Well here we are with internet again, although it is borrowed from the man upstairs who kindly lets Kyle share his wifi and pay half the bill.  I'm not sure if he'll be happy to carry the deal on when Kyle leaves on Wednesday so we'll enjoy it while it lasts at least :)

I'm hoping to arrange some teaching work online now that we're a bit more settled, so I'll probably try to arrange our own connection soon.


So what's been going on in Nica lately?

Let's start with a couple of older shots ....

The view over San Juan del Sur ...  from the south

The boys witnessing, Blake Austin Oliver, Jovani Boubion & Chase

...  and a shot of San Juan from the north

I must also give Chase's cooking skills a mention - with just a few pointers in the right direction he served up a yummy 'pasta chicken' meal the other night - top marks Chase!

Here he is at Mel's house, where we were staying up until last week.  

Speaking of updates about Chase, he has now officially lost both big toenails.  I'm not sure what he did to the second one but it also was hanging by a just a little of skin and today in the surf he finished it off catching it on the board.  Not a pretty sight!

But enough about that little monkey.....   (kidding Chase, just kidding)  .....  As I mentioned before we have a lady (BJ) who attends the meetings here who brings her baby monkey with her - we were with her the night she got her monkey, here's Porl holding it while the lady bought it a babies bottle.  Her name is Suraya.

Suraya usually sits quite quietly in a sling that BJ wears, but this week at the meeting I was sitting next to them and she took a liking to me and came to sit on my knee - she's soooo cute.  Kyle managed to get a shot during the meeting - look at the little cutie!

At the moment there are a group of Mexican brothers and sisters spending a couple of months in San Juan to help with the preaching work.  We had a lovely morning out together the other day, they all cover up and wear hats - I can't believe how many clothes they wear, they must cook in this heat over here.  But they assure me that they're cooler that way and they don't want to burn.  For me, although it's hot here, the sun doesn't have the NZ bite that those gaping holes in the ozone gives us, which is good.

There are lots of barrios in San Juan, some of them quite a way out but the chicken buses are great and although we're still thinking about getting a vehicle, once you know the schedules and routes you can pretty much get anywhere by bus.

The other day we were out at a town called Ostional - another beautiful beach were you can see Costa Rica in the background.

There are two main mobile phone companies here - Claro (red) and Moviestar (blue) and they seem to have a continual competition going to out do each other.  We had to smile when we turned up way out whoop whoop, in the middle of no where, and here each house had its own little claro dish on the roof.

I love the brahman cattle that they have here, they must be favoured because of their ability to live through long dry periods. It's quite strange to be in a place that doesn't ever rain for months and months.  Although it sounds like NZ has been having a bit of that lately - hopefully not for too much longer!

The Memorial of Jesus death went well, there were 198 attendance at the Spanish meeting ....

 and 50 in the English ...

(as always I think of Aunt Jane on memorial night as she always used to call us no matter where we were in the world)

The week of the memorial coincides here in Nicaragua with Semana Santa and San Juan has an influx of about 4 thousand people so the town changed a little for the week   ...

People set up gazebos on the beach, shade in the day, hotel in the night ....

The amount of cars in San Juan increased considerably, so much so that the taxi drivers didn't even both coming into town as they would just end up sitting in a traffic jam and people could walk faster than that.

Lots of big trucks came to town and just in case anyone thought that 'la camioneta' (feminine noun) was too girly, many of them sported a nice pair of 'nads - although this one seems to have 'masculated' the wrong end.

One end of town and part of the beach front was totally shut off from the traffic and it just filled up with street vendors, three discos with stages on the beach, and lots of party goers.

There was lots going on all around town, lots of music and the odd impromptu merimba music session  in the middle of the street.

Of course all that partying, the heat and the alcohol became just a bit too much for some ....

Overall though, the week seemed surprisingly well organized with quite a high police presence.  We did hear however that one person was murdered in San Juan during Semana Santa and some others possibly died due to drowning.  

I had to smile at this congratulatory snippet in the Nicaraguan Dispatch ...

Despite 51 reported deaths last week in highway accidents, murders and drownings, Nicaraguan authorities are calling their Semana Santa security plan a “success” because the traditionally violent week was slightly less so than in years past.

And that was Semana Senta .....

more to come soon - watch this space :)