20-22 July - Masaya and San Juan del Sur

Masaya

Otherwise known as Hammockland. Although best known for its artesans and the local handicraft stores (Phil thought it was extensive stores selling the same souvenirs rather than real artesans).

The handicraft pedalled by these artesans included lovely woodwork, hammocks and stuffed cane toads in suggestive positions, and stuffed crocodiles smoking pipes.

We ventured into the hammock district and found ourselves by the lake where we were bombarded by local children asking for photos, and generally up for a chat. Some spoke a couple of words of english, but as one of them had a birthday coming up, we bought them all ice-cream, particularly cause one of them gave us a lolly each. Good kids, a good indicator of a safe neighbourhood.

Although knowing we were travelling light, and promised ourselves not to buy anything excessive, we ended up purchasing two of the heavier, bulkier and yet very comfy models of hammock and hammock chair available and spent an interesting morning trying to wrap, pack, address and send some weirdly shaped packages home.

San Juan del Sur

We headed south for the weekend, to catch some sun and beachtime. It´s a bit of a gringo-town, but does have a strong fishing fleet and a curious japanese interest in it´s port area.... Karen´s japanese has come into it´s own, reading ¨No Entry¨ signs around the place. The place itself is a nice curved beach with cliffs on either end.

We finally found a hostal after four attempts, one of which is notable. We were invited to come in and see a room, we followed the woman in who then proceeded to take us into another guests room and start fixing the shower!! She´d apparently forgotten about us (in half a second) and both us and the guests we were left staring at weren´t sure what the hell was going on!

We took a boat out for a dive/snorkel to a place called Los Pacomas (I think), where visibility was about 4-5m and there were plenty of small spotted rays, a couple of morays and stone-fish and plenty to see, despite losing my guide on the second dive.... he was off chasing lobster (langosta). Karen enjoyed snorkelling, but was a little wary with large fish circling at one stage, and locals with spearguns.

One more thing, we´ve found a great little italian restaurante overlooking the beach and gorged ourselves on pizza and pasta. If you can get here, we recommend it, they even cook with power failures!