I'll start this weeks blog off with a few random witnessing shots etc from Rivas and San Juan and then I'll let you know about our 3 day trip to the island of Ometepe.

A humble local home, complete with a mobile phone dish.

The bike shop boys.

Porl thought his Mum would like this shot of the lady in curlers downtown in Rivas.

Yorlenis and I, the dogs wanted to join in on the study that day.

July 4th was our 26th wedding anniversary and we had a lovely meal at a local restaurant Colibrí - which means humming bird.

Yorlenis on the right is the top chef there and Laura on the left, the kitchen assistant, is another lovely girl that I study with.

Then came the day for our Ometepe trip.

Ometepe is an island that was formed by two volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicaragua, the name comes from the Nahuatl words, ome (two) and tepetl (mountain).  It has an area of 276km2 and is the largest volcanic island inside a freshwater lake in the world.

The two volcanoes are called Concepción and Maderas.

Most of us went on the bus to San Jorge and from there we took the ferry (about an hours trip on the bus and another hour on the ferry)

The bus was aptly named :).

Some of the boys took bikes, Paul Danger Henry would end up wishing he didn't as not far into the trip it broke down and he spent half of his time over there getting it sorted :(

Here we all are waiting for the ferry at San Jorge.

Obviously the no parking sign doesnt apply to the icecream man.

Chase was obviously excited about the trip :)

For those who have been keeping up with the blog you may remember me mentioning a lovely lady called Arlene that I study with.  She is from America but lives in a rather remote location called Cardenas - she is an older lady but travels in to the meetings on the crowded chicken buses to our meetings twice a week (about a 5 hour round trip) - such a legend.

Anyway, speaking of legends these girls all live in the same town as Arlene.  The live in a house that costs them $50 per month, we havent seen it yet but you can imagine what kind of a house it would be.  They have no refrigerator and there are so many bugs, snakes and scorpions that they live in tents inside their house. They have to haul their water up from a deep well in the back garden, not easy! We hope to visit them one day soon and if so Ill post some pics but let me tell you, these girls do it hard and theyre loving it!  

Boys being boys we werent even out of the harbour before they needed a snack, this man was selling a kind of puffed wheat square covered I think in malt.  Not my favourite but interesting anyways.

Well I still have much to share about Ometepe but thats going to have to wait.  Ive run out of time to post and we are off on our next adventure to the Carribean Coast of Nicaragua.  We are going to visit two English congregations where Porl is going to give a public talk in each.  The first place is called Bluefields, acceccible only by boat,  and then we are heading to Pearl Lagoon.  That side of Nicaragua was settled by the English instead of the Spanish so the people speak an

English Creole and it is said to be like the Jamaica of Nicaragua.  We will be away for two weeks but I promise to catch up with the blog when we get back.

!Hasta la vista!

A little bit of surf

For the surfers out there here's a few shots taken at a beach called Hermosa, it was a pretty small day but we still had fun.

Bradley, one of the young ones in the congregation came with us.  He was born in England to an English mum and a Nicaraguan Dad but has lived his whole life, apart from those first few weeks, in Nicaragua, but he has such a strong English accent, it's sooo cute.

Paul Danger Henry gave Lilly some surf lessons that started out well ...

But didn't end quite so prettily ....

Ah well, the road to the top 'aint easy!

The boys had a bit of fun on the waves, whether on boards ....  

(Paul Hunter)

Paul Danger Henry

Damo Mauch

Porl (still got it) Hunter  :)

or just body surfing (Kieran & Ben)

As well as our crew there was a young local boy going hard out and pulling off some good moves,

On the way home the boys had some motorbike troubles that were going to become pretty routine for them over the next few of weeks :(

Still in the end everyone got home safe and sound, ready for more San Juan del Sur adventures.

Hipico - The horse festival in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua 2013

Well I'm a bit behind in the blogging business, there's been heaps going on so I'll try to do a bit of a catch up over the next few days.  This blog is pretty much all about horses, not last weekend but the one before they had the 'Hipico' or horse festival and it was awesome.  I didn't actually realize it was on but I as was heading off on my bike to a girl's night at Raquel's, suddenly there was all this noise and the street was filled with dancing horses of all varieties, some of them were huge and extremely well bred, decked out in amazing saddlery, others were work horses controlled by nothing more a frayed rope bridle and decked out with just a few coloured tassels, it really was something to see.

             









I quickly went back home to get Porl and my camera and we spent the next hour or two wandering the streets with the horses and lots of lovely loud latin music.  The rider's were downing copious amounts of beer (beer actually seems to be the recurring theme of most of the festivals here, 'religious' or otherwise) and everyone was in a very festive mood.  As the riders circled the town riding down the streets the restaurant owners would bring them out beer, apparently some were even giving it to the horses but I didn't see that.

The horses were amazingly clever and were doing all sorts of high steps, side steps and dance steps to the music, it was fantastic!  Anyway here's a few pics, and a couple of short clips of the event.

Some horses had their moments ....

Even some very young riders were involved ....

Some were real showmen .....

Some were very excited to be there ...

Some just calmly went about their business ....

Others made the most of the free beer ...

While the local street sellers made the most of all the visitors.

This little brown horse (with the yellow rope) was so clever, it rode quite a way up the street backwards in a straight line, not easy for a horse I'd imagine!

And watch the front feet of this black horse ...

There were also a couple of stages set up in town.  A smaller one with a traditional mariachi band on it and a massive one with a young band playing lots of great latin dance music, merengue, salsa etc.

It's amazing how this town can put on events just like that, they seem very well organized and very frequent.  Unfortunately they often attract an unsavory element of humanity to town so when it started getting dark we headed home and left them to it.