02/18/2016 Yesterday we made it to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. We plan to stay here for a month, until our Easter break. Looks like a nice little beach town. We are staying in the hills about a mile north of town in a development called Pacific Marlin. We are maybe 300 yards from the giant Jesus statue. We will post photos as we go. It looks like our map position hasn't been updating. I will work on that tonight.
02/24/2016 (day #47)
Sorry for the delay, we have been without internet for the past week or so. San Juan del Sur is a very nice, small town. No barbed wire, no men armed with shotguns at every store. It is very pretty, warm and the people are friendly. Lots of surfers. We have been exploring the area beaches and towns. The grocery stores don't provide a lot of variety, so we eat out more than we otherwise would. The kids have been surfing most days. It is strange not having anywhere to be and not having errands to run. We will be flying home on the 16th or 17th, probably out of Costa Rica as our car only has a 30 day permit and needs to be renewed either at the border or in Managua so it may be easier to just leave for a few days.
02/15/2016
We are now in Granada , Nicaragua. We crossed through Honduras in 1 day, spending 6 hours at the crossing themselves. We had an issue at the on the Nicaragua side as we only have a certified copy of our car title and they are demanding the original, so they denied our entry at first and we had to argue for 2 hours for them to stamp us through for 30 days. We will probably need the original before we have to renew. El Salvador and the corner of Honduras we went through look very similar, mostly dry and very hilly/mountainous. The roads are good. The people are all very friendly and helpful. We spoke with a man who was working at the hotel in El Salvador. He has lived in both the US and here. Average salary for full time workers in El Salvador is $250 per MONTH!!!! Even with this, he prefers to live here. He said cost of living is much better here and he only has to work one job to provide for his family, but needed to work two jobs when living in the US.
The people we have met along the way are great too! We recently met a man on his bicycle at the Honduras border. He started in Alaska, made his way to New York and is now in Central America. He is by himself, with all supplies carried on the bicycle. He plans on finishing in Argentina... ALL the way down! He is riding to raise awareness for a young boy's illness. The boys story hits home because he is about the age of Finn and Ella. If you would like to read about him or donate you can find more information on codyhatch.org
We also met 4 people riding from the US to San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua... the same place we are headed. Three of them are from Ireland and one from South Carolina. They are planning on opening a hostel and doing surf trips in Nicaragua. They bought a former, full sized school bus to use as their RV for the trip. The bus's last purpose was as a burning man festival vehicle. I cannot imagine driving something so large down these roads.
One interesting thing is the roadside vendors. People stand on the side of the roads selling all kinds of things. The obvious like fruit and drinks, but also iguanas, live parrots and other live animals we weren't able to identify.
Their public transportation consists of pickup trucks with modified beds, minivans and tricked-out former school buses.
Wednesday we drive 2 hours to our final destination of San Juan del Sur. It will be nice to unpack and to stop driving for a while after 5 weeks on the road.
03/08/2016
Nothing much going on here. Just sun and sand. We leave this Thursday for Costa Rica for 4 days at Selva Verde (www.selvaverde.com) before flying home next week. I have read that Alamo car rental has a secure lot where we can pay to leave our car for a couple of weeks. I would feel better if we didn't have to leave our stuff in it as well.
03/02/2016
We have internet!!!! Barely. Running at a blazing 56k download, so no photos today. We haven't had internet for about 9 days, so I guess we should be happy for what we have. We also don't have power for 3-4 hours each day, just randomly. Finn has gone off on a 4 day surf bus trip with the Irish people we met at the border crossing on the way down. They are planning on setting up a hostel , but in the mean time, they have outfitted their old school bus with bunks and are taking surfers to beaches farther away from San Juan del Sur. Finn says he is having fun, but isn't sure what beach he is at tonight. There are lots of monkeys in the trees, mostly spider monkeys, but we heard howler monkeys roaring last night. There are wild (Clare) , feral (me) horses everywhere. I think we are going to leave for Coata Rica on the 10th or 11th of March before flying home on the Ides from Liberia, Costa Rica.
3/5/16
Everybody hitchhikes here. Everyone. It is a normal way of transportation. 10 year old kids hitchhike to school and will climb in with strangers without a thought, (we know because we have picked up a few), adults travel cross country.
We had to go to Managua yesterday for our 10,000 mile service on our car. Everything takes all day here, but the actual service is general good, if slow. The stores here have many , many workers. Probably a result of very low wages. Walmart, Managua had at least one employee for every section of aisle.