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Thursday, August 18, 2011

Nicaragua.....San Juan Del Sur 2

Now that Princess has dropped Acapulco from their itineraries, we had the replacement port of San Juan Del Sur...... never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined that I would ever visit Nicaragua.... just saying it conjures up visions of drug lords, machine guns and contraband....

 

Just like Rio they have a statue of Jesus overlooking the town and as you looked down the mountain you can see some beautiful homes built to take advantage of  the beautiful view.

Brian, who had organised our original Acapulco trip contacted the company he used in Costa Rica and they volunteered to travel across the border and take us for a tour here. Not really knowing what to expect , we boarded our tender for a short ride to port...

We were greeted on shore by a group of musicians playing some traditional music that had a kind of calypso feel to it.... Both the beaches here and at Puntarenas have grey nearly black sand, that is from the volcanic rock content.

We were met by our guide Evelyn who was sent up to San Juan because she may have been Okey Dokey’s only tour guide originally from Nicaragua. She told us that as soon as she dropped off the passengers from her tour in Puntarenas she was on her way up here.... a couple of mishaps on the way, but she made it....

We drove to the first town of Rivas where a bit of time was wasted while they purchased a missing microphone, beer and water for our day....  We drove up to the town of Masaya and visited a walled flea market.  Then into Granada to see the coloured buildings and lunch at a small cafe.  Curry Chicken...yum...... all prepared without the use of electricity...seems Granada doesn’t always have electricity in the afternoon.  We did a drive by  Lake Granada the largest inland lake in the world.... comes with it’s own active volcanos emerging from within the lake.

On the way back the driver and guide found a vantage point where we could see the lake up close and the 2 volcano’s smoking away.

It was then a slow hot tender ride back to the ship.....

 

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