Hanging out at Las Salinas Grandes

A long bumpy dirt road leads to Las Salinas, the Sampson family beach house on the Pacific coast south of Leon. Kate has spent week here and Maggie and I caught up with her for a night. It's basic, fronts onto the beach and is a long way from a proper road. There are a few houses up and down the kilometres of beach and a small fishing community. Small boats go out from the beach at night, bringing in the catch early in the morning. The catch is meagre, some small fish and one or two large ones. They don't make a fortune, just enough to feed a family and pay for the petrol for the outboards. We bought fish, no more than 10 Cordobas for a small fish, about 35 US cents.
At night we slept in hammocks, my first experience of this. I suspected it would be profoundly uncomfortable but I slept remarkably well.
Kate and Maggie brought gifts for Pedro and his family. Pedro is the caretaker. Kate has been helping him for some years to buy a plot of land, dig a well and start to build a house. This means that Pedro now has something to pass on to his sons Isaac and Jonathan. In the evening we had a little party with a pinata for the children. This involves hanging up a paper figure with a hollow inside filled with sweets. The children take turns to whack the figure with a stick as it is jerked around on a rope. As it is whacked about, the sweets gradually spill out and the children scramble all over the floor gathering them up.
Behind the house, some 200 metres inland, are the salt works, Las Salinas. In Europe salt works are mechanised, with diggers and tractors to lug the drying salt around. Here men work in the full sun, scooping up the sand from the drying pans with shovels and bare hands into handcarts. It's hot, unremitting labour, but it's work and keeps families.
Swimming from the beach is more about jumping around in the waves. There is a vicious undertow and unless you are a strong swimmer going out beyond the breakers is dangerous. It's a surfer's paradise, however, but so far there are few surf dudes. We walked a long way down the beach and only saw a couple.
Later we are going back to Leon for the last few days in Nicaragua, then it's back to France and the rain. Oh well.