No alarm today! There are buses to Esteli almost every hour so we were in no rush! I like these mornings! And I'm sure Steve does too! You know the expression "Happy wife, happy life"? It doesn't always mean that a man who makes something to please his wife will feel gratified and joyful. It often means that if his wife is happy, he won't have to deal with her mood swings and watch everything he says and does for fear of a big tragedy. I'm not a big killer monster but sometimes, especially when I don't have enough sleep, I feel like the military green frog that we saw 2 days ago.
So, all that to say that I woke up refreshed and happy.
We had breakfast at our hotel, took a taxi to the bus station and bought tickets to Esteli. This time, we had a better bus and it was just a 2 to 3 hour trip. I spent most of my time writing my blog.
In Esteli, we grabbed a taxi to go to a nice hotel that I had on my list. They only had one room available and for one night only. Since we were planning in staying in Esteli for at least 3 nights, it was not ideal but we decided to take it and it would give us time to search for something else and book the excursions we wanted to do. Because the places we wanted to visit around Esteli are all in National Park and a guide is mandatory.
After our check in, we walked to an apparently well renowned place to book tours. Everything on the boards and walls was written in English. Cool! We would finally be able to communicate properly!... at least, that's what we thought…
It seems to be almost impossible to find someone that can speak or at least understand English. And we really wanted a guide that we could understand and we wanted to know what we were reserving since there were a few options and we had questions. So we left with the hope of finding someone that could understand us… in vain!
We walked the city and I was very surprised to see how lively and animated it was. We thought it was a small remote and quiet town in the mountains but it was, in fact, a small place with good renowned schools and university, with plenty of shops, stores and restaurants.
We returned to our hotel to reassess the situation and see what was the best solution for the tours we wanted to do and, as we started losing faith, Steve found a tour company for Esteli online and was able to chat with someone who spoke English. We booked one of the tours we wanted to a canyon named Somoto with an overnight stay in a local farm. We were very happy!!! And once there, we would see if we can get help from them to book guides for the other places we wanted to visit.
Yippee! We would be able to hike Somoto, sleep in a farm, maybe book another tour for later this week and we didn't need to find a place to sleep tonight. Thank you Steve!
For dinner, I made some research and found a very well rated restaurant owned by an American chef that had beers from local microbreweries and was well known for their burgers and ribs. Food here is good but after a week of rice, beans, coleslaw, cheese and a protein for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it would be good to eat something different…
So we went to El Restaurante La Finca a su Mesa and enjoyed a good IPA and a juicy pinkish beef burger with french fries. It was delicious!... and expensive! Well, at least, compared to what we usually pay here. But it was totally worth it.
We went back to our room early because the next morning, we had to catch the bus to Somoto that was leaving at 7:30.
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