March 14, 2015 San Juan del Sur

Today was another all day tour, again because everything is so far away from the port.  We went to Granada, a lovely city with beautiful churches (of course) on Lake Nicaragua.  Both yesterday and today we drove on the Pan-American Highway.  That’s the highway that we saw the end of while in Ushuaia.  “Highway” is a bit of an overstatement.  It’s actually a 2 lane road with almost no shoulder.  Besides the cars, buses and trucks that use it, there are people walking or riding their bikes in the 2 extra feet at the edge.  And houses are built right up to the edge, with kids, dogs, chickens, goats and cattle roaming around.  Fortunately the cattle and goats are tethered, but we did have to stop for a herd of horses being moved from one side to the other.  And the driver stopped once by a tree full of howler monkeys.  I guess the children learn at a very early age to be street savvy because we never saw them close to the road.

After Granada we took a cruise in a small boat on Lake Nicaragua, which is huge.  It has something like 365 small islands (islets) and many of them are inhabited.  People build homes on them - some very elegant and some not much more than shacks.  We saw more monkeys (spider monkeys this time), turtles, and plenty of birds.  This lake also has sharks and alligators that have adapted to the fresh water which might explain why we didn’t see any of the children swimming in it.

And speaking of homes being not much more than shacks - tiny wooden structures with tin roofs held down by rocks - more than half of this type had satellite dishes on them.  We drove by woman hand pumping water from the well at her home and next door was a young woman making and selling tortillas at a stall outside her home while her sister sat nearby talking on her cell phone.  Interesting to see the juxtaposition of old and new technologies.

Again our guide put the best spin on life here.  According to him since the end of the Sandinistas, and the start of general elections, life has gotten much better and the economy is doing well.  There are mixed feelings about the construction of the Nicaraguan Canal which just broke ground and is scheduled to be completed in 2020.  They are excited about the jobs it will bring, but worried that the Chinese who are building it may not be so careful about environmental concerns as they should be.

Now we have three more sea days until Puerto Vallarta.  The captain said we’d be diverting closer to shore a little on our route to avoid a storm with 60 mph winds.