What a fantastic Valentines Day–Sorry I’m a little late with this post but it was awesome!

We got up early and ran down to our hole-in-the-wall gym “Pure.” It’s owned by a really cool young American couple—Warren and April. We really like them. They met at the Burning Man retreat in Nevada, which by itself makes them colorful… They are part of a little group of gringo couples on this side of Granada that hang out together and own some of the local businesses (a bakery and the bar and the restaurant at Casa San Francisco). We got to know all of them and really like them—even though they’re half our age.

After our workout, we ran back to our room and our new Swiss friends (Vivi and Tscheugge) were 30 min early to pick us up for our adventure–Swiss precision and all.

We had a riot with them.  Vivi is age 53 and has a very sarcastic, hilarious sense of humor!  He and Bill were going at each other all day. He owns restaurants in Switzerland and is an adventurer.  He runs marathons all over the world. He’s climbed Kilimanjaro twice. etc, etc. Tscheugge is a really sweet, thoughtful man.  We talked about every subject you could think of,  including quite a bit about our religion.  We drove up to the Volcano Masaya and saw a panoramic view of the region. Then we drove to this quaint, darling, colorful little town called Catarina that looks over Laguna Apoyo (see our last post).  Such a colorful little town–painted 10 different bright colors and  full of colorful flowers.

Got back to the hotel, dipped in the pool, had some Valentines Day fun:)  Ate tapas by our pool.

We were joined by Terri Leary, the owner of the hotel (and about 20 other properties in town) . We had spend some time with her a couple of days earlier and she has an amazing life story. Lots of tragedy to overcome, but she’s a builder. She has spent most of her career managing very tough (and large) government and NGO projects in the world’s worst war zones. Kosovo, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Iraq. Crazy life! So we asked her to sit down with us and tell it while we recorded.   We recorded it and will be posting it to our Witness Project website.

Then we hurried off to our Valentine extravaganza at the Spa. There were about ten of us–from all over the world. A gal from the Yukon territory. Two young girls from Australia who are biking across Central America. A girl from Amsterdam who is here for a year or so helping to make a documentary about “Love in Latin America” for Dutch TV….etc.

The “extravaganza”  started out with about 90 minutes of meditative yoga (heart opening yoga for Valentines—very cool, actually–led by Warren the yoga master). Then  60 minute massages for everyone, and then a really yummy dinner cooked at the little kitchen in the spa.

Then, to top it off, we learned to make chocolate.   I’m talking roasting the cacao beans and grinding them and melting the raw sugar.  Oh it was sooooo delicious! Dark chocolate stuffed with hazelnuts, ginger and sea salt!

A really sweet part of the night was when we were sitting around the dinner table as a group and they wanted to hear our story.  So I told them our story of  how we met and they all sighed and said “Oh how romantic–thanks for sharing!”  The owners of the Spa (Warren and April) are engaged to be married in August of 2015.  Bill said, “When I met Susan, I looked into her eyes and I had never seen that kind of energy!  She’s like Mary Poppins—when you are with her everything just turns out great!  April has that energy, Warren—you have a lot to look forward to.”  Everyone sighed again!  A lady said, “Oh what a beautiful tribute, and you managed to compliment two women at once. You’re good!”
Of course, the day and night followed the theme of Nicaragua:  EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS!!!

Off to Atenas, Costa Rica at 5 am.  Night Night!!!

Best day yet! Got up early and took our cameras out to photo the city before it got too congested.

Came back to the hotel for breakfast. Had to switch rooms (hassle!) then our driver arrived to take us to Laguna Apoyo.

Amazing! Spent the day at San Simian resort—tiny little resort with about 5-6 casitas, great view of an amazing lake in a 23,000 year-old crater. Huge crater (4 miles across) filled with fresh, geothermal warmed water. Fantastic swimming.

We immediately met a cool couple—Rick and Diane from Nevada City, CA, sort of near Tahoe, I think. They were staying in one of the casitas there. They have been EVERYWHERE. They have special full-sized road bikes that they can take apart in 30 minutes and put in their suitcases, so they take them to Europe and everywhere and just see the world by bike. Maybe a little older than us. Great salsa dancers! They may or may not have recently biked around Cuba–rebels!

We talked about everything—including family, politics, religion and the pros and cons of the war on drugs. Then we walked up to their casita for some salsa music and dancing. Here’s some MUST SEE hilarious video–love the suggestive moves and semi-perverted grin at the end.  

When we were leaving we chatted with these two Swiss guys, and they were hilarious. One about my age (very fit–marathon runner) and another older guy (who was gimpy since he ruined his knees playing pro hockey). Our ride was waiting so we had to cut it short. But then when we were having dinner Cafe de los Suenos back in Granada, they came walking by. We insisted they sit down and chat. It took a little persuading, but they finally did. The younger one, Vivi, was really engaging and we had a wonderful chat about Switzerland vs. America, challenges of modern society, Mormonism, family. Just a great guy, and another world traveller. Then we walked down and had gelato together.

We arrived in Nicaragua last night at 11:00. On our flight from Houston, we sat by Pastor Bob from Wichita. He was with a group going down to do volunteer work in a remote Nicaraguan village. Super guy!! Great energy and easy to talk to. He is pastor of a Disciples of Christ congregation. They take a very pragmatic and non-dogmatic approach to Christianity. There’s a fair amount of philosophical diversity in their church, but united around a few core principles and a focus on applying Christian principles in their lives. He knew surprisingly little about Mormonism, so we talked quite a bit about it and our experience.

We arrived in Granada at this nice little boutique Hotel called Casa de San Francisco.   They serve a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit and freshly squeezed oj and a Nica breakfast of eggs, rice and beans and petite pieces of wheat bread.

The townspeople are so sweet (except for the one that stole my bag this morning). Landscaping is easy here:  just don’t put a roof on and vegetation will take over and it will look like the garden of Eden in no time!

View from Iglesia Merced bell tower

We took a horse-drawn buggy ride around the town to get the lay of the land.    A son and his father (the old) took us and gave us a history of the city.  The first church was built in 1529 – Iglesia de San Francisco–right next to our hotel.  Anyway, one church has a bell tower that the driver said we could climb and view the whole city. I grabbed my bag to leave and he said “Oh no, just leave it, my dad will watch it”.    The spiral stairway to the top was sooooo narrow—20″ stair treads.  The view was incredible!  A volcano on one turn, Lake Nicaragua on the next.  Beautiful (insert Annabelle’s voice!).       Well….upon returning to the carriage—my bag was gone and so was The Old.  The son went looking at him and he returned with his father looking distraught, while hand gesturing quite a bit.  Long story short:  the old “Abe’d” it and someone stole my bag!   I felt so bad for the old man.  The son was sooooo mad at him!  He was yelling about commissions and money.   My bag didn’t have any REALLY valuable stuff—lip glosses, sunglass cases, ibuprofen, etc.   They didn’t speak much English except what the son had memorized for the tour and the Dad didn’t speak any English,   so I hugged the Dad and told him not to think a thing about it and that it wasn’t valuable. Man he hurt my nins!  A good CHEAP lesson!

We ate lunch at a fantastic place!  A couple from Toronto own the restaurant (El Garaje)  and grow their own produce outside of town.  It was so fresh and unique!