World Cruise - Day 10 - Jan 22 - San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

I thought I would give Krissie an opportunity to make the first entry in this blog entry.  We went horseback riding today on the beach in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua.  Here is what Krissie said about the experience:

“It was life altering.  My life will never be the same after that.  It was just so freeing to be able to run at full speed with the horses.  I have never done that in my life.  When the horses started to canter, at first I was worried that it was going to be bouncy and scary, like a carnival ride.  Then I just let go.  It was incredible running along the beach, running in the ocean.  All I could do was thank God for that experience, it was so wonderful and amazing.”

So Krissie really liked it.  I can sum up my day in four words.  Best shore excursion ever. 

Here are some of our pics.  Note that I am downsizing the pics to a smaller size, so the resolution won’t be as great as before, but this way I can get everything into one blog entry.  I will keep the best photos at a larger size, but reducing about 80% of them to a smaller size:

We tendered into the port of San Juan Del Sur.  I thought I would like Costa Rica over Nicaragua, but both Krissie and I actually liked Nicaragua better.  Nicaragua is less well developed, but the port town was way more interesting and the sites were more interesting.  Krissie said she would like to come back here someday with our kids.

San Juan Del Sur is an actual fishing village and there were several fishing boats going out as we arrived at the port.

When we got off the boat, there was a local band entertaining the visitors on the pier.

The shoreline is dotted with houses and scores of fishing boats parked in the harbor bay area.

We got picked up at the port by Blue (co-owner of Rancho Chilamate with her husband, Jeremy—she is female, her real name is Heather), who gave us a ride in her pickup truck.  We went along with Dennis and Roberta from Houston on our tour for the day.  Blue picked up several passengers along the way.  She started out with two locals in the back of her truck in town, then picked up more along the way.  By the time we arrived at their ranch, she had picked up a total of 7 total extra passengers, all riding in the bed of the truck.  We saw this ox driven cart along the way.

Using animals is pretty common around here.  People ride horses for transportation and use oxen and cattle to pull carts.  You have to be pretty well off to own a motorcycle and very well off to own a car or truck.

We arrived at Rancho Chilamate just south of town.  They have a baseball field that they developed at the front of the property and there was a baseball game going on there today (Blue and Jeremy are sponsors of one of the teams).

Blue got us all outfitted with cowboy boots, hats and bandanas.  We got to meet their two dogs and two parrots.  The dogs accompanied us out to the barn.

The dog by Krissie could jump vertically about 3 feet in the air with all legs, kinda like a little springboard, except he’s such a large dog.

The dogs made their way back to the house, we made our way out to the barn.

Krissie looks like a real cowgirl!

There were lots of sights on our 4 mile ride to the beach, including this mango tree.

There was a cute little girl at one of the houses along the way who came out to greet us.

She has a really cute smile.  Today is Sunday, so she’s all dressed up.  Blue has given her photos of herself, so she really likes getting her picture taken.

We rode through several river beds along the way.

It was a nice trail along the way to the beach, although still very rugged.

There were several small houses like this along the way during our ride.

When we got to the ocean, there were several local teenage boys who had made a raft in the river (which feeds into the ocean) and were trying to float on it, then stand up on it.

I like this photo, I caught it as it tipped over and you can see how they lashed it together with wood and styrofoam.  Basically discarded trash made into a raft.

Here we are at the beach, getting ready for our ride down by the water.

Blue took a lot of photos on her camera that she will be posting on Facebook in a few days (I will include the link when I get it), this is one she took of me and Krissie with my camera.

The photo above is my favorite photo of the day.  Although we haven’t yet seen Blue’s photos, so hopefully one or two will turn out of us galloping on the beach.

As we got to the beach, we went straight down to the shore, then left turn and went charging down the beach.  My horse was not used to running in the water, so she kept veering left, away from the water.  I shortened up the reigns on her, then had to pull hard right to keep her straight on the beach.  As I was leaning right, the saddle started to slip.  And, as it started to slip, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to hold it, so I brought my horse to a quick stop.  By the time I got her stopped (from a full gallop), the saddle was leaning halfway down on the right side.  I didn’t fall, but if I would have been going another 5 seconds or so, it would have been pretty hard to stay on the horse.  Good thing it was me and not someone else.  Jeremy mentioned that he always had a rule to check tack when you get to the beach, but he had let us go, since we were so anxious to run.  From now on, he will enforce the check tack rule.

So we spent after taking a break for refreshments, we spent close to an hour tearing up and down the beach.  I had the fastest horse other than Jeremy’s (and he wasn’t riding the beach), so I could sprint past the others.  However, my horse had never run in the water before.  I didn’t know that and I was able to get her to do it after several tries, along with the other horses.

Krissie was just having the time of her life riding today.  She had never cantered/galloped before, so this was a first for her.  And once she got the hang of it, she was excellent, keeping up with both me and Dennis.  She was miles of smiles all afternoon.  She wants to buy a horse now.

Then we took a completely different way back, through a forest area that went through several streams and then up through a mountain meadow.

The horses were all very sure footed in spite of rocky and slippery terrain.

We tended to walk down into the streams, then cantered out and up the hill on the other side.

Krissie was holding her own.  This was not a trail ride like she had done before, we were all running at various gaits throughout the day.

We saw some howler monkeys up in the tree canopy.

I got a good shot of this one, he’s pretty big.

For those of you who watched Survivor Nicaragua, it was shot here in the same location as the beach where we rode.  This sign was at the entrance to where the train back to the ranch comes off the beach.  The TV show had not taken the sign after they left, so Blue took it back to the ranch.

This is a pic of Jeremy.  Note the weapon on his thigh.  The locals started a rumor that he was in Vietnam and had apparently killed a man or two.  Not true, but he just lets the rumor go, since they all treat him with respect.  He and Blue are both from Vancouver, Canada and are expats here in Nicaragua.  He used to be a builder in Vancouver and got out about 5 years ago before the industry tanked.

Blue poured shots of local rum for those who were interested.

Jeremy and Heather (Blue) in their kitchen at their home.

They had two very cool parrots that were talking to us when we returned.  Apparently they are normally out all day Sunday and they were anxious for us to return from our ride.

One parrot could fly, the other one could not, due to having a broken wing in the past.

The parrot that could fly flew to my hand and the other parrot made a chatter to be picked up, so Krissie went and picked her up as well.

The bananas were from their garden, we got to try them.  Krissie is trying some of the local beer.

Blue had this really nice duster that we asked her to put on.  She said that when she wears it at the airports, she often gets an upgrade in her seat.

This table is full of a lot of cool stuff, including a cow’s hoof made into a flask.

This is the view of their home from the back.

This is the guy who watches the entrance to their property.  Note the weapon.

This road was funded to be built by the World Bank, but apparently the contractor ran out of money, so they stopped right in the middle of the project.  One side is completed, the other side is not.

This is the view from the restaurant where we at lunch back in San Juan Del Sur.

Krissie had white snapper.  Yes, that is a fish head.

Back onboard, we are getting ready for 5 days at sea before arriving in San Diego.  I have several comments on the blog that I will do my best to get to tomorrow.  Hopefully everything worked out OK with the smaller pics in this blog entry.  I kept three at the “normal” size just to see the difference.

Patti and Julie mentioned that in my blog entries yesterday, the dog pic is not rotated properly?  I rechecked the e-mail and it is rotated properly there, so not sure how/why it ended up wrong on the blog.  I could go in and change it manually, but I’m limited in the number of Internet minutes I have onboard, so the blog entries are all composed offline and sent as an e-mail.  Maybe I will check out the blog at an Internet café in San Diego and can update everything.  I will eventually update all of the photos when I get home with the bigger high res photos, so if something is too small right now, rest assured that it will all eventually be supersized.