Border Run

Well, Sunday was the day that we had originally planned on flying home from Nicaragua when we first made our summer plans, but we're still here! :)  We had thought we needed to be back in the states before school started for Joe's work, but about a month ago his colleagues said it was ok for us to stay through September.  And because of the money we'll be saving on flights and rent by staying, we can go on a cruise!! Woohoo!!  So we have officially gotten flights to Fort Lauderdale on the 15th of Sept., booked a cruise til the 21st, and will be flying back to Vegas that same day.  We are pretty excited to say the least. So now when Joe starts to get his unbearable meat cravings, he can dream about all of the luscious steaks that he will get to eat on the cruise and it gets him through :)

Because we are staying another month and a half, we needed to renew our tourist visas because the 3 month mark was up two days ago.  So a week ago we did a border run!  The process was a little confusing at times, but we survived :)

The bus to the Costa Rican border took about 2 1/2 hours, we all filed out of the bus, filled out exit forms, paid the exit fees,

then walked down the road to the Costa Rican border.

We checked into Costa Rica,

Then walked around to the other side of the building and checked out.  Good bye, Costa Rica! The 45 minutes we spent standing on your soil was far too short!  Sometime we'll have to go back and give it a real visit. 

Then we walked back to the Nicaraguan border, paid the entrance fees, and got a new tourist visa!  Bingo!

On the way back we took a detour out to San Juan del Sur, a beautiful beach on the southwestern coast of Nicaragua.  This is Joe standing on the side of the road waiting for a bus to take us there.

The bus that we got onto had a flat panel TV with a DVD player!  Wow! We have never seen a chicken bus here with those kinds of accessories.  Pretty impressive.

The beach was gorgeous!

And pretty empty, I thought.  Joe and I had a whole section of the beach just to ourselves. A lot of surfers come here because it's cheap and still pretty undiscovered.  Apparently one of the popular things to do in the town is to hike up to the huge Jesus statue that you can see on the hill behind Joe.  We didn't have time to do that, but we were surprised at how big it was.

 After a few hours in the water we decided to dry off by walking around the town.

We found some delicious muffins for lunch.

In our meanderings we found a beautiful church.

I think I liked it so much because most of it was made of wood.

A few days ago my brothers sent a picture of themselves at the Golden Gate Bridge - well, we found one here too! :)

The hair scrunchie I'd been wearing got lost in the ocean when we were swimming and my nasty, frizzy hair was driving me CRAZY!  So Joe tied it in knots and I was a much happier person for the rest of the trip :)

 The trip home became a bit stressful when we arrived back in Rivas and found out that buses from Rivas to Granada were done running for the day (it was only 4:30 pm!).  But thank goodness not all buses into Granada had stopped running.  After a few unplanned transfers we made it safely back home.  The end.