To Travel is To Live

Okay, so we love Bonaire!!!! We arrived yesterday afternoon via air from Aruba.  We are staying at the Divi Flamingo Dive Resort and it's quite fun and cute and exactly the sort of place I love to be at.  The resort is larger than I expected, actually, but there are 2 pools, 2 restaurants, a bar, and a dive shop right on site. The clientele are very much divers, and the hours of the bar and restaurants are very much catering to the dive people.  Which is fine... Prices here a much better than in Aruba, too.  We walked across the street last night for dinner, to Jasmine Garden (an Asian fusion restaurant) and found beer for less than $2.00 US each (whereas in Aruba beer were at least $5.00 US).   The food there was very good, lots of options from Chinese to Indonesian, too! We did, admittedly, drink way too much at the resort bar last night.  The one bartender was trying to teach me some Papamientu phrases but I honestly don't remember them!  Numb...

Alright, alright!  [Pictures to come...] It's been WAY too long since I traveled and updated this blog but I am BACK! Bryan and I traveled to Aruba with friends, Dave and Lexi, for a 2-week 40th birthday vacation celebration.  We're hitting the three ABC islands, in order, so it's gonna be a blast! Flights were good, considering we had the red eye from Calgary to Toronto Saturday morning.  I actually slept!  We didn't get stuck beside screaming kids!  No obnoxious people were giving me dirty looks for being a 'bad mom' (a little side note on a recent flight to Mesa I took alone...see below). Anyway, we arrived, safe and sound in Aruba on Saturday afternoon.  Customs was super easy here - no mystery button to press to see if you were either A) free to clear or B) subject to a complete smackdown by angry officials.  Phew! In all honestly, customs here was the most efficient I've ever seen it anywhere in the world.  We didn't talk to anyone...

Tonight is our last night in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.  This small surf town is quite pretty and very easy to get around.  I think it would be fun to stay here a bit longer. We took a surf lesson yesterday with a very helpful and patient instructor named Saul.  He works for San Juan del Sur Surf and Sport here in town. We were driven over dirt roads full of potholes and rust from the rains to Playa Remanzo by another guy who works at the shop.  It was a bit rough!   But, the beach was worth the rough ride.  All down the coast there are surf beaches that are accessible via back roads and still basically untouched. A few higher end homes have sprung up (because, let’s face it, you cannot beat the views) and some small food shacks are set up to keep the surfers happy. But, unless you know where to go and have a 4x4 vehicle, you probably wouldn’t find most of these surfing spots.  Playa Remanzo is the beginner beach. Our waves were...

Right now, I am sitting in our beautiful Hotel Plaza Colon hotel in central Granada.  This hotel is colonial architecture, as are many of the buildings in the city.  They’ve restored it to its original look and design as much as possible and we love it.  Our doors and windows to the outside balcony have doors in them!  The ceiling is about 25 feet high.  The rooms open to a walkway that surrounds an outdoor space. Currently, there’s a pool in that space but it’s the original courtyard. I close my eyes and feel what it would be like to live in a house like this decades ago.  I'm convinced my past life was set in the mid- to late-1800s and that I was of upper class. :) I love Colonial architecture. In my dreams, this is what I want my beach house to look like! Lovely hotel aside, Granada is a very beautiful city.  Every building is a different bright colour.  Reds. Pinks.  Purples.  Blues. Greens.  If I painted our ho...

Have you ever walked down a beach and seen no other people for at least 20 minutes? It seems like an impossible feat when every new paradise swarms with tourists and expats and locals and other visitors.  But, today, we had the luxury of spending a couple of hours walking along untouched beaches teeming with rocks, palm trees and local wildlife without bumping into anyone else.  It was like being an explorer, coming across this beautiful island and feeling amazed by its natural awe.  Most of the eastern and northern coasts of Little Corn aren’t developed or even inhabited yet.  And I think the locals want to keep things that way as long as possible.  It keeps the island untouched and serene.  It also makes it super easy to run into the same people over and over again too. Yesterday, we found a small private beach to swim at and just relax.  It’s in front of a local person’s home but it was still ours for an hour. No one else showed up.  We h...

We arrived on Little Corn Island this morning and I’m pretty in love with it already! Okay, first, let me fill you in on what went on over at Big Corn the last couple of days.  Bryan and I stayed in a one room apartment that was steps from the island’s only dive shop. How convenient!  We stopped in on Sunday to ask about dives, prices and all the important stuff. They were a little hesitant to dive with us since it’s been a year since our last dives but we convinced them we would be okay. The dive shop is called Dos Tiburones Dive Shop and they have a cute little cafe on site too. Yesterday morning, we dropped in to see when they would be going and decided to do at least a one tank dive to the reef.  The dive was just us and the dive master and pretty low visibility from the churn of sand. It’s been quite windy lately over there.  But, we did a 50 minute dive and saw a nurse shark and a few other tropical fish. I’m never upset with a dive if I see blue tang...

We have talked about traveling to Nicaragua for a couple of years and we finally did it! Last year, we went to Mexico and got married . We never had a honeymoon and by July we thought we better go somewhere for our anniversary. So, this is our anniversary/honeymoon.  We had a long day to get here yesterday.  Up at 5:00 am, 4 hour flight to Houston; we had a 4 hour layover and a 3 hour flight to Managua.  Customs wasn’t too bad and we arrived at our hotel, the Camino Real in Managua, by 9:00 pm. A late dinner and a couple of complimentary drinks and to bed by 11:00. (BTW, the Camino Real is located less than a 5 minute drive from the Managua International Airport and they have a free shuttle that runs from 5:00 am to 11:00 pm.  The hotel is gorgeous and they have random 'wild' animals trotting through.  On our last night, we stayed here again and enjoyed some Tonas and playful kittens!  It's a lovely hotel.) This morning we were up at 7:00 ...