired. They had A/C in their hotel room though, which they said was working well, thank goodness.
We walked to the only place Joe and I had eaten before that was American food and ate a wonderful dinner. It was so nice to have a Spanish speaker with us! Here's Tom loving every minute of speaking Spanish to these people. (I promise there were Nicaraguan people talking to him until I took this picture...)
Three orders of hamburgers and fries, one giant hotdog, one chicken fajita meal and 7 drinks all for about $12. And they had real ketchup - definitely a bonus :)
After dinner we walked down to Pali - the little supermarket in town where they bought some water and looked around a bit. Then we headed back to their hotel and said goodnight so they could get some much needed sleep.
At 9:00 the next morning we met at a tour place where we (along with another English-speaking couple) took a shuttle out to Lake Nicaragua to get a tour of some of the islands not far off the coast (I mentioned this group of 365 islands in a previous post).
Walking on a bridge made of boards out to the boat.
They couldn't get the boat pushed out into the water after we had all gotten in, so half had to climb into another boat they brought alongside and then climb back into the first boat after they had gotten it floating.
These are all just some pictures I took during our 2 hour boat ride through some of the islands.
Pretty cool house built between two islands
We saw a lot of local fishermen out catching their fish for the day. They would throw out their nets, let them sit for a while, and then bring them in, hoping there were fish inside. Our guide said that the bottom of their boats had water in them so that they could keep the fish alive once they caught them. When they were done for the day, they would fill the nets up again with the live fish and lower them back into the water by their houses, tied up to something, and then take them live to the market the next morning so they would be fresh. He said the men fish, and the women take them to the market and sell them.
Some of the islands had small, fishermen's houses on them, some had huge mansions on them, and some didn't have buildings on them at all. A couple of the islands had For Sale signs on them and our guide pointed out one island that had a normal size house on it that was going for $125,000 - island included :) Now there's something to start saving your pennies for :)
This house was probably my favorite. I just love the color red with the dark green of the trees surrounding it. You'll notice the American flag flying with the Nicaraguan flag - our guide said it's owned by an American couple and they only visit it for a few weeks out of the year. You could tell by the way he said it that that was a completely foreign concept to him. To have such an expensive, beautiful house, and only use it a few weeks out of the year was totally absurd to him.
We passed a tree on an island that had these things hanging off most of the branches. Our guide said they were bird nests for a certain kind of bird. Cool. We saw so many beautiful, exotic birds on our boat trip, but my camera didn't pick up any of them.
A lot of the islands had restaurants on them
And we stopped at one where they gave us each a coconut! First time ever drinking coconut milk! So awesome!
I think this is one of my favorite pictures ever. Such a good one of both of them! Mom Meservy got her coconut cut in half so we could all taste the meat. Interesting... :)
We stopped by the monkey island! There are 4 monkeys living on a small island. Someone put them there years ago and they can't swim, so they've been there ever since -surviving off tourist food.
It's a privately owned island, so we couldn't get off the boat, but we pulled in close enough to feed them.
Good thing the other couple brought a couple of bananas with them!
More beauty.
Mombacho volcano is in the background. You will also see the cloud cover - the few days the Meservys were here were all about 10 degrees cooler than before they came and after they left. Hallelujah! :) The temperature was also so much cooler out on the lake too. It was absolute heaven sitting in that boat and seeing such beautiful things while feeling a breeze.
Heading back to shore.
When we got back to Granada, we went to a place that Tom had read about on Trip Advisor for lunch. Owned and operated by a Canadian and his wife. Pretty sure they were the only two people who worked there. And they made great food! They also told us that they soak their lettuce and cabbage in bleached water so we were able to feel good about enjoying green salad and coleslaw! It was delicious!
Joe felt like taking candid shots of everyone eating...
He warned me :) That's what husbands are for.
After lunch we walked around town and saw the Choco museum and the artifacts museum with pottery and stuff from the Aztec and Mayan periods. We went to the Casa de las sonrisas (house of smiles) to check it out. I found out about it about a week ago while reading up on different things to see in Granada. A guy from Spain who was living in Costa Rica decided to move to Nicaragua. A little while later he met a deaf mute guy and tried to help him by educating him. Other deaf mutes eventually found their way to this guy from off the streets and he set up a school for them. That eventually got too expensive to run, so they started a cafe and hammock workshop to help earn money for the school. This foundation is all about giving people, who would otherwise be on the streets, a job to do so that they can have dignity and earn their way in life.
All over the walls are signs and apparently the cafe menu has signs in it as well so that the customers can communicate with the waiters. We thought of you, Monique! :)
As we were walking back from the market towards the city center to find the guy we wanted to take us on a horse and carriage ride tour, he came riding by! Perfect timing! So we all jumped on and got 1 1/2 hour tour of the city. Much better than walking! Again - the breeze made it incredible!
This is supposedly the oldest house in Granada.
I have loved learning the history of this city. First the island guide and then this horse and carriage guide have given us a lot of history about this place. It's so fascinating to me. Apparently tourism has only been a part of this city for the last 10 years or so. Before 2002 there was only one hotel in the whole city. Since then tourism has funded many major improvements of the city, especially the tourist district. I had no idea it was such a recent thing. Give this city another 10 years and it's going to be unrecognizable :) They are definitely on the up! Also interesting news - we learned that in a year the project to dig a canal through Nicaragua - to give an alternative to the Panama canal - will be started. Cool, huh?
We got dropped off at our apartment and enjoyed a wonderful evening sitting on the porch talking, eating cookies, drinking delicious smoothie that Tom made for us, and watching the rain storm.
On Thursday morning we met at the bus stop at 7:45 and took the bus to San Juan de Oriente - the place that's known for their pottery. A lady took us into their workshop and explained to Tom how the pottery is made. I think it takes 20 days from start to finish to make a piece of pottery. Here they are standing in front of the kiln. She was explaining how you even have to burn different kinds of wood at different times of the day to get the temperature just right to bake the clay. Wow.
Her son was painting pottery in the shop.
Joe has fallen in love with this painting of Don Quixote that he saw in a shop.
From San Juan de Oriente we walked the short distance to Catarina and went through the town to get to the Laguna lookout.
The lookout was beautiful, but the best part for me was the breeze :)
It also happened to be a school field trip day there, so the place was teeming with school uniforms. From there we jumped on a bus that was headed to Masaya - a town in between Granada and Managua known for their handicrafts. And what do ya know - there was a preacher on the bus! I've heard stories about Mormon missionaries standing up and preaching on the bus, and I've always been grateful that I didn't get sent to a place like that on my mission, but apparently it's totally normal here! He preached all the way to Masaya and then when we got near, he walked through the bus and collected money for his sermon. Awesome.
When we got to Masaya, we found the handicraft market that's rated so highly on every site about Masaya. And it was neat, with pretty things, but it wasn't what we were expecting. We thought it would be more like a big farmer's market where people were selling handmade things and making them on the spot for you to see. Most of the booths here had the exact same stuff - just Nicaraguan souvenirs.
We walked around for a bit and then headed through town to find the bus that would take us back to Granada. We happened to have to walk through another market - the Nicaraguan market - to get to the bus station, and this thing was the market of all markets. This is exactly what we had been hoping the last one would be! They had EVERYTHING! And a lot of times they were making it right there in their booths. These guys were sewing shoes and their machines looked like something you'd see in an antique shop. All of the sewing machines we've seen here look like that.
Didn't get many pictures of the market, so you're just gonna have to believe me - it was AMAZING. I took this picture because we see pinatas everywhere. I mean everywhere. They're in most shops and we see people carrying them down the street all the time. These were all Disney princess pinatas and we thought they were fun.
We got back to Granada just in time to grab some hot dogs at a local restaurant and be ready to see the procession for Mary go down the street from one Catholic cathedral to the main one (the carriage driver had told us it would be happening at 3:00). Well, we waited...
And waited...
And waited. No procession. So Joe finally walked down to the church and asked about it and apparently it wasn't going to happen until 5:00 :(
So we headed back down to our apartment to spend the evening enjoying each others' company and to see a bit of our neighborhood. Mom Meservy took a lot of pictures around our neighborhood - I'll post when I get them. The people were so friendly and would smile and tell their kids to smile when the camera came out. And it was so nice to have Tom around to talk to them and joke with them. What a fun evening.
Tom had bought some bread and eggs and made us all french toast for dinner! I can't believe I didn't even get a picture of it! It was such a nice treat! He had bought 3 jars of this "honey" from a peddler in Masaya for $1 each and it actually tastes really good! Still not sure what percentage of it is honey and what percentage is corn syrup, but it's great on french toast! And pancakes! Tom realized after he bought it that he couldn't take it home on the airplane with him because they didn't check any luggage, so Joe and I got to keep it :) We have since made pancakes twice and this stuff makes them amazing!
I tried making a smoothie in our "new" blender, but didn't know that you didn't have to twist the pitcher to get it out. It all came gushing out the bottom. Oops! :( So we just ate fruit and cookies instead, which were still good :)
They left on the 6:45 am bus to head back to Costa Rica. We are SO glad they came and we had such a wonderful time with them! We're excited to hear about their adventures in Costa Rica!
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