Blogs from Granada, Southern Pacific Coast, Nicaragua, Central America Caribbean

Travel to new places pits your wits against daily challenges. All new destinations are filled with strangers that you need for directions, food, rooms and basic necessities. Adding to anxiety, all travel books warn about theft, dangers, and the occasional murder. Expatriates encountered on the road usually have a story of someone being robbed of cameras, computers or cash. Locals will warn you of no go places and just to impress, will throw in a story whether recent or long past about a brutal slaying of some unfortunate backpacker. Of course, being the fortunate few from the First World, lugging around electronic devices worth the annual wages around these parts, we feel the target on our backs and more some. Its like the lawyer on the pot in Jurassic Park; pants down, no where to run ... read more

Marika, Will and Dad headed by boat to the local snorkeling hotspot and we spent an hour or so spotting a rainbow sushi buffet of Pacific Ocean fish. Pufferfish were the coolest sporting iridescent blue spots and fish that looked like they may have been parrotfish and triggerfish. Nicaragua was just too close to ignore so we had a BIG 19 hour Nicaragua day Monday. Up at 4:30 and onto a small modern bus which took us to the town of Liberia for breakfast. We then had about an hour drive to the border and crossed without incident but saw dozens and may be 100—200 huge transport trucks idling their hot engines to keep their air conditioning going. Apparently they wait from two to four days to cross and boy is it hot there!!!! We visited ... read more

This entry is a continuation of Part One... you should read that first. We had just arrived at the Central Market in Granada, Nicaragua and I turned around from purchasing some bottles of pop and water to find Marilyn (my 71 year-old mother-in-law) laying on the ground. She was moaning in pain, with her right hand bleeding and her camera in two pieces on the ground. My first instinct was that someone had run into her at full speed with a bicycle, or that she'd been attacked or mugged. It just looked too severe to be the result of a simple fall. Once I'd had a moment to process what was happening, I saw Cheryl kneeling behind her mom. I asked what happened and found out that Marilyn had simply tripped and gone flying. In trying ... read more

Well, it’s been a bit crazy here for the last few weeks so I apologize for not getting an update posted sooner. If you’ve seen any of my recent posts on Facebook you will know that my mother-in-law, Marilyn Macneall, had a serious accident during her visit here which had us all very distraught for the past two weeks. Here’s what happened: Marilyn and Norm arrived at our house in Playa Grande three weeks ago. After a week or so of just hanging out and exploring the neighbourhood, we all thought it would be fun to take a day trip and see something “a little different”. We initially planned to drive up to the closest volcano, Rincon de la Vieja , to check out the beautiful Blue River and the mud baths . Aft... read more

Today was a roller coaster! I was excited to leave the Treehouse (we had planned on staying two more nights but decided to leave for a number of reasons… I posted a review on TripAdvisor.com that explains why). We walked down to the main road and made what I thought was a pretty good plan…. Ugh! We got picked up by a tuk tuk, negotiated a price (Es Caro!!!) but turned out to be lesson – a hard one. The kid driving was nice enough but was charging way more than the guy we rode with the night before. The language barrier and lack of food is making communications worse. I thought it was more expensive because we were going farther but that wasn’t what happened. I wanted to go to Laguna Apoyo but he took ... read more