Day 60 & Beyond!

Hey Kids,

Holy jamoly! It's been like three weeks since our last post. I can only assume Japan's cities are clean an devoid of nuclear fallout, a sensible transfer of power has been agreed upon in Libya and the Braves are in first place heading for another title!!! Right, am I right? So, I'm wrong but our travels are still so right! Can anyone guess where lovely Joy is at this moment? Give up? Taking a much needed siesta after hiking through Honduran canyons and waterfalls all day, that's where! Haha.

If you've not followed the posts on facebook, we reached the northern border of Honduras where it joins Guatemala just before the holiest of Central American holidays, Semana Santa or Easter Week. We have posted up in a town called Copan Ruinas, and, as u may suspect, they are most famous for their incredible, Mayan Ruins. However, if u ask my lady, she will tell you that their street food is TOPS. To this point, even the street food in Americana Centro has been...uh...bland. In Copan the pork street tacos are stupendous, the homade ice cream is awesome, the pupusas (more El Salvadorian than Honduran but who cares) fantastic and the cinnamon, sugar drinks (ponche) are strait addictive. Plus, Joy found the best salsa ever, and even I agreed we should purchase our own jar. You know, for the bland times.

However, how did we get here? Where have we been since April 7th? The short answers are the beach, the mountains and two HUGE major cities with a couple small ones in between. We left Leon wanting to explore the north western beaches of Nicaragua before the holy week. During 4/17 thru 4/24 there we gonna be 3 million Nicas at the beaches celebrating Christ's resurrection and cold Tona! We hoped for a more tranquil setting and were not disappointed. The first beach we hit was Las Penitas, 40 clicks west of Leon. Wow! We've never been on a more deserted stretch of beach. 22km to the north and south and it was us, the local fisherman, a couple surfers, millions of shells and hundreds of bird species. For three and a half days we played in the surf (hours a day, we were like kids on summer vacation again) and explored a 20 km. barrier island with estuaries, mangroves, crocodiles and, during certain times of year, nesting sea turtles. Didn't spot Amy sea turtles, wrong time of year, but the birds and crocs were amazing. Joy, our guide and I took a boat 2km up the estuary and another 2km back and it was like being back in prehistoric times. No people, hot, humid, giant herons and crocs. So cool. Our guides little boat ran out of gas about ten minutes from shore, so we had to paddle back. It was hilarious. I wanted a discount, joy told me to shove it, and we were back to playing in the ocean in no time. Side note - super proud of my wife! Normally a bit shy in the water after nearly breaking her sternum body surfing in Coronado, CA, was swimming champ in waves twice as big in Las Penitas. Good job, honey!

Not finished with remote beach exportation, we jumped a couple buses north to another beach just below the El Salvadorian border called Zorros Beach. We heard rumor of a hostel in this area with beach front
cabins, vegetarian food, cold beer and an owner from San Francisco. A five hour bus ride and two cold cobs of corn served via bus window, and we were beach front at Rancho Tranqilo, Zorros Beach, Nicaragua.

A nice young man with shiny bits of glitter all over his face, body and feet checked us in. Julian, glitter man, said he'd been fillin in as owner and hotelier while the actual owner, Tina, was recovering from back surgery in Leon. Apparently, she was stringing more Xmas lights around the bar and took a tumble. Yikes! She cracked her back and her ribs and after meeting her (she returned that day and Julian took of after 1.5 months at the helm) I understood why this fall injured her so badly. She's a tiny person. And what she lacks in size makes up for in Tona and cigarette consumption. For normal people, Tina was probably terrifying, for us she was interesting in a here's-what-an-ex-hippie- computer-programmer-can-do-with-a- little-bit-of-dough-in-Nicaragua kind if way. It was impressive. She didn't rise before 11 am, subsided on smokes and Tona, but kept her place spick and span and the food tasty. We stayed 3.5 days and then headed for the mountains, but we could have stayed longer. The place was special. Not sure why but it had something to do with another miles-long deserted beach, great waves (we both tried surfing with success) and the cheap rum. Flor De Cana is made about 70 km south. Great beach times.

My hands are asleep as I'm typing on the iPhone, and we are headed to Easter mass. Thus, I leave you! We will share our times in the mountains and across the two major cities of Honduras next time. We promise the next lost in less than 3 weeks, unless Internet is spotty in Guatemala. Haha. We head to Rio Dulce, Guatemala, en la mañana!

Miss y'all!

Ciao!

CP JP