Surfin' Safari

It’s so sad (and such a relief) to be finishing our vacation tomorrow. We’ve had a wonderful time, but we’re exhausted! Tomorrow we have to leave at 4:15 a.m. for the airport. It never ends. Today, however, we had a relaxing day. We didn’t leave the house till 10 a.m. We started out at Deininger National Park, which was about 25 minutes from our Villa. The ranger pointed out the flora and fauna, the flora consisting of old growth forest with a huge variety of trees. The fauna was butterflies, worms, frogs and fire ants, the last of which left a lasting impression on us!

We even saw a bat cave that harbored chupacabras (bats that suck the blood of small animals). Fortunately, the bats were asleep and we got out of there alive.

We climbed to a lookout point where we had a beautiful view all the way to the ocean!

We then stopped by La Libertad town. It has some nice restaurants along the water front, and a pretty walkway. One of the best things to visit is the fish market, which has all kinds of fish, shrimp and mollusks. We even saw manta rays being cut into steaks. This was a bucket of boca roja (red mouth) fish. The whole fish was red! It was way more than the mouth that was red!

We stopped for pupusas, before we went home. Eli needs to eat a lot of them to make up for the last 5 years in the states. He’s been missing them! We were fortunate to have a great group of musicians serenade us at lunch. I chose Sombrero Azul and Guantanamera, two of my favorite songs! The former of those is fun, as the audience is expected to sing the “dale” echoes, in the chorus.

When we got back to our ocean front home we changed and walked down to the beach for the kids’ surfing lessons. The owner of the surf shop was surprised that the kids were so big (old). I think it might have been easier to teach real kids. Surfing is a sport easier picked up by kids too young to know how hard it is. They started out looking like pros, posing for the shot. It was a good thing they posed before, because after about 45 minutes in the water they looked pretty flushed. Brittany was so red we thought she got a bad sunburn. It took her about an hour before her  face went back to normal! Maybe that was because she was the only one that briefly hung 10.

 I didn’t get a shot of that, but I did get one with Crystal on her knees!

Our surfing instructor, Tiola, was so nice, and hand painted a little surfboard for us while we cooled down. He doesn’t have a lot of gringo clients, and probably even fewer groups of gringos where 3 of them are fluent in Spanish!

We all cooled off in our pool, where we talked about the difference between Baby Boomers and Millennials. Apparently, our children’s generation is in no hurry to move on with their lives. They’re patient to let them happen. I’m sure it must be because we’re in no hurry to let them go. We love them! Eli made dinner for us, so we’ll have to humor him and play Mormon Bridge tonight until he wins!