We did not have to get up so early for todays tour in Nicargua but I did anyway and went around the ship getting photos of the artwork on each floor by the elevators. The front is of fish and turtles and underwater creatures. The middle section is of gems and the back is paintings of modes of transportation, at lot of them boats and ships of different sizes.
After a lovely breakfast at O’Sheehan’s again, only this time it was quiet and time to talk to the staff. After breakfast we went outside to say hi to Nicaragua and saw dolphins and a whale in the distance. We were very excited as this was our second sighting of dolphins and first for whales on this cruise. we entered they and saw a very large volcano in the distance and wondered if this ws the one that had erupted just a month earlier.
The port of Corinto is lovely outside the port with lots of colourful little fishing boats in the water by their villages. Inside the port there are shipping containers and not much else. although they were setting up for us a wonderful reception, the first we had had of its kind. 
We went back to our room and were entertained by the dancers and bands on the dock. It was the best welcome we had received to date at any port. Nicaragua was starting out very well.
They were very organized on the dock and they gave us a bag with maps and information about Nicaragua. We were excited to receive this free gift as it was the first free things we had received at any of the ports. It was very nice.
Our tour guide was Juan? and our driver was ? We left the port and drove through the little village which was very clean and although poor was well cared for. He gave us lots of information about Nicaragua and he tested us at the end of the tour to make sure that we were familiar with his country. A very nice young man and a very nice driver too.
Our 3 and a half hour tour started in El Viejo, "the Old man", with the oldest cathedral in the country and it was beautiful. There was a mass going on and so I did not want to just walk around taking photos like the obviously non Catholics, so I took a few inside and went outside to see the grounds and the exterior of the church.
There were some lovely wall plaques and crosses on the building and some teens in the church youth group selling popcorn and drinks to raise money for the poor children of the poorer sections of town. I tried to talk with them and they picked the teen who spoke the best English and pushed her forward to converse with me. She did pretty well. Her English was way better than my Spanish . I bought two popcorn and gave one to a young girl out front for lighting a candle for me inside the church. It was pretty good popcorn.
We tourists all piled back onto the bus and were on our way to Chinandega. It was not too long a drive and our tour guide kept us well informed as to what we were seeing. Whether it was sugar cane fields on the right, coffee on the left or volcanoes not currently erupting straight ahead.
The small town of Chinendega had the second church we were visiting and also folklore dances out side with children all dressed up in their traditional outfits dancing away in the heat of the morning. We watched from the shade of the trees and then gave them a little bit of money for their performance which was very nice.
The church was very different from the old man church we had seen earlier. It had no mass going on so we could actually take a look around inside, it was brighter inside but not as cozy feeling as the previous church. Lovely all the same.
There were young children selling packages of gum and they had even smaller children with them also selling packages of gum. I felt bad for them but did not buy any gum from them. I did put some money into the donation box and said some prayers for my family and the children selling gum. I wondered if the little ones they older children were holding hands with were really their little brothers and sisters or just random kids off the street. Paris and Slum Dog Millionaire had educated us in so many ways that we were now sceptical of these sorts of things.
After our quick and very crowded shopping spree to get souvenirs at the little market across the street from the church, we all piled back onto the bus and headed back to the ship. The countryside is quite dry and desolate in places but very pretty all the same. Our tour guide was very proud of his country and it showed in all the things that he told us about it and the people and the government programs and the history. some the the Americans were I believe surprised at their roles in the countries past, never having heard these things before about the corruption and greed of the U.S. government and the U.S. multi national companies taking advantage of smaller weaker countries.
We headed back to the ship and at one point the bus pulled over and who ever wanted to could get up and get off and walk back to the bridge we had just passed to get photos of the volcanoes could so quite a few of us did. of course there was a cloud in the way but that was OK ist was a nicaraguan cloud.
We made it back in plenty of time and had a nice relaxing afternoon. I like short tours. We went to the customer service desk and wrote up a report about Agness Hebbert, the waitress who had been yelled at by the unreasonably irate passenger. We simply told them about how she did such a good job taking care of an unsatisfiable passenger and that she did nothing wrong.
After we had done our duty as we saw it righting wrongs in an unjust world, I realized that I had forgotten to sprinkle Mom and Dad on our tour, so I did then at the end of the ship into the harbour. I did not think that they would mind. They were in Nicaragua.
As we waited for other tours to come back I noticed that they were again practising with the tender boats. Maybe they were training new people of just re-certifying the already trained crew to make sure that they were current. We wondered which ports we would be tendered out at. We could have found out but we were really not that curious and would rather be surprised.
We uploaded photos and organized our shots to get them ready to put onto facebook.
Took some nice photos of us leaving the harbour. There were some fishermen in small boats and a statue of, I believe, the first president of Nicaragua, at the harbours entrance right beside the light house. A very picturesque departure.
We looked for whales again once we were out of the harbour and back into the Pacific.
We had dinner with Gerry, (Geraldine) at Magenta’s. She was a solo traveller and enjoyed telling us all about the ins and outs of being a solo traveller. Interesting lady. Back to our room to relax and watch a movie, the Equalizer 2. We decided the we loved Nicaragua.
When we got back to our room after dinner we could not find our Towel animal. We went and got Vignesh, our attendant, and he showed us where he had placed him.... flying off of our air-conditioning vent in the ceiling - Burt the bat.. we loved him. Vignesh is trying all kinds of new things for us as we are saving all of our towel animals and so he is having fun too, seeing them all at the same time in one place.
No comments:
Post a Comment