Day 2 Managua y San Juan del Sur

We kicked off the morning with breakfast I am making note of this because it was very tasty. Not only was it fresh but also organic. The pineapple was white and not yellow like we are used too back home. The other fruits were very sweet especially the banana. The yoke of the egg were a little more orange than yellow and I was very excited to be able to have them over easy.

Following breakfast we went to supply hope and had a crash course in micro-franchising the speaker Ricardo was very passionate and very welcoming. He then took us to visit Margret who is running one of the micro-franchises called Mercado Fresco. Mercado Fresco supplies organic healthy foods to the locals. The food is not only nutritious but also very affordable the families in these low income communities usually purchase cheap goods from the junk foods ridden botega. 

After we drove for two hours to Tolas we met with Jon Thompson and he introduced us to Nica Agua which is a water filtration program. The filtration is done by these clay pots which look like flower pots. We visited Felipa a user, community leader and advocate of the Filtron. She said since using this filter there as been better cooking and stomach issues have ceased. Her home is filled with animals from piglets to ducklings. She is a huge fan of the Filtron. 

He also runs Communidad Connect linked here: http://www.comunidadconnect.org/ which has a number of different programs. The one that stood out me the most is the Sustainable Tourism. This programs allows for people to come to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua to do volunteer work. This is an inexpensive way to give back. Most impressive is that the money raised from this cause is used to run the rest of the Communidad Connect programs. 

At the end of the day we drove up to Playa Maderas which is the hotel that David Grossman built with his partners. The hotel reminds me of those picturesque Fiji homes, but on land instead of on water. The homes with the straw roofs. We did not waste any time and headed down to the beach. The tide was very strong and being a weak swimmer I stayed close to the shore. Its hard to describe the beach and even harder to describe the emotions that consumed me. None the less it was a sight to see and somewhere I would like to return too.