Had a worrying incident in our little bungalow / cabina (called Jazmine!) last night when I investigated the safe. I locked my essentials in it but the code I punched in would not open it afterwards. What to do! I phoned the reception and within an hour an aged man with a toolbox arrived and an accent from North America. He had a well-worn face, Eric Morecambe shorts and a slightly comical hearing problem. He would have fitting well into the black and white Ealing comedies playing a charcter actor, for example alongside Margaret Rutherford as one of the failing criminals in the Ladykillers. He had an awareness of Wales and expressed his admiration for Paul Potts, some young "Britain's Got Talent" young singer from Swansea and "Only Boy's Aloud" which he seemed to come across on youtube. Very random! But I digress. Apparently, the fault was due to a fitting problem and was not due to my short term memory failure......as far as I can remember. At breakfast, a sausage appeared on our omelettes. Our audible gasps of disquiet alarmed the waiter who, realising that eating meat has become an anathema to us, encouraged us to just swipe the offending meat and assorted unmentionables package to another plate. Hmmm! Anyway, a lovely fruit platter and a beautiful spot next to the swimming pool meant that we weren't overly upset. Generally, the food served to us in Nicaragua has been excellent but the bread has been more than underwhelming. It is always so crisp and flavourless...and seems stale. Don't think it is stale though! Perhaps French toastish? We had a quickish trek around the grounds of the Pelican Eye hotel, up many steps to two more swimming pools where there was an eye-popping view of the town and the bay with pelican filled boats stationary on a seemingly painted scene. There was a small group of post-pensionable water aerobists moving a joint or two in the lower pool as they encouraged us to join the fun and frolics. Too much to do unfortunately! Down to town past the security guards and their guns, past uncurious dozing curs, past a stationary Managua bound chicken bus waiting for cordoba carrying customers, past the lemon and mustard coloured church, past an occasional traveller or two wielding cameras at everyday normality, past free wheeling produce-carrying peddlers.....until we reach the bayed seafront where we found the ATM guarded from across the road by a slumbering geriatric with the obligatory holstered gun. The three of us squashed into an air-conditioned cabin where the ATM resides and I punched in my code having followed the screened instructions to the letter. Failure! I tried again and again and got a message from Caitlin that the queue outside were not enamoured with my inefficiency. Alyson took over with her card and withdrew a princely sum of dollars with little problem. At this point, I realised that I had inserted the wrong card. Caitlin alerted me to the potential for an attack by the street long queue outside as I decided to try again. But I had faith in the protective qualities of the guard with the gun across the street or maybe more faith in the protective powers of his gun. I'll be signing up for the gun appreciaion society if I'm not careful! Anyway, after finally succeeding to extract the required money, I darted through the jostling throng towards my armed protector. Near to him, Alyson espied two parrots caged outside a beach bar / restaurant whilst Caitlin was attracted by a table football game. As Alyson conversed enthusiastically with the aforementioned birds and received more intelligent responses...she would claim..than she is used to from her current, travelling companions, I brought into play my distant university skills at the table football arena and thrashed Caitlin at the game as all fathers would aim to do. After a drink at a beach side table, we dragged Alyson away from her caged fliers, bought some local ice-cream and dipped our toes for the first time in the Pacific before walking along the unspoilt beach allowing the waves to crash into our lower limbs. Leaving the beach, we wandered up and down a few of San Juan del Sur's streets where restaurants, bars, small hostals, surf dude places, gift shops and locals' houses barge and bump into each other. Quite commercial but hardly Blackpool. The town has an unusual mix of visitors. In the streets, you see young, quite alternative, culture-experiencing travellers in the majority. But there are also quite a lot of tousled, blonde-bleached surfer types who seem oblivious to anything other than the waves. Probably an unfair generalisation? Anyway, I bought a Nicaraguan T shirt, which appears to be of good quality, for 10 dollars.I can wear it at opportune times back home to show off a little. How shallow is having a "Been there, got the T shirt" T shirt? Tracing our way back to Pelican Eyes, we continued the hard slog up to the uppermost swimming pool -the infinity pool- which has impressive if not quite infinite views of San Juan and the bay below. We all eventually tested the cooling waters and I hooked Caitlin up with two youngsters from New York which led to her playing underwater catch me games with them. Happy Caitlin....for a while! In the evening, we tramped down to a pizza beach-side restaurant having read some reviews on tripadvisor. I was far from impressed as the descriptions on tripadvisor suggested good things from the place. Not their fault that the town had a blackout while we were there. We found out soon enough that a high percentage of eaters bring contingency torches with them...as did we.....and to give praise where it's due, the restaurant quickly utilised its emergency generator. But as I said, service was poor and food adequate at best. Uninspired by the experience, when I got back to the hotel, I wrote my first restaurant review ever on tripadvisor and rewarded the food joint for its mediocre efforts with a mere two stars. From the restaurant, we walked back through the dark streets, rejecting further requests to hawkers from other restaurants to fill our half filled stomachs in their eateries. Nothing much else to report that I can remember other than having spent half an hour or so rubbing washing soap into a few shirts and several pairs of my undergarments. Alyson doubted and questioned my unsoaping technique. Had I used cold water sufficiently to ged rid of the soap? I believe so! Hopefully, they will all be dry by tomorrow. So that's it for another day. Nos da!