After a pleasant 2 hour ride, interrupted by a 30 min. downpour, I arrived in the fishing town of San Juan Del Sur (pop. 6,000).

SJDS is set on a nice horseshoe shaped cove with dramatic cliffs forming at it's far edges. Although the beach is nice, I found it a bit dirty.

While cruising up the main street looking for a vacancy I was waved to by a beautiful couple sitting on the veranda of Posada Nina. It turns out they were real estate agents from Montreal, but became fed up with the city life, sold everything, bought a camper Volkswagon and are in their 2nd year of touring Mexico and Central America.

Elizabeth and Alain are now hoping to settle down in SJDS and buy a small posada (B & B).

Their "business card" reads;
"Elizabeth et Alain en voyage...Ne savent quand reviendront....."

WOW !!!!

E and A were spending the next few days at their friend's, Nina, untill their rented home is ready. Nina offered me a great deal on a room which I booked and was promptly invited to join them all for supper in Nina's kitchen where we were joined by E&A's visiting son, Maxime, and Nina's son Roberto and little daughter. It was great to have a home cooked meal in a family enviornment.

The following morning, I left my moto locked up near Nina's and hitched a ride with a gang of Italian surfers and headed up the coast 12 kms by 4x4 to the remote surfing beach of Playa Maderas.

From there it was a 10 min. walk on the beach to an even more remote beach, Playa Majagual and the beautiful "Bahia Majagual Eco-Lodge", where I spent the next 3 nights on a hammock under a palapa 20 meters from the high tide line.

Days were spent walking the many beaches that scalloped the coast and just laying on the hard clean sand that sloped ever so slightly to the surf. Every 5 minutes or so a wave would slowly creep up to me, bathing me in 1 or 2 cms. of water and then slowly recede.....as they say in Costa Rica, "Pura Vida" (the good life).

3 days later I returned to Nina's and found E&A packing up to their new rented house a few blocks away.

It was also Alain's birthday and I was invited there to their beautiful new home for dinner with Nina and her family. Nina cooked a fabulous lasagna, and with the rum and wine flowing, we all had a great time.

It was hard to leave the company of Nina and E&A. In the space of only a few days they felt like family.

However time was getting short, and early the next morning we all kissed good-bye and it was off to Costa Rica.

While the Caribean of Nica and most other countries of Central America are also very beautiful, such a the "Corn" islands of Nica, and "Rotan" islands of Honduras, there just isn't a developed road network serving the Carribean side, notwithstanding the rain there at this time of the year.

It's for these reasons, that except for Guatemala, and Costa Rica, I have not visited these areas.