Just can't wait to get on that road again...ha ha

Well, we are enjoying a day off travelling today...much needed after spending 20 of the previous 48 hours either on buses or waiting for the next one. We are in Matagalpa, Nicaragua today. We got up early and took a walk to the town square. We have found that it is much faster to get around in the early morning before the cities here really get going. What with all the vendors on the sidewalk and the traffic in the streets, it makes for some slow going in the middle of the day...not to mention the heat...The town square turned out to be really pretty with a bandstand in the middle and a cathedral in the background. There is also a monument to the sandanistas on the side of the square.

We took a little side trip to a coffee plantation called Selva Negra (=black forest in Spanish) in the hills just above the city for a few hours today. It was founded by German immigrants in 1891 and is now a hotel/plantation that charges resort rates to eco-tourists and employs 250 coffee workers. The plantation is at 4000 ft and the wind was playing on the trees. The vegetation was very much like home. It has a lot of pines as well as deciduous trees. From a distance, it could have been summer in Algonquin in the mixed forest part.

It was nice to go for a walk in the woods and have a coffee (a really good one for a change) on the verandah of the hotel. I had ordered a coffee at breakfast and left it after a sip. It was undrinkable in my opinion. I have decided that I am not going to eat or drink stuff I don´t like, Uncle Robert be damned. Following Geoff´s advice, if I buy something and I don´t like it, I keep the untouched portion and give it to the next beggar I see. It works really well....yesterday I didn´t have to eat the pastries that looked potentially good but tasted like dust and the kids who asked me for them were thrilled at the ¨treat¨--win, win.

There was a guy from Sherbrooke, Nova Scotia in the restaurant. It has taken him two weeks to get here from San Jose also, but he has yet to go to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize not to mention back again. He was shocked at our pace (aren´t we all?).