Visitors

So, to make the transition home a little easier, our friends Becca, Richard, Alli and Adam decided to come down and spend a week touring around Nicaragua with us. We started off by visiting Granada, where we did a tour of the cloud forest on volcano Mombacho and went sight-seeing in the town, the oldest colonial city in the Americas.

Walking around on Mombacho, the volcano overlooking Granada

A barn at a coffee farm on Mombacho

From there, we headed to Managua to take a plane to Big Corn Island off the Eastern Coast of Nicaragua. It was the first time that matt and I had the pleasure to visit the east coast and it was a phenomenal experience (aside from the stomach issues experienced by nearly all). The island was a picture of what Carribean islands must have been before cruise ships and five store resorts made their way ashore. Funnily enough, Nicaragua had one last present in store for us on this trip, and it was a good one for a change. Our hotel plans fell through completely (it was holy week and so I had made reservations; however, the word reservation is a lot less firm in Nicaragua than in the US and when we arrived the rooms were not the ones we had wanted and were not suitable for staying in unless you were of the rodent family). Oddly enough, we had met an American in Grananda who happened to have a house on Corn Island. He was renting it to a group of Italians who were on the island helping to film the Italian version of the TV show Survivor, but they had bailed at the last minute. A quick phone call to him, a cab ride and one local tour guide later, we had ourselves a beachfront house for an amazing price. Not a bad way to see ourselves out of the country.

Our crew, in front of the plane that took us from Managua to Big Corn Island

Corn Island as we were approaching to land

The boys trying to figure out how to string up our hammock

The view from the front porch of our rental house...breathtaking

Richard and Matt...manly as ever

Waiting for the bus to Somoto

Chatting in Somoto

We returned to mainland Nicaragua with our friends and headed up to Somoto to show them the place that we had spent two years of our lives. A few last meals, a goodnight’s sleep and a free truckride later, we were on our way out of town to the airport to make arrangements for them, our animals and ourselves on our way back to the US of A.