Gigante, "Foot of the Giant"

   Depending on who you talk to, or what you read, the foot of the giant is either this peninsula that forms one arm of the bay, or the foot is the entire bay.  
   When we arrived in Gigante, just before noon, the town was in full Samana Sanata swing. The restaurants and bars were alive with music and people were spilling into the streets with cervezas.  

   One table had three local fellows, a bottle of rum that was almost empty, and they looked like their sobriety was fading fast. Bo Fox reports that the combination of alcohol and breaking waves with undertow is a fatal formula on holiday weekends. 
   Gigante is a fishing village and we learned that the local fisherman are hard workers and hard drinkers. They smoke and drink much more than the average Nicaraguan, perhaps because they earn more. The fish they catch is packed on ice and has a good market in Managua. 

   The population of the town had swollen with the holiday festivities and we were very fortunate to bump into Bo Fox as soon as we drove into Gigante. He was literally the first person we saw. This was fortuitous because we brought along the remainder of the toys that we had brought for the clinic patients.  
   As we walked to a beach restaurant, Bo said hi to at least ten local fellows.  He has only lived in Gigante since January, and by now he seems to know most everyone. What a congenial guy! We enjoyed a soda with Bo and then he had to leave to do a Skype conference with a volunteer for Project Wave of Opportunity, the charity he works for. 
   We walked along the beach and enjoyed lunch in a Gringo cafe at one end of the beach. There were hundreds of families on the beach. Children built sand castles, adolescents played soccer, and parents sat under tarps or umbrellas.  The beach was a sea of smiles.
   Later that evening, back in Limon, we hosted a party for the clinic staff.  Everyone was in Samana Santa holiday mode, and we had a great time. What a great finish to a week of work in Nicaragua!