So much has happened and there´s so much to share, but part of me doesn´t even care to update anymore, especially since I´ll be back in the States in less than 2 weeks. But a lot can happen in 2 weeks, so I´ll keep trucking...
Thursday: Met Judith for a drink around 9. How do I keep meeting such nice people? She´s living with a friend who´s making a documentary on the pesticides used by local farmers. Apparently, the chemicals are causing kidney failure in a scary percentile of them (one area has 78 widows out of 400 families), so Judith´s friend Steve is making a documentary on the problem and has started an organization to provide information and counseling to the families. Oh, and he rents a totally sick house here in León. In his words, "I have palm trees. That never gets old."
Friday: Got up at 9 to go volcano boarding. Volcano boarding? Yes. You climb a volcano and then sled down. The volcano is called Cerro Negro and it´s the youngest in Central America. Sounds great. Too bad the rain came and the trip had to be called off. The good part, though, is that I was in a truck with some really cool people (2 Australian girls, a German guy, a Canadian guy and a few Israelis) who I ended up hanging out with during the afternoon. We all went our separate ways after lunch, but at 3:30 we met back in the hostel because we´d heard a rumor that President Ortega was coming to speak in the city center to commemorate the 29th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. The actual anniversary was today, but I guess they like to start the party early. We got to the center a little before 4, and then we waited. And waited. And waited. We heard rumors that he wasn´t even coming, or that Hugo Chavez was coming, or that he´d be here tomorrow. But finally, amidst overpoweringly loud music, fireworks, sirens and waving flags, we got to hear the president of Nicaragua speak. I was more interested in Che Guevara´s wife and daughter, who were honored guests at the rally, than in what Ortega himself had to say. But to sum up his speech for you... "Down with capitalism. Fight the imperialist pigs. Shun the yankee bastards. Free yourselves from the constraints of foreign NGOs and foreign dollars. Equality! Freedom! Long live the revolution! To victory, now and forever!" You get the picture.
Friday night (which has bled into Saturday with no definite beginning or end): 2nd volcano hike of the day to Volcán Telica. I went with an organization called QuetzalTrekkers, which is run entirely by volunteers and gives all their profits to an organization called Las Tías to help street kids. Apparently the locals are iffy as to how much good Las Tías really does, but I couldn´t pass up the chance to hike an active volcano in the moonlight. We ate a snack at the QT office around 10:30, then hopped in vans which drove us to the park, and by 11 p.m. it was just us, our packs, our flashlights and the countryside. Our group was about 15 large, including a guy from California, 2 Spanish girls, 2 Dutch girls and their dad, a Swiss woman and her 14 year old son, 2 more girls from California, another Dutch guy, me and our 4 guides. One of the guides was entirely preoccupied with flirting with one of the gorgeous Spaniards the entire time, but the other 3 were so cool. My favorite was the German who has been travelling for 19 months now, and can mark how long he´s been travelling by how long his mohawk and his single thin braid are. Oh, and German is absolutely my next language to tackle. I´m sick of not understanding half the people I hear in hostels.
So we hiked from 11 p.m. to about 4 a.m. First we were on a dirt road, then we started crossing fences and walking through corn fields, then we suddenly plunged into the pitch black forest for the last 2 hours or so. This was, of course, when my flashlight decided to burn out. The guide near me was way too busy with his Spanish lady, so I ended up falling down a lot. But then, so did everyone else. We took a couple of breaks, my favorite of which was under a huge mango tree. We saw it again in daylight but I think it was almost cooler at night, the way the branches spread out and made everything so shadowy. We finally made it to the crater rim and stumbled our way over tons of volcanic rock until we got to the edge. The guides told us to lay on our stomachs and peer over the edge down into the volcano. No lava, but I did get a face full of sulfur smoke. The wind and the rain finally became too much for us, so we went down into a valley where it was slightly less cold and huddled on the ground like the pansies we were until superfly Germanguy started a fire, at which point we Americans introduced the Europeans to the joys of roasting marshmallows. Yes, we roasted marshamallows at 6 in the morning on the side of a volcano. We tried to explain how awesome it is to set your mallow completely on fire, but the perfectionist Dutch girls had to show us up and perfectly brown theirs, leading me to point out that "Maybe Europeans really are better at everything?" The other Dutch guy saved us from our American embarrassment by bringing up that one country that has set the standard for perfecting what others have started. And I quote, "At least no one here is Japanese. Then we´d all look bad." 10 times funnier when you haven´t slept in 24 hours and the speaker is foreign.
After breakfast (coffee, bread and peanut butter!) most of us headed back up to the crater rim to see if we could see anything more. The clouds had started to clear away and we suddenly had an amazing view of our volcano, other volcanoes, farms and hills on all sides. I took so many pictures and I´m sure they all suck next to the real thing. At some point, we started a game called "throw rocks at other rocks and try to make those rocks fall into the volcano." Everyone, from the 50 year old Dutch man to the 14 year old Swiss boy, participated. The competition got pretty fierce.
We hiked back down and got to our lunch spot in a nearby town, passing through an area with bubbling mud springs (think Old Faithful toned down and way dirtier). Finally, at 2 p.m. today, we got back to León. My original plan was to press on north to Matagalpa today, but I decided nothing sounded worse than sitting on an old school bus for 4 hours, so I checked into the same hostel as before and will go to Matagalpa early tomorrow morning. I´d gotten to know a few other travellers in the hostel and they are all here for one more night as well, so it was nice to have a sort of homecoming.
Mom and Dad: It´s probably a little late in the game for this, but do I have travel insurance?
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
It´s raining lizards
Today I heard the song "Piano Man" translated into Spanish. Not the point of this post, though...
Wednesday night: Joseph, Caroline and I went to a place we´d heard had good burgers (the last "burger" I got consisted of shredded chicken and mayonnaise on a hamburger bun, so I was skeptical). The food was great, but right as I took a bite out of my burger I felt something heavy fall onto my hand. It felt like a french fry had somehow flicked up, but when I looked down there was a lizard halfway on my hand and halfway on my burger. I screamed (out of shock, not fear) and Caroline and Joseph both thought the lizard was climbing out of my food. There are little black lizards everywhere, and I´d heard about them falling off ceilings before but had never personally experienced this wonder. I was laughing so hard I couldn´t breathe, much less speak English or Spanish, so it took a good 5 minutes to restore order. I had to assure our waiter about 6 times that it was fine, that I didn´t want a replacement burger, that everything was ok, etc etc.
Afterwards, we went to a restaurant/bar called Olla Quemada (burned pot) to hear a local band play. The place was entirely packed and maybe 10 people in there were Nica, while the rest were fellow gringo travellers just looking for a good beer and some nice music. We got there early enough to get a table, but it turned into standing or perching room only. The people watching was spectacular. Caroline and Joseph had to get up early-ish this morning to catch a bus back to Managua for their noon flight, so we left around 10 and said goodbye for real this time.
Thursday (today): After my breakfast of yogurt, cereal and coffee (which feels like a luxury after 6 weeks of beans and tortillas for breakfast), I started talking to an English girl and a Swiss girl in my room. They were heading to the beach today, which I was planning on doing, too, so we rode out to the beach about 45 minutes from León together. It was so gorgeous. The sand was dark but the water was fairly blue and clear, plus we literally had the entire place to ourselves (minus the pelicans and sand crabs). I also realized that this was the 3rd time I´ve seen the Pacific in the last year (San Diego, Chile and now here), but the first time I´ve really swum in it. We played in the water for maybe an hour, then hung out on the beach for an hour, then got back in the water for awhile. After lunch we caught the bus back to León right before it started raining. Speaking of lunch, I´ve been increasingly glad on this trip that I don´t have any food allergies or generally picky eating habits. Maybe I have low standards for food, but at least I never go hungry. One of the girls was vegetarian and couldn´t find anything on the menu that looked good, so she just didn´t eat for the entire day. I, on the other hand, dominated my plate of fish, rice, cabbage and tortilla.
Oh, side story: the bus we caught from the beach left from a market on the other end of town in a more indigenous community. Right by the gate into the market was a woman selling live crabs, mollusks and eggs. Chicken eggs? Nay. Turtle eggs. So much for wildlife protection laws, I guess.
I am supposed to meet up with Judith, the Austrian girl, for a drink at 8, so I need to go find some dinner before that. Tomorrow´s a double volcano hike (more on that after I make it through alive), then hopefully Saturday I will head to Matagalpa. Travelling by myself is so interesting. Sometimes I think it might be nice to have a buddy for moral support, but it´s really freeing to realize that there is no one telling me where to go or what to do. I am in complete control of my time and my agenda. It´s a little scary if I think about it too much.
Wednesday night: Joseph, Caroline and I went to a place we´d heard had good burgers (the last "burger" I got consisted of shredded chicken and mayonnaise on a hamburger bun, so I was skeptical). The food was great, but right as I took a bite out of my burger I felt something heavy fall onto my hand. It felt like a french fry had somehow flicked up, but when I looked down there was a lizard halfway on my hand and halfway on my burger. I screamed (out of shock, not fear) and Caroline and Joseph both thought the lizard was climbing out of my food. There are little black lizards everywhere, and I´d heard about them falling off ceilings before but had never personally experienced this wonder. I was laughing so hard I couldn´t breathe, much less speak English or Spanish, so it took a good 5 minutes to restore order. I had to assure our waiter about 6 times that it was fine, that I didn´t want a replacement burger, that everything was ok, etc etc.
Afterwards, we went to a restaurant/bar called Olla Quemada (burned pot) to hear a local band play. The place was entirely packed and maybe 10 people in there were Nica, while the rest were fellow gringo travellers just looking for a good beer and some nice music. We got there early enough to get a table, but it turned into standing or perching room only. The people watching was spectacular. Caroline and Joseph had to get up early-ish this morning to catch a bus back to Managua for their noon flight, so we left around 10 and said goodbye for real this time.
Thursday (today): After my breakfast of yogurt, cereal and coffee (which feels like a luxury after 6 weeks of beans and tortillas for breakfast), I started talking to an English girl and a Swiss girl in my room. They were heading to the beach today, which I was planning on doing, too, so we rode out to the beach about 45 minutes from León together. It was so gorgeous. The sand was dark but the water was fairly blue and clear, plus we literally had the entire place to ourselves (minus the pelicans and sand crabs). I also realized that this was the 3rd time I´ve seen the Pacific in the last year (San Diego, Chile and now here), but the first time I´ve really swum in it. We played in the water for maybe an hour, then hung out on the beach for an hour, then got back in the water for awhile. After lunch we caught the bus back to León right before it started raining. Speaking of lunch, I´ve been increasingly glad on this trip that I don´t have any food allergies or generally picky eating habits. Maybe I have low standards for food, but at least I never go hungry. One of the girls was vegetarian and couldn´t find anything on the menu that looked good, so she just didn´t eat for the entire day. I, on the other hand, dominated my plate of fish, rice, cabbage and tortilla.
Oh, side story: the bus we caught from the beach left from a market on the other end of town in a more indigenous community. Right by the gate into the market was a woman selling live crabs, mollusks and eggs. Chicken eggs? Nay. Turtle eggs. So much for wildlife protection laws, I guess.
I am supposed to meet up with Judith, the Austrian girl, for a drink at 8, so I need to go find some dinner before that. Tomorrow´s a double volcano hike (more on that after I make it through alive), then hopefully Saturday I will head to Matagalpa. Travelling by myself is so interesting. Sometimes I think it might be nice to have a buddy for moral support, but it´s really freeing to realize that there is no one telling me where to go or what to do. I am in complete control of my time and my agenda. It´s a little scary if I think about it too much.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
I do not deserve any of this
In a good way, I mean. I am far too blessed. Here´s the rundown on the last 24 hours of my life...
After I made that last post, I decided to wander around and try to find somewhere where I could eat dinner alone without looking too awkward. As I was walking down the street, I heard someone calling my name--Caroline and Joseph just happened to be eating dinner right across the street from my hostel! So I ended up eating with them, then went back to my hostel and watched the 12th inning of the All Star game (who won, anyhow?) until I decided I was too wiped from my day of travel to take anymore. Slept a good 10 hours, and then came...
Wednesday (today): Woke up at 8 and went to the supermarket to buy myself yogurt, cereal and bananas. I figured it would be much cheaper to eat breakfast that way than going out every day (and less alone since I can eat in the hostel.) I ended up talking to a 50 year old hippie who was selling jewelry in my hostel for about half an hour. He was born in a favela (read: ghetto) in Brazil but moved to Bolivia when he was 7, after which point he travelled all over, even spending some time in Austin. He told me he loved hippie hollow, back before "they" ruined it. He also told me I was welcome to come by his workshop any time to check out his jewelry and, since I "look like a person who enjoys a good toke", to light up with him. I probably won´t take him up on that offer. I told him I´ve never smoked weed a day in my life, at which point he told me "well, you´ve got the look down!" I´m not sure what that means but it doesn´t really bother me. Maybe it means I look relaxed? It´s also funny to me that he´s not the first person down here who´s suggested that maybe I enjoy "alternative" forms of recreation.
Anyhow, after I left the hostel I ended up walking around the city with a British woman named Sarah. We went to the cathedral (biggest in central america, I think) and to an art museum. The art museum was AMAZING. It had so much more than I´d expected. There was of course the usual 400 year old Catholic paintings of sad looking people surrounded by fat angels, but there was also tons of indigenous art, surreal paintings and 3 original Picassos! And, it only cost us 60 cents to get in. Afterwards, Sarah and I went for lunch at a café with amazing coffee. She went back to the hostel since she wasn´t feeling well, and I checked out another museum.
I feel so uneducated, but until I got down here I´d never heard of Ruben Dario. He´s apparently renowned as one of the best Hispanic poets ever, and after visiting the house where he lived and reading some of his stuff, I can see why. His work and his life remind me a lot of Pablo Neruda (or maybe it´s just that good poetry comes out of a life of travel, women and rebellion). They didn´t have any books of his poetry at the museum, so afterwards I went to a nearby bookstore to look around. No luck there, but I did start a conversation with a girl from Austria named Judith who´s visiting her friend here for a month. We ended up having coffee together and talking for almost an hour, and we might try to meet up tomorrow.
I´m meeting Caroline and Joseph for dinner tonight (they are leaving tomorrow), so it will be nice not to have to worry about eating alone. I´m realizing more and more, though, that every time I think I will be "lonely", I´m not. I´m sure it will happen in time, but so far I´ve been amazingly blessed with friendships, even if they are random and short lived. I like León a lot, it´s a beautiful city with a lot of history, and I´m looking forward to getting to see more of the area (volcanoes and beaches) over the next couple of days. Since I´m travelling, my Spanish isn´t getting as much of a workout now, but my legs and my brain are working overtime so I think it´s a fair trade off.
Enjoy your lives and your friendships back home, I am definitely getting ready to see people and hear about other summers!
After I made that last post, I decided to wander around and try to find somewhere where I could eat dinner alone without looking too awkward. As I was walking down the street, I heard someone calling my name--Caroline and Joseph just happened to be eating dinner right across the street from my hostel! So I ended up eating with them, then went back to my hostel and watched the 12th inning of the All Star game (who won, anyhow?) until I decided I was too wiped from my day of travel to take anymore. Slept a good 10 hours, and then came...
Wednesday (today): Woke up at 8 and went to the supermarket to buy myself yogurt, cereal and bananas. I figured it would be much cheaper to eat breakfast that way than going out every day (and less alone since I can eat in the hostel.) I ended up talking to a 50 year old hippie who was selling jewelry in my hostel for about half an hour. He was born in a favela (read: ghetto) in Brazil but moved to Bolivia when he was 7, after which point he travelled all over, even spending some time in Austin. He told me he loved hippie hollow, back before "they" ruined it. He also told me I was welcome to come by his workshop any time to check out his jewelry and, since I "look like a person who enjoys a good toke", to light up with him. I probably won´t take him up on that offer. I told him I´ve never smoked weed a day in my life, at which point he told me "well, you´ve got the look down!" I´m not sure what that means but it doesn´t really bother me. Maybe it means I look relaxed? It´s also funny to me that he´s not the first person down here who´s suggested that maybe I enjoy "alternative" forms of recreation.
Anyhow, after I left the hostel I ended up walking around the city with a British woman named Sarah. We went to the cathedral (biggest in central america, I think) and to an art museum. The art museum was AMAZING. It had so much more than I´d expected. There was of course the usual 400 year old Catholic paintings of sad looking people surrounded by fat angels, but there was also tons of indigenous art, surreal paintings and 3 original Picassos! And, it only cost us 60 cents to get in. Afterwards, Sarah and I went for lunch at a café with amazing coffee. She went back to the hostel since she wasn´t feeling well, and I checked out another museum.
I feel so uneducated, but until I got down here I´d never heard of Ruben Dario. He´s apparently renowned as one of the best Hispanic poets ever, and after visiting the house where he lived and reading some of his stuff, I can see why. His work and his life remind me a lot of Pablo Neruda (or maybe it´s just that good poetry comes out of a life of travel, women and rebellion). They didn´t have any books of his poetry at the museum, so afterwards I went to a nearby bookstore to look around. No luck there, but I did start a conversation with a girl from Austria named Judith who´s visiting her friend here for a month. We ended up having coffee together and talking for almost an hour, and we might try to meet up tomorrow.
I´m meeting Caroline and Joseph for dinner tonight (they are leaving tomorrow), so it will be nice not to have to worry about eating alone. I´m realizing more and more, though, that every time I think I will be "lonely", I´m not. I´m sure it will happen in time, but so far I´ve been amazingly blessed with friendships, even if they are random and short lived. I like León a lot, it´s a beautiful city with a lot of history, and I´m looking forward to getting to see more of the area (volcanoes and beaches) over the next couple of days. Since I´m travelling, my Spanish isn´t getting as much of a workout now, but my legs and my brain are working overtime so I think it´s a fair trade off.
Enjoy your lives and your friendships back home, I am definitely getting ready to see people and hear about other summers!
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Excuse the itinerary
Those of you looking for a social commentary won´t find it here. What follows is almost strictly an itinerary of the last 3 days of my life...
Saturday: Woke up around 7:30 to eat breakfast, check my email and finish packing. Said goodbye to my host family, which was so strange. It was a warm goodbye, but detached all the same. I guess it has to be. Went and met Caroline and her brother Joseph at their hostel. I wasn´t sure how travelling with them would be, but Joseph has one of the happiest laughs I´ve ever heard and it worked out really well. We bussed from Granada to Rivas along with a dozen other foreigners and a guy playing a guitar and urging us to break free from the constraints of "Catholicism and coca cola". He also ranted for a good 10 minutes about how before the Spaniards came, all the indigenous tribes lived in peace and how we need to expel the foreigners who come here looking to use the locals for their own entertainment. He also said we should create a world without borders or passports. I held my tongue. We got to Rivas and from there taxied to San Jorge. The driver pulled a fast one and overcharged us by 20 córdobas, which was more irritating than anything else. Oh, well. Got on the ferry and sat down below with the few life jackets, the anchor and the highly necessary beer cooler. Got to Moyogalpa, on Isla de Ometepe, and ended up splitting the cost of a van with 4 British girls and 2 British guys to our hostel about an hour away.
Isla de Ometepe is actually being considered for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It´s formed out of 2 volcanoes and supposedly fulfilled an ancient indian prophecy of finding 2 joined mountains in the middle of the lake. It´s also crazy beautiful. However, I realized this weekend that I don´t like the idea of being on an island. Too much can go wrong, especially when half the island is an active volcano.
We all slept in a dorm room at our hostel, Finca Magdalena, which is an old coffee plantation. Our beds were more or less tall plastic cots. Caroline actually ripped through hers on the 2nd night, which may help to explain the phenomenal grudge all the F.M. staff seemed to hold against us. Caroline, Joseph and I walked around the grounds and looked at some petroglyphs (indigenous stone art) until it started pouring rain. We then went back and ordered dinner from the hostel, at which point we realized that the F.M. kitchen is in fact a black hole where food orders go in and are never seen again. Fortunately, we had a good time talking until our food arrived. The British kids were completely hilarious, especially the guys, which was good because we all spent the entire weekend together.
Sunday: I slept like a rock all night. Everyone else said they woke up around 10 times. We were supposed to meet our guides for the volcano hike around 7:30, but we didn´t end up leaving until about 8 (that´s known as the latin hour around here). We hiked Maderas, which is the smaller of the 2 volcanoes. Small is a relative word. It was supposed to be a 7-8 hour hike, but unfortunately 2 of the girls hurt themselves pretty badly and it took us almost 10 hours of walking, which was broken up by frequent water, snack and (for our guides) lollypop and smoke breaks. The first 5 uphill hours redefined the term "muddy scramble", the last 5 were more or less a series of coordinated falls down the mountain. There was a crater lake at the top where we stopped for lunch, which was so beautiful. It rained on us on the way down and we were all definitely ready to be done, but I would said it was worth it in the end. The area was so lush and green, broken by red flowers and spider webs. We heard loads of howler monkeys (which the English guys insisted were cows, just to piss me off) and passed above the cloud line. When we got back we all hit the cold showers, then ordered coffee, tea, beer and dinner. The coffee kept me up until about 2 a.m., unfortunately, but a few of us stayed up talking until around 11. Caroline and Joseph went to bed early and left me alone for almost 2 hours to fend off British attacks on my "lazy" American English. We laughed a whole lot and I´m so thankful for that.
Monday: The others went back to Moyogalpa to catch the ferry and go their separate ways, but I decided I wasn´t done with old Ometepe quite yet. So, I had the van driver drop me on the beach between the 2 volcanoes in a town called Playa Santo Domingo. I hated saying goodbye to the others, but going to the ferry would only have been delaying the inevitable since we would all be splitting on the other side anyhow. I checked into a hostel called Hospedaje Buena Vista, which was right on the beach. I´d like to point out that even though the island is in the middle of a lake, it´s such a huge lake that it really does look like the ocean from shore. I ended up getting a 2nd breakfast at Buena Vista, then walked to a swimming hole with an English girl named Lucy. We swam and read for a few hours until the rain came, then went back to the hostel where I spent the rest of the day reading and writing in a hammock. I was sharing a room with 2 German guys, so I ate dinner with them and then Lucy, the Germans and I talked for awhile before going to bed. One of the Germans, Janni, downed 3 liters of beer without breaking a sweat. When I expressed my concern for his health, they both just laughed and said "We´re German!" It was their turn to be horrified later when I confessed to owning a gun, though.
Woke up this morning around 7 (I just can´t sleep in here) and caught a bus with the Germans back to the ferry. After the ferry I caught a bus to Managua, then a shuttle to León, where I currently am. It´s been a long day of travel, so I´m glad to be here. I found a hostel called Hostel Bigfoot that seems pretty cool (and it´s only $6 per night!) and tomorrow I´m planning on walking around the city and booking a few volcano hikes for myself.
Thanks for all your interest, emails and prayers. I´m tired right now but I´m doing good. Travelling alone is definitely a new experience and I´m still on the fence as to whether or not I like it, but I´m so thankful for all the opportunities I´ve been given and for everything I´ve seen already. Now I am going to find dinner and then hopefully find someone to laugh with at Bigfoot.
Saturday: Woke up around 7:30 to eat breakfast, check my email and finish packing. Said goodbye to my host family, which was so strange. It was a warm goodbye, but detached all the same. I guess it has to be. Went and met Caroline and her brother Joseph at their hostel. I wasn´t sure how travelling with them would be, but Joseph has one of the happiest laughs I´ve ever heard and it worked out really well. We bussed from Granada to Rivas along with a dozen other foreigners and a guy playing a guitar and urging us to break free from the constraints of "Catholicism and coca cola". He also ranted for a good 10 minutes about how before the Spaniards came, all the indigenous tribes lived in peace and how we need to expel the foreigners who come here looking to use the locals for their own entertainment. He also said we should create a world without borders or passports. I held my tongue. We got to Rivas and from there taxied to San Jorge. The driver pulled a fast one and overcharged us by 20 córdobas, which was more irritating than anything else. Oh, well. Got on the ferry and sat down below with the few life jackets, the anchor and the highly necessary beer cooler. Got to Moyogalpa, on Isla de Ometepe, and ended up splitting the cost of a van with 4 British girls and 2 British guys to our hostel about an hour away.
Isla de Ometepe is actually being considered for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It´s formed out of 2 volcanoes and supposedly fulfilled an ancient indian prophecy of finding 2 joined mountains in the middle of the lake. It´s also crazy beautiful. However, I realized this weekend that I don´t like the idea of being on an island. Too much can go wrong, especially when half the island is an active volcano.
We all slept in a dorm room at our hostel, Finca Magdalena, which is an old coffee plantation. Our beds were more or less tall plastic cots. Caroline actually ripped through hers on the 2nd night, which may help to explain the phenomenal grudge all the F.M. staff seemed to hold against us. Caroline, Joseph and I walked around the grounds and looked at some petroglyphs (indigenous stone art) until it started pouring rain. We then went back and ordered dinner from the hostel, at which point we realized that the F.M. kitchen is in fact a black hole where food orders go in and are never seen again. Fortunately, we had a good time talking until our food arrived. The British kids were completely hilarious, especially the guys, which was good because we all spent the entire weekend together.
Sunday: I slept like a rock all night. Everyone else said they woke up around 10 times. We were supposed to meet our guides for the volcano hike around 7:30, but we didn´t end up leaving until about 8 (that´s known as the latin hour around here). We hiked Maderas, which is the smaller of the 2 volcanoes. Small is a relative word. It was supposed to be a 7-8 hour hike, but unfortunately 2 of the girls hurt themselves pretty badly and it took us almost 10 hours of walking, which was broken up by frequent water, snack and (for our guides) lollypop and smoke breaks. The first 5 uphill hours redefined the term "muddy scramble", the last 5 were more or less a series of coordinated falls down the mountain. There was a crater lake at the top where we stopped for lunch, which was so beautiful. It rained on us on the way down and we were all definitely ready to be done, but I would said it was worth it in the end. The area was so lush and green, broken by red flowers and spider webs. We heard loads of howler monkeys (which the English guys insisted were cows, just to piss me off) and passed above the cloud line. When we got back we all hit the cold showers, then ordered coffee, tea, beer and dinner. The coffee kept me up until about 2 a.m., unfortunately, but a few of us stayed up talking until around 11. Caroline and Joseph went to bed early and left me alone for almost 2 hours to fend off British attacks on my "lazy" American English. We laughed a whole lot and I´m so thankful for that.
Monday: The others went back to Moyogalpa to catch the ferry and go their separate ways, but I decided I wasn´t done with old Ometepe quite yet. So, I had the van driver drop me on the beach between the 2 volcanoes in a town called Playa Santo Domingo. I hated saying goodbye to the others, but going to the ferry would only have been delaying the inevitable since we would all be splitting on the other side anyhow. I checked into a hostel called Hospedaje Buena Vista, which was right on the beach. I´d like to point out that even though the island is in the middle of a lake, it´s such a huge lake that it really does look like the ocean from shore. I ended up getting a 2nd breakfast at Buena Vista, then walked to a swimming hole with an English girl named Lucy. We swam and read for a few hours until the rain came, then went back to the hostel where I spent the rest of the day reading and writing in a hammock. I was sharing a room with 2 German guys, so I ate dinner with them and then Lucy, the Germans and I talked for awhile before going to bed. One of the Germans, Janni, downed 3 liters of beer without breaking a sweat. When I expressed my concern for his health, they both just laughed and said "We´re German!" It was their turn to be horrified later when I confessed to owning a gun, though.
Woke up this morning around 7 (I just can´t sleep in here) and caught a bus with the Germans back to the ferry. After the ferry I caught a bus to Managua, then a shuttle to León, where I currently am. It´s been a long day of travel, so I´m glad to be here. I found a hostel called Hostel Bigfoot that seems pretty cool (and it´s only $6 per night!) and tomorrow I´m planning on walking around the city and booking a few volcano hikes for myself.
Thanks for all your interest, emails and prayers. I´m tired right now but I´m doing good. Travelling alone is definitely a new experience and I´m still on the fence as to whether or not I like it, but I´m so thankful for all the opportunities I´ve been given and for everything I´ve seen already. Now I am going to find dinner and then hopefully find someone to laugh with at Bigfoot.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Sensory Overload
This was going to be a long, well thought out post. I´ve been on this computer for way too long, though, so instead it´s going to be a long rambling post that I make just for the sake of getting some memories out...
Wednesday: When someone dies in Nicaragua, the family, friends and awkward foreign girl sit around in plastic chairs on the sidewalk outside the deceased´s house. Some people stay all night, drinking soda and coffee and eating cake. Most of us just stayed until 10 or 11. The cousins also thought it was hilarious that I was sitting there "funeraling" with them. In my defense, I thought it was normal "hang out on the sidewalk and talk" time, not "remember our departed friend" time. The 2 are easy to confuse.
I also had an incredibly frustrating conversation with one of the cousins on why I have friends who aren´t Nicaraguan (ie dutch and from the US) here. I was going to rant about that, but I don´t have time now. I managed to bite my tongue during our conversation because I didn´t want to offend the family by telling off one of their sons in perhaps more than 1 language, but I did go home and spend half an hour writing out my frustration and my counterpoints in my journal.
Thursday: Took my laundry to the laundromat in the morning. This turned out to be one of my best decisions yet. I honestly had forgotten what truly clean clothes smell and feel like. Then went to school, where we had a piñata with the kids. Went home for lunch, went back to school and taught my 2 afternoon students. Picked up my laundry, dropped off everything I´m not travelling with at my friend Trista´s house, got home just in time for Angela Cristina´s birthday party. 3 hours later, I emerged from a house that contained cake, ice cream, a giant Dora the Explorer piñata and 15 groggy preschoolers to go talk to my friend Caroline about our upcoming weekend of travel. Ended up going out dancing with Caroline´s neighbor Nami, who just got here Tuesday. We went with a couple of other Americans who are here studying and Nami´s host dad, who is 36. We had a really great time and it was nice getting to laugh a lot in English and Spanish.
Friday: Last day of teaching. The kids were so badly behaved today that I cut class 45 minutes short and used the extra time to go say goodbye to the employees and kids over at the daycare. Went home for lunch, and now here I am. Today I have to buy a daypack for hiking, pack all my stuff, drop by 2 friends houses, change some money and go say goodbye to the other US girls at 8:30. They are going out to a disco by the lake but a big part of me wants to spend my last night in Granada absorbing the city, rather than other people´s sweat.
Caroline, her brother and I are leaving for Isla de Ometepe at 10 in the morning. I´m not sure what my internet schedule will be like after that, but I will update as often as possible until I get home on August 1 (3 weeks from today). Prayers for protection would be greatly appreciated. Keep sending emails about your lives at home, I love reading them even if it takes me a couple of days to respond.
Goodbye Granada, hello chicken buses!
Wednesday: When someone dies in Nicaragua, the family, friends and awkward foreign girl sit around in plastic chairs on the sidewalk outside the deceased´s house. Some people stay all night, drinking soda and coffee and eating cake. Most of us just stayed until 10 or 11. The cousins also thought it was hilarious that I was sitting there "funeraling" with them. In my defense, I thought it was normal "hang out on the sidewalk and talk" time, not "remember our departed friend" time. The 2 are easy to confuse.
I also had an incredibly frustrating conversation with one of the cousins on why I have friends who aren´t Nicaraguan (ie dutch and from the US) here. I was going to rant about that, but I don´t have time now. I managed to bite my tongue during our conversation because I didn´t want to offend the family by telling off one of their sons in perhaps more than 1 language, but I did go home and spend half an hour writing out my frustration and my counterpoints in my journal.
Thursday: Took my laundry to the laundromat in the morning. This turned out to be one of my best decisions yet. I honestly had forgotten what truly clean clothes smell and feel like. Then went to school, where we had a piñata with the kids. Went home for lunch, went back to school and taught my 2 afternoon students. Picked up my laundry, dropped off everything I´m not travelling with at my friend Trista´s house, got home just in time for Angela Cristina´s birthday party. 3 hours later, I emerged from a house that contained cake, ice cream, a giant Dora the Explorer piñata and 15 groggy preschoolers to go talk to my friend Caroline about our upcoming weekend of travel. Ended up going out dancing with Caroline´s neighbor Nami, who just got here Tuesday. We went with a couple of other Americans who are here studying and Nami´s host dad, who is 36. We had a really great time and it was nice getting to laugh a lot in English and Spanish.
Friday: Last day of teaching. The kids were so badly behaved today that I cut class 45 minutes short and used the extra time to go say goodbye to the employees and kids over at the daycare. Went home for lunch, and now here I am. Today I have to buy a daypack for hiking, pack all my stuff, drop by 2 friends houses, change some money and go say goodbye to the other US girls at 8:30. They are going out to a disco by the lake but a big part of me wants to spend my last night in Granada absorbing the city, rather than other people´s sweat.
Caroline, her brother and I are leaving for Isla de Ometepe at 10 in the morning. I´m not sure what my internet schedule will be like after that, but I will update as often as possible until I get home on August 1 (3 weeks from today). Prayers for protection would be greatly appreciated. Keep sending emails about your lives at home, I love reading them even if it takes me a couple of days to respond.
Goodbye Granada, hello chicken buses!
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