SailingKnitter

We're just enjoying the peace and quiet in this little slice of heaven in Nicaragua. Yep...you can see our boat in this picture way in the background there. This is a mangrove estuary so we have no waves or surge...nice and calm.

We took a walk around the Puesta del Sol marina property and out to the beach. Then we had a nice long walk in the sand, putting our toes in the warm water. Ahhhhh...The surf was pretty strong though so that's all that got wet, just the feet. It was great to get off the boat and get moving again after my fall during the last passage. Yeah, you can knock this old broad down but you can't keep her there.

Along the dirt road leading to the beach, we came across a man bringing in his dugout canoe from fishing. His cute little girls were there to greet him. I guess this is dinner? Fish...with gallo pinto, which is the local standard - red beans and rice. This is served with every meal. At the grocery store, the only kind of beans they sell are red beans. That's it. No other kind of bean is available. Many different brands and all the beans you want as long as you want red beans.

Today we rode in the marina's van to the nearest town of any size - Chinandega. It takes us about an hour each way - about half of that along a dirt road through agricultural lands.














Right now it is the dry season so it is pretty dusty. We see many people riding along on bicycles, and some with horse drawn carts. We saw this woman riding her horse home. Some of the fields are filled with cattle, horses, and/or goats and of course, we see plenty of chickens and dogs. Everyday life in Nicaragua.

We've never seen another personal car...only a couple of pick up trucks from businesses. Even on the asphalt highway we see very few cars. The traffic is mostly bulk cargo trucks and wildly painted local transportation busses.

In town, there is some vehicular traffic - but there are also a lot of these "tricicolos", human powered tricycles with a bench seat in front! Cheap! And the horse carts are also trotting along on the cobbled streets.

Our driver took us first to the open-air produce market so that we could shop for some fresh fruit and vegetables. First we - Jonesy & me and another cruising couple, had breakfast at a little cafe...4 breakfasts of scrambled eggs, coffee, red beans & rice, and tortillas for a grand total of $7US.

Then we wandered around the market. At one stall I asked for $1US worth of bananas and got a FULL plastic shopping bag!! Too many bananas! Produce is incredibly cheap here. Some star fruit, tangerines, and a pineapple were selected and then we loaded up in the van for the quick (and scary) trip over to the large grocery store. Whew! They drive like crazy people here!!











So, we are moving on down to Costa Rica this week. We'll leave here on Friday morning early, and are planning a simple overnight trip to a remote bay. This may be a windy/rough passage due to the Papagallo winds that pump over the flatlands of Nicaragua from the Caribbean in the Gulf of Papagallo. Many of our friends who have sailed farther this season than us slow-pokes got really knocked around by these winds. Looks like I might have to work on worsted weight yarns for this trip - the sock/fingering weight yarns get blown about in strong winds so knitting with them in the cockpit is really annoying.

There's no internet where we're going - actually there's not much of anything. Later....