Chinandega

Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua

The resort here in Puesta del Sol is very pretty but very isolated.  The nearby village is basically dirt-poor with little to offer for your typical tourist.  There is a restaurant at the resort but the prices are prohibitively expensive.

The day after we got here saw the arrival of one of the boats we had met in Bahia del Sol, a Canadian family of 5 on a 73-foot trawler called Family Time.  Greg, the captain, had need of some parts fabricated, and I really needed some kind of working temperature gauge for our engine, so we made a trek into the nearest larger town of Chinandego.  For $50 US we had a taxi for the entire day and were able to make lots of stops at hardware stores, machine shops, automotive supply stores and supermarkets.  We had lunch in town at a typical Nicaraguan restaurant, which we really enjoyed.  Note: it was cheaper to rent a taxi for the day to take us to lunch in the city, than it was to have lunch at the resort.

Machine Shop

Once we were back at the marina, we joined the crew of one other sailing vessel that had just arrived at the marina, and we all gathered at the "beach" side of the resort to watch the sun set - a nice ending to a very busy day.

The day before our trip into the city and the day after, I spent tearing into the plumbing on our engine.  At this point I cannot find anything much wrong, or at least not much that I can fix, and I am not really sure if it was overheating at all.  The new temperature gauge I bought has the wrong thread so I still don't have a working gauge.  To try and simplify everything, I have stripped off all of the nifty plumbing I did a few years ago in order to get an engine-heated hot-water tank working - we don't really need it down here in the tropics anyway.

So far, Nicaragua appears to be even poorer than El Salvador - a lot of room for improvement.  The people we have met have all been very friendly.

While on our trip into Chinandega, we were able to make arrangements with a tour company for a more extensive whirlwind tour of the country.  Tomorrow morning we will start a small custom tour of the surrounding countryside and the colonial cities of Leon and Granada.  Sounds like lots of fun.

Our new friends on Family Time left for Costa Rica yesterday, so now the only cruisers here are ourselves and the crew of Eyoni, another similar-sized sailboat.  This is not a real a hot-spot for cruisers just now.

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