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.