After recovering from the night I got up, washed, brushed teeth, made up the room and went downstairs for breakfast. Yolanda was in the kitchen and had my breakfast waiting for me: a bowl of melon and sliced bananas, a glass of orange juice, a bowl of red beans and rice and a block of cheese. She said it is called "queso seco" or "dry cheese" and it had the consistency and flavor of a very hard, dry feta. Very salty with a hint of olive flavor. Considering last nights dinner and this mornings breakfast I do not expect any diarrhea. Actually, without getting too gross, that is one thing that Scott Underhill taught me during our first visit to Panama. He has had quite a bit of experience in back country travel and explained that while traveling the tendency toward a high starch diet and intermittent dehydration results more in constipation than in the expected travelers diarrhea. Not much in the way of vegetables out here but I grab them whenever I can. Enough of this crap.
One thing I had managed to do on the way back from the restaurant last night was to find some fresh AA batteries. Over breakfast I replaced the dead ones, powered up the Explorist and headed out to the front to let it search for satellites. Yolanda keeps the front gate-door locked for security so she had to let me out into the front courtyard to do this. Once the GPS got its satellites tracked it gave me my bearings: 13 deg 05 min north, 86 deg 00 min west, altitude 3330 feet (by comparison, the highest peak in the Catskills, Slide Mountain, is 4180 feet high). Went for a quick walk in the immediate vicinity and it performed very well, tracking my walking speed, direction and distance correctly as I navigated a box pattern just to put it through its paces. So far, so good.
Later I will head out on a walking tour, take photos and find a bank and withdraw some cash from the ATM to get local currency. The Nicaraguan currency is the Cordoba and the current exchange is 29 C on the dollar or about 3.5 cents per Cordoba.
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