After spending a few days in Ometepe we went to San Juan del Sur which is a very nice beach town in the south west of Nicaragua.
We caught the ferry from Ometepe and when we arrived in San Jorge we caught a taxi to San Juan del Sur in a taxi. On the drive Bridget and Leah were singing to the radio the whole way and the driver thought that was funny. It was very green, there were paddocks full of cows and lots of hills. The roads were really bumpy and full of potholes so it took about an hour.
When we arrived in San Juan del Sur we looked for somewhere to eat and found a fish and chip shop called Lago Azul (blue lake) down on the beach. The food there was great and when I say great I mean GREAT!
After we had finished our delicious lunch, Dad went out with Leah to look for a hotel and Bridget and I played black jack. If I won we would play table soccer and if I lost we wouldn't... I lost :(
We kept playing and, after the 6th round, Dad came back being driven in a luxury 4 wheel drive from the hotel we were going to and said lets go! They came to pick us up!
So went to the hotel and found that it had two names: the Pelican Eyes and Olas y Piedras (which means waves and rocks in Spanish). The hotel was up the side of a mountain!! It was very nice and it had good views of the beach and pretty much the whole town.
There were three pools and they were quite big. I had a swim pretty much every morning with Leah and I learnt to swim again because I had forgotten how to. Dad taught me how to doggy paddle, breast stroke and to not breath in under water. Bridget taught me that if I was sinking and couldn't stay up just to hold my breath go down to the bottom kick off and take another breath when I got to the surface. Leah taught me to float and maybe other stuff that I can't remember. I had lots of fun in all the pools, they were nice.
On the first night Dad went to ask for a cheese and tomato sandwich for me to have for dinner (we didn't need much after our big and late lunch), and on the way back he tripped over one of the 29 cats the hotel has and scraped his knee really badly.
On the second night, there was a Halloween party and I got dressed up as a ninja! At first I didn't know what to wear, but Dad gave me the idea. I wore one of Bridget's hoodies and dads tie-pants, my crocs and a black singlet of dads wrapped around my face. I am glad that I went with that custome because I won a prize for scariest male costume! The prize was two free appetisers at their restaurant. Bridget was getting me to go on missions like to get us drinks and back to the room to get more money and things like that.
Almost every night we changed to a different room/house because we hadn't booked in advance. The first and second nights we were in a room with a bathroom and a room with two queen-size beds. On the third night we went to a little house that had a lounge two bedrooms and a kitchen and bathroom. The 4th night we were in a house that had a bathroom, a big kitchen, a lounge, a dining room, two rooms and three beds. And, on the last night, we had like half a house. It had two bathrooms but only one shower, a lounge, a fold out sofa-bed, a king-size bed and a smaller kitchen than the house from the night before.
We went to the restaurant to eat every morning because breakfast was included in the price and went there twice for dinner. We also went to the markets in town and got some stuff to cook in the kitchen of the house on the 4th night. Dad, Bridget and I cooked some pasta with a tomato sauce that was delicious. We also ate at the fish and chip shop again once for dinner because it was so nice.
I was very excited when I heard that this hotel actually has its own mini zoo!!! I found it amazing. They have six monkeys, a wild pig, 8 turtles, geese, ducks, five dogs and 29 cats. I tried counting the cats and when we left I still hadn't seen 13 of them! The animals were injured and rescued by a vet and they were kept for too long to return to the wild. So they keep them in the zoo and look after them there.
We went to another beach called Majagual (which is pronounced like this: Mahagwal) and it was very nice. We had to catch a water taxi to get to the beach. A water taxi is just a little boat that takes people from beach to beach in exchange for money. They have them at the lake of Nicaragua which is how we did our tour of the isletas.
On the way to the beach, we saw people fishing and even the people driving our water taxi were fishing while we being driven along. When we got close to the beach we waited for the boat to turn around and face back out to sea and a wave to come and carry us to shore. When we got out of the boat Dad, Bridget, Leah and I went up the beach to look for shade to put our stuff. We saw a hermit crab and Dad picked it up and gave it to me. I held on to it while Dad dug a pit to put it in. We collected more and more until we got 94 all together!
Then we went for a swim, that was fun until the monster came! It was a huge wave! Twice as big as Dad maybe even more! and boom... I was dumped and shaken and banged and I was stuck under the wave I was dumped! It wasn't fun but I learnt that you have to dive under them and I learnt how.
After that, we had a little lunch in the shade of a tree. It was nice: just some crackers, cheese, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and capers. Yum.
After lunch, Dad and I went for a walk on the rocks and in some rock pools we saw sea slugs, crabs, limpets, sea snails, mud skippers, sea urchins and lots more hermit crabs. On the way back to the beach, I slipped and grazed my knee. Also, Dad jumped down from a rock and his big toe stuck out through a hole of his croc (which is a type of sandal).
When we got back to the beach we had a quick swim and then Dad went back over to the rock pools again with his camera and I stayed because of my sore knee.
When Dad got back we had to leave because the taxi had come back to pick us up. On the way out to the deeper water we went over a massive wave and slammed back down onto the water! We all got splashed with water. It was very funny.
The next day it was time for us to leave. The man who drove us to Ometepe arrived to pick us up in his car and we said goodbye to San Juan del Sur.
In the end, I was very sad to be leaving San Juan del Sur because it was very pretty and the fish and chip shop was so good and so was the hotel. My favorite part was the fish and chip shop - it was just so good. My favorite parts of the hotel were the zoo and the pools. I would love to go back again.