Run down stew, a let down with the rugby, Jesus revisited & farewell to Kieran

While in Bluefields you might remember us mentioning that we tried a delicious stew with coconut milk as its base - 'run down' (pronounced as 'rondon').

Well, each week Porl and I visit a lovely family here in San Juan to study the Bible with them and the gentleman, Elvis, is from over Bluefields way (actually a bit north of there, from a place called Puerto Cabeza).  We had told him how much we had enjoyed 'run down' while in Bluefields and one day when we arrived to have our study he had a surprise waiting for us.  He had kindly cooked us lunch of 'run down' - made with some locally caught little fish that were delicious.  He had also made gallo pinto but with coconut milk instead of just cooking the rice in water was usual.  He'd gone to a lot of trouble as it had involved getting coconuts, grating and squeezing them as well as all the other preparation.  Cans of coconut milk here are around $4 for just a small one so they are well out of range for the budget of most locals.

Here's Elvis in his kitchen, finishing off the delicious meal.

Elvis's wife Escarlet and their cute as a button baby.

The rainy season (not that there seemed to be much of that) seems to be pretty much over and we've had lots of beautiful weather lately.  Although it has to be said that some days have been a little to hot for comfort.  Thank goodness the beach is nearby and we swim most days to cool off.

 

Perhaps beacause of the heat, town has been quite quiet for a couple of months now with many less tourists than usual but the good weather has seen a return of the cruise ships with people coming in just for the day to stroll around San Juan or to take a day trip to Ometepe on the Tica buses.

The cruise ships dwarf the little fishing boats that moor in the harbour.

This week Gabby and I helped out down on the malecón with the literature display stand.

And given that it was such a hot day, when the coquero (Coconut guy) rode past on his bike, we happily treated ourselves to a 40c fresh coconut each for refreshment.

Later in the week it was Porl and Mel's turn to man the stand.  Here they are with a sister and her nephew who were part of a group of about 30 brothers and sisters visiting from Masaya.  The group spent the morning with us visiting local homes to share the good news from the Bible and then after an afternoon at the beach, swimming and relaxing, they once again boarded their bus and headed home.

 We had other visitors turn up this week too.  And just to show that it's a small world, it turns out that we know James' and his son Hemi's family who live in Kaitaia, about an hour from where we used to be in Kerikeri.

James and Hemi have been serving where the need is great in an English group in Mexico and they have carried around with them their All Blacks rugby shirts just in case they got to watch a game some time during their stay.  They were heading back to Australia where they live and hadn't got to use them even once, so you can imagine how excited they were when we said that that night we were going to watch what would be one of the biggest games of the year - NZ vs South Africa in the 4 nations championship.

Out came the shirts and off we set to one of the local restaurants that had arranged to show the game.

It was set to show at 7pm and as we waited for the game to begin Porl told Hemi that the beer mats were actually designed to be worn on the head.

 

Hemi of course, trusting child that he is, took Porl at his word and they both happily sat there for half an hour or so in their rather unusual headwear.

 

7 o'clock came and went and the restaurant owner apologized saying that he was having some technical difficulties.  Finally at about 7.30 he told us that the technical difficulties involved his 'source' not having loaded the game on to youtube for him to stream.  Rather than have us sitting their twiddling our thumbs he loaded up another game, Auckland vs Wellington.

That was kind of him but not quite what we'd come for.

 The poor guy kept trying to find the real game but to no avail, in the end we watched a few minutes of highlights but it just wasn't the same as seeing the game :(

In fact the highlight of the evening was an enormous bug that Kieran found as we were leaving.

This week was also a sad one because it was the end of Kieran's stay with us in Nicaragua.  The day before he left we went out for a goodbye breakfast at Gato Negro.

Here we are playing a game of Rummycub over breakfast, as you do.

Later that day, after Kieran had sorted out some odds and ends and got pretty much packed up and ready to go we decided to replay our mountain climbing adventure up to the Jesus statue. You may remember after the last one we had a home invasion and had our phone and camera stolen, so we had no pictures to show for the adventure.

The normal way to get to the Jesus statue is to stay on the road and head to the right in the picture below.  The road conveniently wends its way up the hill right to the statue.  But that's all a little ho-hum and we prefered to make an adventure of it.

... so we headed down the beach and went left.

Here's Kieran and young Ben who came with us.

 We went past some very interesting rock formations, something you never get to see on the road route.

We got to look back across the harbour into San Juan, a view that also wouldn't have been possible had we gone the road way.

 

We found some cute little bays ...

 

We got to see some cacti growing on the hillside ...

And then the best bit of all, we got to climb up some very interesting, rickety, tumbledown stairs.

The first bit seemed like normal, regular stairs ....

But halfway up you find out that the first half is not really connected to the second half and that's where things get a little more interesting, then you have to climb up the outside of the stairs to get to the next part.

The first time we came this way, after reaching the top of the stairs there was a kind of a path through the bush, this time it was rather overgrown.  Much more interesting :)

Eventually you get to see the path again ...

Then we popped out on a private road with some private estates and made our way up the hill, past some banks with lovely green moss ...

... and finally after a little more bush bashing we popped out right behind the Jesus statue.

There are some lovely views there out over another bay.

And then we found ourselves on the regular road that everyone else takes ...

 And out we went past the usually gun toting guard who on this day seemed unarmed and fairly friendly.

 Once back on the road we went to the regular lookout which has a spectacular view back over San Juan.

And here's one for the midgets, San Juan with a tiny town filter - loving your camera thanks Dio!

A well deserved few chips and an aloe drink got the energy levels back up ......

  and then all that was left was the descent, down the road to the beach for a dip.

That night, being Kieran's last we had a little farewell  ....

And then, Porl, being the lovely Dad that he is got up bright and early to make Kieran a farewell brekky.

El Salvador

I hope you have a minute or two, this is a whole 'nother country so the post is a biggie!!

This year's 'God's Word is Truth' English convention was to be held in El Salvador so off we set.  The brothers in El Salvador had kindly arranged accommodation for us with a family there so we just had to find our way to San Salvador.  This was going to involve a pretty long trip across three countries and a couple of buses but we were up for it.

The first bus!  San Juan to Managua.

Goodness if we look this wasted at the beginning of the trip, how are we going to look at the end? lol

Leaving San Juan we took a shuttle bus very early in the morning!

There were a couple of fellow travelers heading in the same direction.

We arrived in Managua at one bus depot but of course that wasn't the depot that our next bus was to leave from so we had to take a taxi to the Tica Bus depot.

To save on taxi fare we all squeezed into one taxi.

After waiting for a couple of hours we got on our Tica bus that would take us all the way to San Salvador.  Along the way we met up with another witness couple who had been travelling around Central America (they just came up from Panama) and who were also heading to the District Convention.

There were a few stops along the way as we crossed borders to get our passports etc checked.

This lady had obviously been very busy frying up banana chips the night before, all ready for a nice big bus of hungry tourists.

A couple of countries and about 16 hours later we arrived in San Salvador.  The bus arrived a couple of hours later than scheduled and we had no way of contacting our hosts as we hadn't had a chance to get a sim card for El Salvador.  It was 11pm and we were thinking we might need to spend the night on the streets lol.  But then Roberto and his lovely son Giovanni turned up.  They were so lovely and had been going backwards and forwards between the two possible bus stations that we would arrive at waiting for us to get there.  Chase was with them too as he had arrived on a different bus to us, having travelled down with the rest of the congregation.

Giovanni and Roberto took us home and fed us with some delicious little tacos.

Getting some food into him reinvigorated Porl and he was ready to party!

The next day Roberto and Giovanni took us to a very impressive shopping mall.

And we went up to see the Boquerón (Big Mouth) Crater in the San Salvador Volcano, also known as Quetzealtepec.

We found a cute little Kingdom Hall on the way up. 

But there was no one around.

Giovanni made a couple of calls to arrange to meet his sisters and their children up at Boqueton.

We went past some children selling berries by the side of the road so I bought a pot to try.  They're a bit like the wild strawberries that we have in NZ but bigger.

We checked out the first lookout while we were waiting for the others ...

Chase escaped from Police custody.

And then we went to the volcano museum that was very interesting ..

They had some amazing old photos.

It also had a box of dress-ups!

... that was fun.

And some very light rocks.

It turns out that El Salvador and Nicaragua have the same national bird, 

they've just given it a different name.

We caught up with everyone ....

... and then it was time to climb up to the look out to see El Boquetón.

It wasn't too far but some parts were pretty steep.

But the view was worth the climb!

At the top we met some others brothers and sisters who had come from Guatemala to attend the English District Convention.

Then it was time to head back down the hill ...

We stopped for coffee on the way down at one of the local restaurants which had an awesome view back over San Salvador.

The coffee and cakes were pretty awesome too!

It was a beautiful building with an unusual feature ceiling made of bricks that I thought my Dad would like.

That evening we met up with some of the young brothers from San Salvador and the boys had a game of soccer.  They managed to hold themselves back from tackling anyone to the ground which was good.

I kept telling Porl before he went on, soccer Paul, not rugby, soccer!

No, don't worry Porl didn't get caught up in the game and forget, this poor bro twisted his ankle but did a pretty good job on it, we heard later that he was going to be off that foot for 6 weeks.

When we got home we had a lovely surprise waiting for us ...

Our lovely sister Elba had made us homemade pupusas :)  Yum!

Obviously those things that we had eaten a couple of times in Rivas, Nicaragua that may have been called pupusas were not really pupusas.  These were the real deal!

A couple of friends came over so of course it was photo time!

And then it was time for our three day convention to begin ...

Some sisters came in their traditional El Salvadorean dress and kindly had a photo with us.

Everyone wanted a picture with the sign in the background,

so we shared it lol ...

That night we had dinner with a lovely family from Giovanni's congregation.

And Kieran serenaded the girls, I mean, played the guitar for everyone.  :)

Everyone enjoyed it.  (the girls especially ;) )  Just kidding!  

On the Saturday we did a detour on the way home because la familia Cruz (the Cruz family who we were staying with) wanted us to meet their congregation.

First time I've ever done a convention and a meeting in one day! Ayayay!  

We met some lovely brothers and sisters.

They must have heard that Porl was coming as they had a chair all ready for him.

For those of you who can't quite make it out, it says 'Necesidades Especiales' or 'Special Needs'.

Porl thought he should take one home for his friend Pawl Hill.  Just kidding Pawl! :)

Here's Roberto and Elba, their hospitality and care of us was amazing,

it really was like staying with family !!!

Then it was off for another game of soccer.

And on Sunday night we all had Maccas.  Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves although

Chase had accidently superglued his finger up his nostril which made for some unfortunate photos.

We had made plans to stay a few extra days in El Salvador after the convention seeing as we had travelled all that way but when we asked our lovely host family for directions to the bus stop they held their hands out and told us that there was a reason that none of them had wedding rings anymore.  

 Apparently it's a pretty rare thing to catch a bus in San Salvador and not to be robbed.  All of them had been robbed a number of times and they wouldn't hear of us travelling for an hour or so out to the coast where we had booked a hosted.  So we chipped in for the fuel and Giovanni kindly took us in his taxi.

... all the way to El Tunco

The hostel was just a few meters away from the beach ...

So we headed straight down and ...

yes! there were waves

To the left, there were waves at El Boquerón (The Big Mouth)

... people fishing

some local vegetation ...

... more waves

And to the right down at Sunzal ....

there were more waves

 So after a quick fruit juice.

Porl hired a board and hit the waves at El Boquerón.

While I took some pics.

The waves were to drop over the next few days but Porl still had some good sessions and got some chocolate barrels.  I even went out one small day and had a go on Porl's board for fun.  I obviously wasn't doing that well because a local boy came over and lent me his board which was a lot bigger and easier to catch waves on.  So finally, thanks to him, I even stood up on one :)  Very unprofessionally I'm sure but it was fun.

One of the days we headed into the nearby town of La Libertad.

There were some very pretty crabs which I fancied cooking up but as I saw them just as we arrived I had to leave them and make do with just imagining the flavour, mmmmm I love crab!

This was funny enough as we came across it from this direction, then when you get further on and look back it turns out that it's a fountain!

We asked in one of the shops where the local kingdom hall was and instead of getting information we got taken across the road to meet a young brother who let us know that there wouldn't be any meetings before we left as their congregation was heading off for the weekend to their convention in San Salvador.

He then took us to another stall to meet another brother and we made arrangements to meet the local brothers and sisters to spend a morning witnessing with them which we did on the Friday morning.  The territory was pretty steep but the people were friendly and we enjoyed meeting lots of new brothers and sisters.

We had lunch in town and saw the sights.

We went back to the malecón and watched some boogie boarders play chicken with the pier.

Then we walked to the other end to check out Punta Roca.

Kieran caught a wave on the way.

We took a shortcut through a jungly cemetery ...

And found the Kingdom Hall.

Past a couple of rather groovy Latin American buses.

Then we headed back to the hostel where we tried to get an artistic shot of Kieran's beard to post on instagram but we couldn't quite get it like we'd imagined it.

We had lunch back in the little town of El Tunco, which incidentally is one of the many Spanish words for pig, and we were serenade by a mariachi band who weren't that great and were more worried about the colour of our money before they sang anything.

The boys headed out for one last wave and we were treated to another beautiful sunset.

The Giovanni and Leyla turned up to take us to his sister's holiday home for the night.  

We thought we were just going for a visit but they had arranged accommodation for us all so we had a lovely evening with the three families and spent the night at San Blas a private estate with private homes but shared amenities and beach access, rather posh!

As well as eating and drinking the evening included an impromptu game of soccer on the lawn ...

A walk to the beach where we found some crabs ...

And a game of touch rugby ...  as you do ....

Unfortunately there were no lights down there so the only pictures of the rugby that are in focus enough to show anything are the one where we're all stopped waiting for someone to chase the ball down.

The next morning we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast amongst the beautiful tropical flowers and beneath the coconut palms.

Then we received a visit from a cute little owl who just about knocked himself out flying into the window, poor thing :(

We were admiring the amount of coconuts on the palms and wondering if the boys could remember how to climb the palms as they had done when we lived in Tonga so that we could all have a fresh coconut juice to go with our breakfast.

They all had a go but it was harder than it looked.  In the end the family asked the friendly groundsman and he kindly climbed up just using a rag between his feet.  He made it look super easy.

While he was up there he did a bit of tree maintenance ...

... but most importantly he sent down plenty of coconuts for us all to drink.

Then we set off to spend some time at the pool and the beach ...

Not too shabby aye!

We had a muscle competition, I cant divulge who won so I'll let you decide, I know why my favourite is :)

It was a glorious day at the beach.

And there were a few waves, not too big but fun and every now and then a big set would come through.

Then it was back to the pool!  Ah it's a hard life but someone has to do it ;)

Obviously all this relaxation was very tiring!

Giovanni and Leyla showed us how to recover.

Then it was time to head back to San Salvador to spend our last night with the lovely Cruz family.

We had wanted to take a taxi for our 430am bus home but Giovanni as usual wouldn't hear of it and personally dropped us off again (in his pyjamas I might add) :)

The El Savadorian countryside sped by .....

and after many hours in the bus we found ourselves back in Nicaragua.

At the border we met a friendly three legged-dog ...

Who on closer inspection not only had one leg missing but also had one munted foot, pobrecito and he also had a one legged-man, or was it the other way around?

 We were all looking forward to getting back to San Juan and having a break from travelling but the buses weren't going to connect so we were going to have to spend a night at the bus depot in Rivas.

But finally we were back in San Juan after a great Salvadoreña adventure!