Yesterday morning the water taxi picked us up and 0730. We picked up Mike and the three of us went out to breakfast at an American style coffee house/café/bookstore. Mike ordered French toast and it may very well be the best French toast we have ever had in our lives. It was dipped in vanilla custard instead of the usual milk and eggs and topped with apple slices sautéed in a delicious brown sugar and butter sauce. To die for good.

Then we walked around town a little more, checking out a few shops. Unfortunately, Mike hadn’t completed his paper, so we had to cut sightseeing short. It was OK though, downtown is small, and we were pretty sure we had seen most of it when we turned around and headed back to the hotel. Something that we found particularly amusing was an ox drawn cart was parallel parked in front of a small store between two cars.

At the hotel, Mike went to work on his paper and Eric got on our website to load blogs. Grrr”¦ we’d been hacked again. We hate it when that happens. So, Eric worked on unhacking us instead. He was unsuccessful.

Mike left for the airport at noon, taking a taxi all the way to Managua. We saw him off, then walked down to the waterfront for lunch. Unfortunately, we picked seats a tad too close to the beach. The wind was again super strong and consistently blew a thin layer of sand onto our table (and food and drinks) throughout the meal.

After lunch, we treated ourselves to a visit to the local spa. The spa is located on the grounds of a hotel at the very top of the big hill. It was definitely quite the climb to get up there, and again we were huffing and puffing when we arrived at the hotel. We were taken aback when we saw three monkeys in a large cage, two of the three being a mama and baby. We stopped to watch the monkeys and read the sign. It looks like there is an animal sanctuary and free veterinary clinic on the hotel grounds somewhere. Locals bring in sick, abused and/or abandoned animals. The sign said that most of the wild animals are returned to the wild, but that these could not be for some reason. The monkeys are adorable and so fun to watch. They climbed and swung all over the walls, ceiling and toys in the cage, entertaining themselves and us. Their tails are pretty incredible. The monkeys use their tails almost like a third hand, grabbing on to things with it and pulling it to them, or hanging off a ledge solely holding on with their tail. At one point the baby nursed, which was really cute to watch.

At the spa, Eric got a massage and Christi got a facial. We met some cruisers there and wound up talking with them for a couple hours. They were going south and we were going north, so we gave one another the low down on what to see/do/expect at the various stops along the way. They also told us that the wind speed has been “mild” in only the 30’s. A couple weeks before, winds were over 100 knots. They themselves had been unable to measure it because their wind meter broke when the wind got to the high 80’s! Oy vey! We had so much fun talking with them that we lost track of time. When we looked at the clock, we were aghast. Oh no, the sun was setting! The twilight was beautiful, but sadly, we couldn’t enjoy it.

We more or less ran all the way down the mountain and over to the water taxi stand, praying that the water taxi driver hadn’t left for the day. We were so relieved when we saw him. He said he had stuck around longer than normal to wait for us, knowing we needed a ride back. He is such a nice guy. Everyone we have met has been so nice.

When we got back to Kosmos, we checked the weather and saw the forecast was phenomenally good. We wanted to stay in San Juan del Sur for several more days, but we knew we needed to move with the weather. If we didn’t leave with this weather window, we could very well get stuck for a couple of weeks waiting on another one. The ideal window is expected to last for 5 days, which would get us past the dreaded Gulf of Tehuantepec and into southern Mexico. We were sad about missing El Salvador and Guatemala, but the weather was just too good to not keep going. We keep telling ourselves that it is OK to zoom through this part of the world because it is so easy for us to come back here again in the future.

Today we headed into shore at 0800. When we climbed into the water taxi, we saw that there was a small cruise ship anchored in the bay. We had all our check out paperwork with us, intending to visit the Immigration Officer this evening. We went by the Port Captain’s office, who told us we needed to go to Immigration first. He told us that today she hadn’t gone to the border because she needed to be here to check the cruise ship passengers in and out. All the cruise ship passengers had been checked in, and she was at her house until it was time to check the passengers back out. Eric walked over to her house while Christi visited with the Port Captain.

Check out was more or less the same as check in. Eric waited in her living room as she called her office and they processed the paperwork together over the phone. It again took a long time. Christi had a lovely visit with the Port Captain, chatting about our respective families and travels. The Port Captain is trying to learn English, so now and again he would say a phrase in English and be incredibly proud of himself. And sometimes Christi would not be able to finish what she was trying to say because she didn’t know the necessary words, but he seemed to be able to understand her over all.

We met at the American cafe for breakfast. We absolutely needed to order that awesome French toast dish for ourselves! Then we went back to Ralph’s hotel to use the internet. Today Eric managed to find the problem and fix the hack. Yay! Ralph had also arranged for a reporter from the local weekly newspaper to meet us at the hotel for an interview. There is a big enough ex-pat community in San Juan del Sur that the paper is printed in both English and Spanish. It was exciting to be interviewed. We felt important.

We went to lunch with Ralph and Renda at yet another restaurant on the beach. Today we got fresh fish with jalapeno sauce. We were wondering if it would be a lightly spicy sauce, like Costa Rica, or a fiery sauce, like in Mexico. It was something in the middle. It was similar to the Costa Rican sauce in that it was a cream sauce with jalapenos, but they used much hotter peppers than in Costa Rica. They also had a lot of onions cooked into the sauce here, whereas the sauce in Costa Rica had no onion at all. We loved it. We’d say on the whole, the local Nicaraguan food is very similar to the Costa Rican food.

After lunch, we tried to book an ATV tour for the afternoon. They weren’t running a tour today, but we could go tomorrow morning. We looked at each other. We really should leave first thing in the morning”¦ but the tour sounded really fun”¦ so we booked it. The tour was supposed to end at 1300, and we could pull out by 1330 as long as we got everything ready to go tonight. We headed back to Kosmos, intending to get her completely ready for sea. Of course, we didn’t. We are such procrastinators.

Our downstairs air conditioner appears to have a clog in the sea water intake and it stopped working. Oh, and while we’re talking about how the boat is performing, we’ll mention something we find interesting. Since we have gotten into the cold water of the Pacific, we have noticed there is often condensation on the sea strainers, generator and water maker.