Three Free Nights at Gran Pacifica Resort! 11

Well…tomorrow we’ll be back in Panama, dudes! We’ve just concluded our epic border run after a nine week house sit in Laguna de Apoyo, Nicaragua. But before we return, we get to enjoy some R&R because Cheli scored us a three night stay at Gran Pacifica Beach & Golf Resort on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast. How you ask? I’ll tell you after a quick word from this week’s sponsor…

Gran Pacifica Beach & Golf Resort

Experience Gran Pacifica Resort, where you can surf, golf, swim, horseback ride, take a three mile walk along the beach, go volcano boarding and more…and after you’ve done all that, make sure you save some time for the relaxing ocean-front massage!

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog post:

So…how did we come to enjoy three free nights at Gran Pacifica Beach & Golf Resort?  I bet you’re thinking that from the commercial above we did some sort of back-room deal…but nope. Cheli filled out a survey for Best Places in the World to Retire and won the grand prize – three nights at Gran Pacifica Beach & Golf Resort. Yup – that’s all folks. Sometimes it pays to take a few minutes of your time to help others gather information. In fact, if you’re using Google/GMail, your information is being gathered and sold all the time to advertisers. When is the last time Google gave you three free nights somewhere awesome?

Anyway, we got picked up by a company called DeTour which is 1) a company that provides VERY comfortable transportation, and 2) a company with a really awesome name, right!

The drive took us about an hour and a half from Managua, mas o menos. After a quick check-in, the dude at reception gave us a brief tour of the place, which I’ll summarize; There’s the shop, there’s the restaurant, over there is the massage cabana, there’s the ocean – don’t swim because of the rip – let’s go see your room…

Cheli Chillin’

HELLO ROOM…Cheli won us a 2-bedroom condo overlooking the ocean! This place is sweeter than the time I got covered in chocolate! The dude from reception and our DeTour driver helped with our luggage. To them, it probably seemed like a lot of luggage for three nights, but it’s basically our life in that suitcase and a half.

After our very kind and professional staffer gave us a tour of the condo we set up our laptops and connected our devices to the WiFi…

HELLO INTERNET…Cheli won us a 2-bedroom condo overlooking the ocean with AWESOME INTERNET! It’s so nice when you can connect and update your devices and you don’t have to worry about using up data. Oh, and we can stream YouTube. Let me repeat that for those using Claro sticks or tethering through your phone. WE CAN STREAM YouTube! Okay, I’ll stop rubbing it in.

Hora de Feliz!

About an hour later we decided to ditch the workday and go for a dip in the pool with a few beers. A nice infinity pool beckoned and we chatted up a few Californians visiting Nica for the first time. It’s always nice to get other people’s perception of a country during their virgin visit. They were having an amazing time and enjoying the great surf Nica has to offer on the shores of Gran Pacifica Resort.

A couple three beers later it was time to either see if the pool had that chemical that appears when you pee in the pool…or just get out, use the bano and grab a snack. We opted for the latter (for obvious reasons) and followed it up with a nice stroll on the beach as the sun went down over the Pacific. This got us thinking. We really missed:

• Long walks on the beach
• Sand on your feet
• Finding a really cool shell
• The sound of surf crashing on the shore
• Sunsets (and sunrises) over the ocean

Shell of a good time!

Memories do make things sweeter. And after three days here at Gran Pacifica Beach & Golf Resort we’ll have some sugar-coated, chocolate covered, cherry on top memories…no whip cream though, trying to cut back on the dairy.

Later Dudes!