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What a start to our day! 3 hours of sleep last night due to our standard last minute rush around for items, and Jarrod's review of 2 weeks of Heather's packing...
5am! Up and at 'em! It was an uneventful Trip to the airport, but holy cow, there were like 5000 people at the airport already...and one of the workers tried to tell me that we should have been there 4 hours early...my response, "hire more people." So there are advantages to traveling with a baby, obviously they feel bad for you so we got to skip the entire security wait line of over an hour and made it to our gate with enough time to buy a coffee. But the airlines have for some reason decided that it is no longer necessary to pre-board parents traveling with small children...but thats ok, we're travel pros and we got on the plane and in our seats faster than probably anyone else on the plane...as you know, if there's one thing that drives me crazy, its dumbasses that don' know how to efficiently get on and off the plane. Maclaren did AMAZING on the plane...she wouldn't sleep but didn't cry one time and made friends with everyone within a 3 row radius of us, the pilots, attendants, and just about everyone that walked down the aisle...her personality is really starting to shine!
So our seats were at the back of the plane so of course we're about the last people off the plane and therefore about the last people through customs...and that's another thing that drives us nuts, people that don't have their customs/immigration paperwork filled out and their $10 entry fee ready to go.
And here's where the adventure really begins...after we pick up our luggage and go to the car rental place, I realize I left my drivers license in Houston...uh oh! So of course the rental place won't rent to me on just a passport...we stranded! Guess we're taking a taxi, but we didn't bring a car seat because the car rental company had one for us, but now they won't rent just the car seat to us, and how many taxi's have car seats? So as I'm trying to find a taxi with a car seat, some backpackers from California start talking to Heather...BINGO! "hey, do you guys have your drivers license?" Long story short, we go back to the car rental place, get the car by having this random backpacker we just met as an additional driver in exchange for giving them a ride to Granada. But then I have to get a much bigger vehicle than what we had originally reserved to fit all these people, bags, car seat, etc. and all they have for cars of that size is manual transmission, which i am not altogether comfortable with, but what else are we going to do? Alright, all loaded, 5 adults and a baby in a 5 passenger SUV, 1.5 hours drive, no one knows how to get there, and Pierre (our Californian buddy) has never driven in a foreign country and is scared to death. A few wrong turns that took us through a crowded market, detoured around a river washout, and down a road that looked like it hadn't been repaired since the Contra's; coupled with about half the drive following behind 20mph buses and tractor/trailers because Pierre couldn't grasp the 'extra lane' and 'honking etiquette' of Central America...we finally arrive in Granada, 3 hours late, but we're here!
After parting ways with our backpacker friends, we check into our hotel and then I have to go get our bags and move the car from where its parallel parked on the main street to the secure parking lot for the hotel...this should be fun is all I can think. I'm surprisingly good at driving a manual transmission, I come to find out! Super impressed with myself!
After cleaning up, we head out for some dinner, is almost 6pm and all we've had to eat today is half a blueberry muffin each... We find O'Shea's pub down restaurant row and order up an ice cold Tona beer, a chicken dinner, and a filet minon...or at least what passes for a filet in Nicaragua (I think IHOP has better steak). But its edible and we are starving.
There is a HUGE problem in this country with exploitation of children, but not by ex-pats, by their own parents. They send the kids to the streets to beg or sell handicrafts, cigarettes, gum, and just about anything else you can imagine. Its a epidemic, during dinner we were approached by no less that 20 different kids while eating dinner and a few adults too. A bunch of them are walking around with these big grass leaves and these hand woven hearts and butterfly like designs. So I finally gave in, more out of curiosity than anything else, and told a kid if he could sit down at our table and make one of his design in front of us, I'd buy it. Sure a s***, he sits down and goes to town weaving this very complex flower...then a grasshopper, then a heart, and then all of his little buddies show up and all of a sudden we have 4 of them trying to show up who is best weaver. Between them all, I think I shelled out $4 US for 45 mins of entertainment and a couple handmade handicrafts to carry home. Money well spent. (let me not fail to mention that they were all flirting with my daughter and wife the entire time)(and earlier one kid had tried to get me for $2 for one little easy design, but the kid we actually committed to, only wanted 5 cordobas ($.25), so when the first kid came back I gave him a hard time about his prices and told him he was a hustler).
We strolled back through the Central Plaza and back to our hotel...its only 7:30pm but we're beat, but thats ok, cause when I walked back to the front office for something at 8pm, the Central Plaza was like a ghost town. They are early to rise and early to sleep here.
- comments
Mom So glad to see to happy smiling faces. Love Your guys
mom Wow, guess my typing was not too good. Sorry Guys
Heather We love you too mom and miss you a ton!
kmacoog04 Don't know which girl I love more... I am leaning towards the chubby one :)
kmacoog04 Good thing we ordered this same carrier- I can see this in my future too! :) H- we will have no problem hitting up happy hour even with MC and BB!