If I haven’t mentioned it before, one of the things we love about visiting the Gran Pacifica region is the time frame for sunlight. Daylight starts around 6 am and remains until about 6 pm. I wish it would stay light a little longer, but the early mornings provide a cooler temps for morning walks along the beautiful beaches. Depending on where the tide is will depend on how far out towards the ocean you can go to explore the little pools in the rocky shore left behind by the receding water.
If the tide is on the higher side, it’s a good chance you’ll see surfers out there challenging the waves.
Or you can head over to the Sea Salt restaurant area and just watch it all unfold. In the mornings, we’d typically sit at tables set up outside, closer to the pool. In the heat of the day, we’d choose the under the roof option.
The restaurant usually opens at 8 am, but if you’re there a little early, someone will be nice enough to bring you a cup of Nicaraguan coffee and offer up a breakfast menu.
We had two servers in particular that went out of their way to help us with our Spanish and ask for help with their English.
Naomi and Eric, pictured here, were a delight along with Victoria, (sorry no picture).
Naomi was so full of spunk and Eric, who had only been there 3 weeks, showed such a willingness to learn. Both would test us on our Spanish. Eric would often politely ask us to write out English phrases that would better help him ask things like steak doneness. When he brought our order, he would often say, “Sorry”. We offered the suggestion to rather say “Excuse me” when placing our orders on the table. Saying sorry made him sound too Canadian LOL. Also, it would indicate he did something wrong, which was never the case.
This morning, Osman, who works for the resort taking people on tours and who also quickly became a friend, was taking us to a village a short time away where the fishing boats would return to with their fresh catch during the night.
We’d often see the boats heading out late afternoon or sunset and see their lights bobbing out on the water at night. They lay down nets or lines and wait….all night.
In the morning they head back to their home base village of Masachapa.
It’s quite a site to see as each boat comes in, how a group of the locals surround the boat to see what catch has been brought in. Osman explained that they don’t all go after the same thing. So each boat is like opening a new package to see what’s inside.
The daily catch get weighed, sold to the local merchants who prep and sell to the public.
We saw fishing boats either sitting out in the water or rolled up onto the beach and parked.
All the while, vultures, much like our ravens or crows, wait to pounce on the leftovers..
I saw a couple of hats that stood out and had to record them…even if one of them is a Habs fan…
Of course after seeing all this fish we had to indulge in a little ourselves. We actually did purchase some from the market that the Sea Salt restaurant would prepare for us for supper. But for lunch, Osman took us to an open air restaurant over looking the whole scene. We ordered a sampler plate which fed all six of us easily.
With full bellys we headed back to Gran Pacifica. On the road back, there’s a hanging bridge we checked out, well, Jacki, Sandra and Arlene did. Alex and I hung back. You see the bridge is over a stream which, for anyone not comfortable with heights, looked very very far away.
It’s an interesting bridge. Everything from people to cattle to motorbikes cross it. Last year when we were here there were quite a few broken boards along the stretch of bridge. Some volunteers spent some time replacing them with new boards, which makes it look MUCH safer.
One of the daily activities in Nica life is getting the laundry done as evidenced here.
One more stop along the way included a visit to a local woman who bakes fresh bread on certain days of the week. Today was one of those days, but unfortunately, it was still in the process when we popped in. It was interesting to me, and also a testament to Osman’s reputation, that we just wandered in to this family’s yard to take this in. I wonder how we’d react to a group of tourists dropping into our home unexpectedly. Any place we went, the people were so friendly and welcoming. Not in a over smiley phony kind of way, but genuine.
This stone oven was HOT! Given that the daytime temps avg in the 35C range, it just adds to the heat. And on that note, it was time for these North Americans to find some AC! It takes a while to acclimatize to the heat and after only a few days, it’s safe to say, we weren’t there yet 😉
I started off this blog by talking about our love of the early daylight. The other thing we’ve thoroughly enjoyed about these trips is how they implement tours that allow us to see real Nica life.
You can see the rest of the pics for this day
here.
Time to try and remember what happened next…
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
moes ramblings 