Nothing Like a Campfire in the Canyon

We had a pretty busy day yesterday, hitting a lot of spots in the north of Nicaragua, all the way to the border.

We are staying in the town of Esteli, Nicaragua for the last couple days, having a look around the area.  Our hotel here is old and grand and really nice, shown in the above photo.

It's pretty mountainous here in this region, with volcanoes all around.  The Panamerican highway runs right through here, but it's just another road in these parts. 

We started out the day with a walk in the plaza.  Every city, town, and village in Central America has a cathedral, and this one is no exception.  It's a beautiful old building, and the plaza also contains the local farmer's market, where we bought some food for a picnic planned later in the day.

 

We made our way up into the hills, with a goal of finding a property that TK and Jenny are interested in possibly purchasing.  They are keeping their options open here in Nicaragua, and might want to have a place of their own.  

Directions are iffy here, but we did eventually find the place and took a walk around.   Property here is inexpensive by US standards; this place is seven acres, with a couple of wells and reservoirs, three house dwellings, 400 trees (several varieties, mango, banana, papaya, other fruits), entirely fenced and cross fenced.  Price tag? Somewhere under $25,000 - but it is REE-Mote, and far away from anything.  

Another destination of the day was the Canyon of Somoto.  This is a highly regarded location in the mountains, with "spectacular" views ...

 

I mean, it was okay, pretty cool, but not great.  I try not to compare places, so I won't here either, but it was maybe worth the drive.  One really fun thing we did was to have a camp fire on the banks of the river and roast some sausages from Oregon. 

   

 

WE brought these sausages from home, they were from pork that TK raised at his farm in Jefferson.  We just gathered up some wood and started a little fire and used sticks to cook the sausages.  It was very ... rustic!

Since we were not far from Honduras, we made our way to the border just to have a look (sometimes I don't have the best luck crossing borders so we just got a picture).  We did get hassled by the police when driving back to Esteli, which is par for the course. In almost every developing country, the police establish roadside check points and they generally harass the local citizens, this time including us. Maybe I'll tell the story when I get the chance.

We returned to the city after dark, and went for a walk to dinner. The plaza had been transformed into some kind of big noisy event, with a concert and fireworks.   All in all, a pretty full day.