Heading Home

Yesterday we had our longest travel day of the trip (besides flying). We took the 5:20am boat up the river from El Castillo to San Carlos, managed to run out of gas right near another boat that sold us a barrel. Along the way we met three female British physicians who work in rural Cornwall, and hung out a bit in San Carlos, after we found out the first Sunday boat to Costa Rica leaves at noon.

From San Carlos, we took another river boat up the Río Frío which drains into Colcibolca from Costa Rica. This was an hour trip to Los Chiles, Costa Rica, where we went through immigration and customs. Fortunately we made the 2:30 pm bus for San Jose which followed a fairly winding road and got us to the airport in Alajuela about 7:30. We found there was not much open on Sunday night in Alajuela after 8pm, and ate at a restaurant run by a Chinese couple who really enjoyed watching Cantonese language television.

Alajuela was delightfully cool and we used blankets for the first time since arriving in Central America. Also the hotel (Hostel Trotamundos) was totally on top of it, arranging a taxi to pick us up at 5:30. Funny enough, we road to the Costa Rican airport with a couple who lives about a half-mile from us in Portland.

RIght now, we are heading home along the western edge of Nicaragua, Guatemala, & Mexico to Phoenix, watching the ring of fire as we fly over. I have put together a brief slide show for anyone interested.

Flora and Fauna

Liam catches dinner

Iguana sitting on a branch

rana verde, source of curare poison darts

caminadora, walking plant

best sport in the world

El Castillo sits on the Río San Juan, and is a perfect place for starting trips to southeastern Nicaragua and northeastern Costa Rica. We met a British couple who were beginning a week long kayak float trip down the river to the Caribbean coast, others heading down the river to catch a boat to the Corn islands, which have Nicaragua's best snorkeling. With less time, we had fewer plans, but enjoyed our time quite a bit.

We had arrived in El Castillo after a 11 hour overnight boat down the length of Cocibolca, then a 3 hour river boat trip to EL Castillo. Needless to say, when we arrived, we mostly didn't do much, except wash some very dirty clothes (by hand), watch some soccer using the hotel Wi-fi, and walk around a bit. 

That night we went out with a guide on a Cayman trip. There were 3 Americanos, 2 Brits, and 2 French people. He could see the Caymans on the shore looking for the reflection from their eyes from his headlamp. He caught 3 without too much difficulty and we all got a chance to hold them before letting them go. He also managed to spot a baselisco (?gecko); fortunately we did not die when it looked at us.

On Saturday we traveled with a guide to Reserva Indio Maíz, which is a huge nature preserve along the Río San Juan downriver from El Castillo. We were quite lucky to have an excellent, friendly, and passionate guide. He spotted a perezoso (sloth) in a riverside tree from 100 meters, as well as a family of spider monkeys, and some caymans. We passed an iguana sitting on a tree branch, then watched as it jumped into the water and swam. The number of herons, cormorants, and kingfishers was more than I could count.

Once we went into the reserve, we took a 3 hour walk along a trail that took us by many smaller animals and plants. We saw some green frogs (source of curare for poison darts), a rubber tree, a wild cacao tree, a snake, a hanging vine called a monkey ladder, a rubber tree, and an odd tree called a caminero (walker) which actually moves along the ground as a sapling toward the light. We took a swim in the Rio Bartolas, which runs along the western edge of the reserve, then headed back to El Castillo.

In El Castillo, we were lucky to see a Saturday beisbol game between El Castillo and Los Raudes, a neighboring village. There is nothing like Nicaraguan beisbol, where the fans go wild equally for a hit, or when the game is paused so the horse can trot off the field. In the end, El Castillo won the game, and everyone walked home to celebrate.

Lakes and Rivers

Hells Angels?

Ferry across Cocibolca

Egrets in a tree

 

Pulling in to El Castillo

We arrived today in El Castillo, a small town on the Río San Juan after a 14 hour water journey. The San Juan River is the main drainage from Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua). During the late 1800´s, U.S. engineers determined that the best canal route across Central America would be up the San Juan River, across Cocibolca, then across the thin flat land bridge to the Pacific. During the 1880´s, while the French flailed in Panama, the U.S. stood by and watched. After the turn of the century, legislation was initiated to build a Nicaragua canal. Ultimately this was scrapped when a French used canal salesman, Philippe Buneau-Varilla successfully managed to convince Teddy Roosevelt and key congressman to buy the Panama idea.

We left our Hotel in the morning by motorcycle and made a couple of stops along the island. Our favorite spot was "Ojo del Agua" (eye of water) which is a natural mineral springs with crystal clear water. Absolutely beautiful. We spent and hour there, then took off for more riding. In the end we made it to Altagracia which is the port where the ferry boat stops. The boat goes up and down the lake twice a week, and we caught the southbound boat for San Carlos (see map). We arrived in San Carlos at 6am after attempting to sleep during the the trip. We then had some breakfast, then headed down the river for a 3 hour trip to El Castillo. We saw many herons, grey and white, living in a lovely river jungle.

El Castillo is a town on the river, centered around a fort that was established in the 1700's to stop British and French pirates from stealing more Spanish gold. The river flows by, quite broad and somewhat brown. Today we mostly rested, washed our very dirty clothes, and managed to Skype to home. We also arranged with some other travelers to do some wildlife viewing tonight and tomorrow.

After that we will be heading back up the river to San Carlos, then south to Costa Rica and a flight home.

Mud is a boy

Going to Ometepe on the lancha

After a swim in Colcibolca (lake Nicaragua)

Chris, Liam, and Carlos in the caldera

Howler Monkeys

Carlos & Liam with Concepción in background

For anyone who has learned Spanish, one of the more difficult things is to remember the gender (masculine/feminine) of various nouns. Today we experienced el lodo, in English, mud. We climbed about 4,000 feet to the top of Volcán Maderas and descended about 300 feet to the floor of the caldera, which is a small lake. 

Yesterday, we traveled from the town of Masaya to Finca Magdalena, on the island of Ometepe. Ometepe is the jewel of Colcibolca, an island of two volcanoes (Concepción and Maderas) which sits in the largest lake in Central America. Ome means ¨two¨in Nahuatl, and Tepe means hills or mountains. The Nahuatl people moved to Nicaragua after being kicked out of Mexico by the Aztecs prior to the arrival of Europeans. Finca (plantation) Magdalena is a farm that has raised coffee and cacao for at least 25 years. It is a beautiful spot on to stay and sits at the base of Volcán Maderas, making it a perfect place to spend the night before climbing the Volcano. We had traveled by bus from Masaya to Rivas, by taxi to San Jorge where the ferry boats go back and forth to  Moyogalpa on the island.

This is the part where we ran into some entrepreneurial youths who offered to rent a 125cc motorcycle to cruise around the island. Well, what could we say? Cruising around on the island was the perfect way to see the island and have some fun. We stopped along the way to watch a local soccer game between two island villages, then took some pretty rocky roads to arrive at Finca Magdalena.

We met our guide, Carlos, last night, and started out this morning at 7:30. We passed through areas of shade grown coffee and cacao (unfortunately we missed harvest time by a month). We saw 3 families of congos (howler monkeys) who have a very distinctive call. Carlos pointed out wild turkeys, armadillos, butterflies, and more plants and trees than we can remember.

There were a couple of benches along the way up, and some new steps that they are putting in. Then about half-way up, we entered into a cloud forest. There were many different orchids growing on the branches, drops from the leaves and branches, and nice coolness to the air. The dirt turned to mud and out feet and lower legs became coated in it as we slipped and slid and climbed our way to the summit. We descended the steep path to the lake and rested for lunch, then began the slog back to the finca.

To our credit, we set the records for both the youngest and oldest climbers that Carlos has led. There were no other kids, and Liam was a real trooper. He is really a great traveller, quite game for just about everything except for mosquito bites and falls in the mud. The vast majority of the hikers are in their 20´s and many made complementary comments about a 10 year old making the thike.

Tomorrow we cycle back to Moyogalpa, then take a ferry boat down to the southern end of the lake, San Carlos, for more adventures.

Masaya

Waiting for the bus to Managua

Volcán Masaya (on the left)

Volcanoes in Nicaragua, looking southeast from Cosinguina

Laguna de Masaya, with Volcán Masaya in the backdrop

We started the day at a very extranjero (foreigner) oriented hostel, the Tortuga Booluda in León, Wi-Fi enabled. The breakfast specialty is self made pancakes which were excellent. Liam and I met a Brit, but stepped on some toes when we said we liked Arsenal, who apparently had played a part in the demise of his team, Sheffield (now in Division 1 of the Football Association).

From León to Masaya, you have to pass (and thus change buses) in Managua which we did.  Anyone traveling in Central America learns quickly to ask ¨where is the bus to…?¨ and stand in line. It took a few hours, but we managed to make it to the town of Masaya which is outside of Managua by about 45 minutes. Masaya is the name of the town, as well as a large lake (Laguna de Masaya) and an active Volcano (Volcán Masaya).

Although the Volcano is a national park, and the only Volcano in Nicaragua that you can drive the rim, there is no public transportation to the top. We hired a taxi and the driver agreed to give us a half hour at the top to make faces into the camera. When the Spanish first arrived in this area, they believed Masaya to be the mouth of hell, because of the huge chasm belching out sulfurous smoke. It wasn't until centuries later that the mouth of hell was shown to be Ann Coulter. We also got to spend a little time in the visitor center, studying the volcanoes of Nicaragua.

Later we walked through the old marketplace of Masaya, which is one of the largest handcrafted marketplaces in Nicaragua. I was unable to find any FSLN (Sandinista) t-shirts or hats, although we did find some gifts. We took a walk to the lake overlook (Malecón), running into many young boys and girls sitting along the rail. Lastly we had a chance to watch the local baseball team (San Fernando) practicing in Roberto Clemente Stadium. Although Clemente was from Puerto Rico, he became involved in the relief work following the 1972 earthquake in Managua. He felt like he had to personally escort the relief donation because Somoza was pocketing the cash and selling the donated goods to people. He died in 1972 while on a relief mission to Nicaragua and is remembered fondly by the country.

We also experienced ¡hot showers! when we got back to our hotel in Masaya, the first since leaving home. Tomorrow, we are heading to Ometepe, which is the island in Lake Niacaragua (Cocibolca) formed by two of the volcanoes in the chain.

León

Bus to El Sauce

Cathedral of León

Reagan, Kissinger, Weinberger

Isla Los Brasiles

Yesterday we made the trip from El Lagartillo to León (see link). The first part of this was a 2 hour road on a packed (I mean standing and pressing flesh) bus from El Lagartillo to Achuapa and then to El Sauce (pronounced sow-say). Part of the reason it was so crowded was that there was a festival of Cristo Negro (Black Jesus) in Sauce. We even met some guys from Denmark who joined in the pilgrimage to Sauce by walking 5 days to get there.

El Sauce to León was quite smooth and we found a hotel, only to discover that ¨budget¨ in Nicaragua might mean no working shower (you also get a clue when the maintenance guy hands you a 5 gallon bucket full of water and says it´s for cleaning.

We walked around León for a couple of hours, seeing some sites. León is one of two cities founded by the Spanish, and of course named after León in Spain (Granada is the other famous colonial city). Originally founded at the base of Volcano Momotombo, it was moved in 1610 when the volcano erupted to its present location. It has the largest church in all of Central America, the cathedral at the center of town, built in 1747.
 During periods of history, León has served as the capital. However, it has always been a hotbed of liberalism, in contrast to the more conservative Granada. Murals around the city attest to its political views. Somoza targeted the city with bombs in 1978. We stopped into the Centro de Cultura and saw a great picture of a former U.S. president.

We also visited the home of Rubén Darío, a poet, and the most renowned Nicaraguan ever (alright not counting Bianca Jagger). We managed to buy a short book of his poetry and Liam read one of them aloud. Other famous Nicaraguans: Augusto Sandino (Sandinista movement took its name from him), Dennis Martinez (MLB pitcher), current president Daniel Ortega.

Liam found his favorite restaurant ever, Pure Earth Cafe, a vegetarian place catering to americans serving pasta, toast & fruit, and pizza (which we had tonight). Next door to the Cafe is Bigfoot Hostel, that we arranged a surfing trip to the Surfing Turtle Lodge (see link). The final score in surfing was Liam & Chris 6 points (number of times we stood up more than a second), Ocean 8 (number of times we got slammed by the waves). The surf was remarkably strong for this time of year; the guidebooks said January was mellow. Needless to say, the beach itself was beautiful and very sparsely used.

We changed hotels to the ¨Hostal Tortuga Booluda¨, surrounded mostly by German speakers. Even better there are working showers. Tomorrow we are heading for Masaya.

Leaving El Lagartillo

Juan Ramón, Yajaira, Monchito, Liam

Grinding Corn

Gallo Pinto, Platanos Maduros, Tortilla

Maribel and a recalcitrant student

We left El Lagartillo yesterday morning for León. There was a little rain last night which is unusual for this time of year. It was with some sadness that we left and said goodbyes to the friends we made this week. We are now in León, one of the two Spanish colonial cities which is in Nicaragua. I had to think back and ask where did the time go?

Then I had to think a little bit about how we spent our time, and how almost everything we did seemed to take more time than at home. Washing up in the morning was an effort. Taking a shower in an outdoor shower stall meant cleaning out the chicken poo first (they like to sleep in the shower), then filling up the water bucket, then taking a sponge bath.

Making tortillas is quite the technical process. First you have to soak the corn in water with lime (calcium carbonate or ¨cal¨in Spanish) starting the night before. The lime helps to loosen the husk of the corn kernel. Then you have to wash the kernels to remove the husks. Next step is to grind the corn (in this case with a hand powered grinder). To grind corn for 8 tortillas feels like doing about 50 pushups.

While Juan Ramón chopped firewood for the day, Yajaira would start the coffee. She makes excellent coffee, using finely ground Nicaraguan coffee in a Turkish coffee manner of brewing. Of course there is always sweeping, watering the paths to cut down the dust, doing laundry by hand and hanging it in the sun, and other chores.

Class was 4 hours per day. We would usually meet our teachers for two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. As a plug for the school, the cost for 1 week of school plus lodging and meals is $160, which is easily worth the cost.

Every afternoon at four, the youth of the town head out to the field to play ball. Beisbol of course. Had you come this week, you would have seen a viejo blanco (old white dude) out playing in the fields with the boys. Nicaraguan boys are invariably excellent at playing baseball which they do from an early age.

For the last few nights, Liam and I would go outside and sit at the bus stop (a covered bench right next to the house) to read, talk about our time, and practice Taekwondo.

More about El Lagartillo

Bairon milking the cow

Monument to the fallen of 1986

Community Cistern, to be filled by the new pump

Swimming at the waterfall

El Lagartillo was founded as a cooperative in 1982, where the land was held in common by the members of the community. This was a very unique time in Nicaraguan history. Since the time of the Spanish conquest, land had been divided and held in the hands of the wealthiest families. In 1979, the hated dictator Anastasio Somoza fled the country in a wave of public outrage that had been rising over the previous years. The Sandinistas (FSLN) stepped in and began to support land reform, purchasing (and confiscating) land from the wealthy owners who had either not been paying taxes on the land or claiming very deflated prices. The land was then offered to cooperatives such as those in El Lagartillo.

Life was good initially for the community, and it began with a handful of families who all held the idea of holding property in common. However, the US, believing that its empire was threatened, financed and armed the Contras who targeted cooperatives (and literacy teachers) in particular, fearing that they were the harbinger of full communism. The contras attacked El Lagartillo in 1984 and six members of the community were killed by the Contras. There is a monument to the fallen. When 1990 came and the Nicaraguans, tired of fighting the US embargo and the Contras, elected Violeta Chamorro, she began a reversal of land reform and passed laws to remove support for cooperatives. El Lagartillo held a vote and decided to let anyone who did not wish to be part of the cooperative, to opt out and receive a share of land. When 1996 came and Arnoldo Alemán was elected (he is now under house arrest for embezzlement), he passed laws making it even harder to financially sustain as a cooperative and the community decided to apportion the remaining land.

Currently there are a few things held in common: the water system, a small forest, the library. There are about 150 people that live in the town. There is a primary school, taught by members of the community and a couple of teachers from Achuapa, a nearby town. There is also a secondary school that serves the region, although they are in need of an English teacher and a science teacher. There is a medical clinic, where once a week a resident physician from a nearby town comes for half a
day. The school, Hijos del Maíz, began in 2004 as a way to support the community. There are 8 teachers, who all underwent an extensive training in teaching Spanish. Most houses use a solar panel and a car battery to supply basic electric needs such as lighting. There are no flush toilets, just outhouses. There is one Clear modem which is shared by the community, and to use it, you have to walk about 10 minutes to where there is a radio tower in sight.

Yesterday, the water system (see previous post) was tested and proved to be quite sufficient. Using 8 solar panels, the pump moved 16,000 liters (about 4000 gallons) from the well in about 2 hours.  To celebrate this, we took a 30 minute hike to a nearby waterfall to take a swim and relax. There were natural rock slides diving spots. We are winding down our week here and there will be a lot to miss.

A Day in the Life, by Liam

Dad´s alarm clock

Me & Yomar, mi profesor

El campo de fútbol

My dad usually wakes me up around 7am. The roosters wake him around 5am. Good thing I'm a sound sleeper. It is a little cool at night I sometimes wake up with bug bites. There is about an hour and a half to get ready for my lesson. For breakfast, Yajaira gives us a galleta with jam on it and some fruit, like fresh pineapple, banana, or papaya. My dad drinks coffee.

My teacher, Yomar, meets me at 9am. We go over verbs, and how they go with different subjects, like yo, tú, él, nosotros, and ellos. We do regular verbs like hablar. comer, and vivir. We do irregular verbs like ir. We talk a lot about new words and what they mean. He makes me do conjugation of verbs for different pronouns. Yomar is the brother of Juan Ramon, our host.

After the lesson, I usually go home and read or play with Monchito until lunchtime. For lunch, Yajaira makes a drink called refresco natural, water with fruit juice. She usually makes something with beans and sometimes rice. After lunchtime, I get to read or play baseball in the road with Monchito and the other boys: Mario, Gabriel, Claudio, and sometimes Juan Ramon. Juan Ramon has a big hammock I like to lie in when it's hot.

In the afternoon, I have class again with Yomar. at 3pm. We usually don't study so hard, but he shows me around the town. At 4pm, all the boys in the town go to a field where there are two soccer goals and we play for an hour or two. The older boys play baseball on the same field.

Then we go home and play some games like tag or sit in the hammock until dinner. Yajaira usually gives us some gallo pinto (beans and rice together) and a tortilla. Also she gives us a drink called Avena, which is oat milk, kind of like horchata. After dinner, the adults watch the tv, a program called "La Fantasma de Elena." Then I get bored and leave. Then we have bible time, hyung time, and time for bed.

Community

Welcome sign to the village Luis hanging laundry The word "community" gets used a lot in the U.S. Probably a better word would be "population" or "group" since we usually are usually referring to a specific set of people.  El Lagartillo (the village where the school Hijos del Maíz is set - see link) is a real community. Not only do the residents live in a given place , but there is a real dialogue that happens by which the people meet, discuss, and make decisions about how to live their common life. Yesterday I managed to go to two committee meetings.The committee of water was meeting to install a new water pump and discuss and learn about the system so as to maintain and take care of it. During the dry season (sometimes called "summer" although it runs from November to May), water is often in short supply in mountainous regions of Central America. Although there is a well, there is no system of bringing the water to where the houses  are. Hence, the project which has been in the works for several years. It is a partnership of El Lagartillo, the regional government, and the government of Spain., The idea is fairly simple: use solar panels to power an electric pump to move the water from the well to a cistern close to where people live. So the installation guy (and his cadre of 2 German engineering students) was talking for about 3 hours to members of the water committee about solar panels, pumps, and maintenance of the equipment, I asked one of the women of the committee to show me notes and was quite impressed at the notes she took. At the end of the meeting they created 3 work crews to do the installation today. Last night I went to the committee of health. Prior to coming, I had offered to bring some health equipment with me and they (the committee) requested via e-mail for a nebulizer and blood pressure cuff. These I found on Craig's list. The meeting last night was to check out the equipment, learn how to use it, and more importantly, decide how it should be stored and made available for everyone. Right now, I am writing this entry from a hillside using the Clear network, using the modem owned and used in common by El Lagartillo. I am quite impressed at the community of El Lagartillo, and feel like they have shown me what community means.

Curveballs

Waiting in Miami

Landing in Managua

You know travelling definitely brings you its share of surprises. We are in Esteli which is about 70 miles north of Managua. The laptop isn't working so I am henpecking this on an iPod.

Liam and I made it fine to Miami, then had an unplanned 10 hour layover. Well the upside was that I managed to get caught up on charting, but by the time we got to Mamagua it was too late to go by bus. We ended up hiring a driver to Esteli. Not exactly chicken bus travel, but I was interested in pushing on from Managua. Then we were walking around this town of 60K and ran into our contact from our school by accident. I guess he doesn't see a lot of hueritos (crackers) walking through town with their kids and guessed it was us.
Tomorrow we bus it to El Lagartillo (see Hijos link) and continue la vida nicaraguense.

¿Why Nicaragua?

Good question. Where would be a good place to take my son for an immersion experience with a Spanish speaking family, be able to see jungle wildlife, but not follow the roads more traveled? Of course there is not just one answer to the question.
Several months back, I began to think about options from Mexico to Panamá. I kept coming back to Nicaragua for its natural beauty, lack of pretention, wonderful spirit of independence, and absence of major tourism. What can you say about a country that has been invaded several times by big brother to the north and yet has managed to neither become a complete banana republic, a drug war zone, or a tourist attraction like some of the neighbors? Add to that a REAL national sport (see Wikipedia link) and that's a place I want to visit.
Next step was to figure out where to go? A bit of web searching yielded the perfect place, Hijos del Maíz (see link). We will be heading straight from Managua to Estelí, then to El Lagartillo where the school is. Hopefully we will have a chance to post from there, although given there are no cars, there might not be internet connections, in which case we will post when we can.

The Guardabarranco, the national bird of Nicaragua, posing with the FSLN (Sandinista) banner