Jan 16

Now this is a pretty picture ! We spent the morning exploring. We went down the beach at La Penita as far north as we could. Gorgeous day and more beautiful scenery. I found a lot of small pieces of different colors of beach glass. We'll use them in our projects.  We also saw a number of casas that were for sale too. They're actually in good shape as each owner has a family hired to maintain them and protect them from vandals. The family usually is hired by the new owners. It is very important for these people to have work.There is a lot of poverty here, and they are a proud people who take pride in their work.
Our walk continued for 3 km or so. We came to a huge area of rock on the beach and could not go past it because of the treacherous water. We met a gentleman from Quebec, Pierre, who told us that on the other side was a long 3 or 4 mile beach that was rumored to be owned by Bill Gates near La Colonia. There were some big casas that had just been built so who knows?
The walk back was a little tougher as it was much hotter ! Fortunately we were able to cool off at lunch at the Las Britas Restaurant, thus the picture. Behind Helene you see fishing boats and a bunch of frigate birds. A fisherman's  shop has just dumped a bunch of fish parts on the beach there and the birds are feeding! Really remarkable to see !
Our waiter Miguel also gave us Spanish lessons. I ordered burrito de camaron and Helene had omelette de cameron. We also had dos cervesas (I already knew how to order those !).
I wanted to include more pictures from our walk but it takes s long to downlosd them. I finally figured out why. The pics were too big, so I set the the size smaller. This one of Helene was the first one taken at the smaller size, so you can expect more pictures over the next few days. All it took was having a beer on the beach .......
Adios !