I am finally up to date on the blog.
I had to rush through, it takes a long time to load and I know there are a lot of mistakes.
We are still in San Juan del Sur and are leaving for El Salvador in a few days
We are waiting for weather and tide conditions to improve for the transit.
The heat is really hard. I welcome rain and cold...even freezing rain. The one thing about being cold is you can always put on some clothes. Being hot on the other hand does not provide so many options.
Thanks for reading our blog and I appologize for the sporatic posts, it's just that internet is so random.
April 26, 2008
ladies of the lake
this is the source of the Papagyo winds and also the lake provides fresh water for laundry day.
San Juan del sur and then some more...
San Juan Del Sur
We were happy to see Sea Whisper still anchored here.
Checking in was a breeze and we celebrated by watching the sun set at the Girls favorite hangout…Iguana’s . we met up with their Smither’s friends and we all had a laugh…are you still here? It turns out we both arrived in San Juan at the same time after months of travel adventures. They like it here and I see why.
We met up with the boys from the Dive shop and they were really glad to see us.
We love this town again after such a bad time with the sail….and it is a whole lot easier to be here with without the girls to worry about.
We took a tour to Granada, Rivas and Masaya Volcanoes
Rivas is a really funky town like Chinindega with lots of bike rickshaws and people selling home made snacks. The road out of San Juan Del Sur is terrible, infact, much worse than the last time I was here. There are virtually no trafic signs and half the road is closed while the other half has boulders strewn all over the place, never mind the pot holes. I was having deja vous of an imminent car accident . …I don’t really want to go over on my side again.
We made it to Granada and toured the majestic cemetery. It is filled with mausoleums that are dedicated to family. A nice custom to have all your family members burried in the same place. The statues were amazingly, beautiful and really quite a testament to the family buried there.
They even had a separate mausoleum for dead presidents.
Granada is colorful with the colonial structures each with brightly colored doorways opening to a beautiful inner courtyard, I love this style of home.
I was going crazy taking pictures, it was just so damn beautiful.
There are literally hundreds of poor selling what ever they can to the visitors of this town. I really felt kind of sad watching a family while I ate lunch sell chicklets and single cigarettes for a pennies.
The whole days take may muster up a dollar or two. Which does not go far here..
Fuel is so expensive and the price of food is increasing as well. Most can not afford anything beyond rice and beans.
Nicaragua is definitely not as affluent as its neighbors however, the people seem friendly and have a sense of pride. They recycle here and there is little garbage on the streets. I saw bales of plastic on the side of the road waiting for pick up.
I wish El Salvador could do the same.
In contrast to El Salvador the Nicaraguans seem to be hard at work everyone works. The only hammock people I seem to notice are the elderly and small children.
Women can be seen gathering wood from the side of the road , washing, carrying things on their head, or sweeping. They keep their yards very clean and many homes have brightly painted walls with gardens at the entrance.
The men can usually be seen working on the side of the road, either in construction, burning fields, farming, or ranch handling. It is apparent that the young boys are left with the "cow boy" duties.
There are more families traveling here riding in horse drawn carts than in the rest of Central America.
The Masaya volcano was definitely a highlight. This is the most active volcano in Central and South America. We climbed to the top to gaze into the sulfur rock spewing active volcano. It was hot humid and smelly. The cross on the top of the climb was erected by a Spanish Catholic Priest apparently as an exorcism ritual. The priest was convinced that the volcano was the gate way to hell.
The locals believed it to be a mystical place of the gods. They perfomed sacrifices there by throwing young virgins into the steaming hole in the earth.
The caves near by were used to discuss who would be considered worthy for the ritual. It was a tremendous honor to the family to have a child chosen to sacrifice.
The volcano was believed to be the home of a witch who the locals would consult for information about crops planting and other worldly concerns.
The caves were used to hide fighters during the war and also later for satanic rituals. Today, they are a park and visited by 3 varieties of bats, boa constrictors and birds.
Parakeets like to nest there apparently, they have adapted to the sulfuic atmosphere and their predators have not
On to Nicaragua
We sail and motor sail…the afternoon is great as we sail closer to Papagyo territory the winds pick up and we have the best sail so far.
As we approach Bahia Brasillito where we met our Cuban American friends, I decide to sit on the bow to enjoy the late afternoon sun. I start to panic as I see us approaching a large mass of brown water ahead. I yell to Michel about a rock ahead and he quickly alters course. We look at all our charts and there are no rocks charted. The mass was too large to be a whale but the strange thing was waves were not breaking on the mass….hmmm
Not too much further I see another mass of brown with fins poking up. I yell at Michel to turn the boat around and investigate. We crossed over a group of about 100 or so rays just floating around. This was the explanation for the other large mass I observed earlier on. We drifted overtop of them which was amazing as they glided underneath the boat. We were just off of Tamerino Beach and there were thousands of rays floating around and dozens jumping all around the boat. We wondered if one was going to land in the boat. An amazing site to say the least, perhaps it was mating season.
We anchored in Brasillito a lovely bay bursting with tourism. The white sandy beach attracts many activities. You can rent, jet skis, horses, hobi cats, and ATV.s. There was a wedding on the beach just at sunset- around the same time as 20 ATV’s roared through followed by horses. I would have freaked out if it were my wedding. Everyone wants a piece of paradise.
I had a job of returning Alphrado’s sunglasses. This involved swimming ashore from the boat as the dingy was stowed and there is a bit of a surf there.
We sailed to the next anchorage enjoying all the rays jumping along side accompanied by dolphins. The next anchorage Bahia De Culebr was a nice surprise right on the edge of the Papagayo Gulf where the winds are notorious.
The bay is dotted by expensive resorts on the hill tops. It seems that majority of luxury resorts are in these parts of Costa Rica. It is noticeably dryer and the brown landscape reminds me of Okanogan hillsides.
We had a quiet anchorage, well protected and no swell. We met a family cruising from Seattle with a beautiful, intelligent 8 year old girl. She seemed to enjoy cruising despite the absence of friends her own age.
Bahia Murcielagos the bay of Bats.
Once again we get whacked at the exact same place when we traveled with Pete and Sue. For some reason Michel opted to go inside the Islands rather than go the extra couple miles out. Apparently, he wanted to look at the islands. This knife edge peninsula has amazing rock formations that jet out of the ocean. The high mountains seem to accelerate the winds to boisterous gusts that scare the crap out of you. Michel kept saying I hate this shit…I was happy to see a group of dolphins follow us through. I talked to them and thanked them for taking my attention away from the anxiety that was beginning to take hold of me during the nasty gusts of wind.
We checked the Grib file weather reports for days and I was predicted to have 8-10 k winds. The winds were on the nose and more like 10-15 k but entirely manageable. We adjusted the sails to pinch as high as we could to windward which involved a course that was about 30 degrees off of where we wanted to go. This was a sacrifice for comfort as we could opt for tacking back as we got closer to San Juan del Sur. As luck would have it the winds and seas subsided enough to motor right into the wind for the last 10 miles. We only got a few bashes and waves in the face hardly worth mentioning. We felt like it was a perfect Papagyo crossing- as this is probably as good as it gets. We sailed for the most part of the day getting up to 9 knots and fighting with the engine into the wind at 3-4 knots
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