Hopitality

We've been quite busy lately. We managed to take a vacation and go to the ocean in San Juan Del Sur. It's a little beach town that's nice but it had been raining for days and because of that we couldn't really leave the town. Our objective was to go see some large sea turtles laying their eggs but the rivers were too big to cross in our truck so we were stuck in the town. Here's a picture of us in the nicest resort in town. It's called Pelican Eyes, a really nice place. We payed about $6 and got a multi course breakfast here. Really cheap and really nice. The view from our table was amazing.

Before we took off, though, we managed to have some of the local friends in for dinner. We took some of the other friends advice and stuck with traditional Nica food, beans and rice and the not so traditional desert of Chocolate chip cookies. The friends loved the visit, even though we couldn't talk about too much.

It's a family with 3 kids. Leo's (the dad) a farmer and manages to support his family with the money from his dad's farm. The two other girls in the picture are cousins of the mother Blanca here. Vanessa's cookies were going rather slowly, everyone only ate one. About two hours into the visit the power went out, no problem we had candles, interestingly though, when the power came back on there were no cookies to be found. 15-20 cookies disappeared in an instant. Maybe someone needed comfort food.

The family was so thrilled that we had them over they decided to have us over for lunch a couple of days later. We went out to the farm where Leo works and Andrew and I managed to till the soil with their oxen. We're sure they were laughing inside at us, but outside they didn't show it. They treated us like honored guests. Nessy made fresh corn tortillas with the ladies in the kitchen.

And afterward they made us rice and beans to go with it. They served us first. They also offered us cuajada. A soft white cheese made from cow's milk. We've had it, but only cooked in lasagna. Raw it can be hard to digest. So Shane & I passed on the cuajada. But Ryan accepted it graciously. He was starting to get full with a half a plate left. But when you think about how the family feeding you has probably just given you the best of the best of the best of what they have. You gotta cram it in and clean your plate, no matter how much you feel that your belly will burst. And so he did. No, not burst, he cleaned the plate. Everyone was happy. And now we've been invited back for chicken soup. The first time I've ever actually met the chicken before its soup. The guys add, these chickens were pretty rough looking, skinny, bald spots, big stray feathers poking out at awkward angles. In their opinion, they'll be better off as soup.

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua