November 2006
After a quick 2-night stay in Tegucigalpa to see Todd, Erinn and Kelly and re-pack our bags, Ross and I took an early bus to get down to Leon, Nicaragua. Our first bus, which took us to Esteli, was a bit classier than the chicken buses. In keeping with this, Ross decided to eat a packet of saltines and dump the remaining crumbs directly from the packet into his mouth. But before he did, he nudged me and said loudly (because he had his headphones on), “YOU WANNA SEE CLASS?” I assured him, “Oh, I think I just did.”
The bus also had a great music selection—when they played a Spanish version of that 80s hit song “Gloria” (“se llama Gloria!), I remembered Kelly had told us Nicaragua has great music, and figured we were finally getting a taste of it.
In Estelí, we switched to a chicken bus (one of the old converted US school buses) to travel to Leon. It was actually a really pleasant ride—everything was lush and green, the sky was brilliantly blue, and even though some of the roads were unpaved it was nice not being thrown around mountain curves a la Guatemala.
Nicaragua is known for having friendly people, and is a little more “undiscovered” by tourists, compared to other countries in the region (probably in part because of the misperception that there is still an armed conflict in Nicaragua, when in fact the country has been peaceful for more than a decade.)
LEÓN
We decided to go to Leon, in the Pacific lowlands, first because Leon is known as an artistic and intellectual center (we wanted to meet our polar opposites), with lots of university students and liberal-themed murals decorating the buildings.
Like a lot of Central American cities, Leon has a central park with trees and fountains, a lot of charming colonial architecture, and horse-drawn carts that share the streets with cars. Leon’s historical rival city is Granada, which is more politically and socially conservative (both cities have been capitals of Nicaragua in the past).
A dark cloud settles over our visit to Leon...
We enjoyed Leon for a few days, but decided to move on to Granada in search of volunteer opportunities for me, cafes for Ross to write in, and of course, more adventures.
GRANADA
Granada is strikingly beautiful—it’s located on the North shore of Lake Nicaragua, has palm trees lining the streets and shading its central park, colorful houses and centuries-old churches (some restored, some in ruins and charred from Granada’s historical popularity in the “ransacking and burning” department), and to top it all off, Volcan Mombacho is towering in the background.
Central Park! 
We hung out around here a lot...I regret not buying more ice cream from these guys.
Just off Central Park
The city is small enough to be walkable, and has a lot of cute cafes and restaurants with courtyards, so we spent a lot of time outside our hostel, The Bearded Monkey. But as far as hostels go, The Bearded Monkey was nice, and it had its own restaurant and bar (convenient for people-watching) and plenty of hammocks for relaxing.
The Bearded Monkey’s restaurant had a pretty good music selection, including a CD of Johnny Cash doing covers of songs like Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” Comparing his version to Tom Petty’s more lighthearted version, Ross and I observed that with Johnny Cash’s deep, intense voice and slow, deliberate singing style, lines like “I’ll stand my ground, and I won’t back down,” made you want to yell, “That’s right Johnny! Keep on fighting the good fight, whatever it is!” Ross and I applied Johnny Cash impressions to other Tom Petty songs (“The waaaaiting….is the….hardest part…”) and then to other soulful songs like “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” the “Facts of Life” theme song (“you taaaake the good…..you taaake the bad…”) and to the Saved By the Bell themes (both the original and College Years versions).
We also enjoyed observing the travelers who passed through The Bearded Monkey, like the smooth guy sitting at the bar who responded to a girl’s flirtation by placing his flat palm on the side of her face and rubbing downwards, and the guy and girl who attempted to covertly shower together. This involved the guy going in first, with the girl following a few minutes later, doing a little detective work to figure out which shower he was in, and then scratching on the door—very subtle. Then, after all that trouble to be so secretive, they would talk loudly about really boring things.
There was also a surfer guy who kept putting naked travel pictures of himself—standing on a beach but covered by a guy walking buy with a surf board, or behind a strategically placed rock—as the background on the hostels’ computers. The guy then put up signs on the bulletin boards above the computers that said, “Did you like the picture? Go to http://www.mynakedtrip.com/.” (Ross reset the computer background as soon as he sat down to use it, just to piss off the narcissist).
Our hostel was also the site of many intellectually stimulating 80s cartoon viewings on Ross’s computer—Thundercats, He-Man, Voltron, Silverhawks, Jem and the Holograms, Transformers, Bravestarr, and M.A.S.K. Many of these shows take place on other planets, and the ones set on Earth involve superpowers like the ability to change into a rock star by talking to an earring or the ability to defy laws of physics by putting on a special mask that enables its wearer to fire a blinding blast of energy or create an anti-gravity field. My favorite scene was in an episode of M.A.S.K., where Matt Trakker’s son, Scott, appears to be crushed beneath a boulder that was rolling through some long hallway they were in. Just as Matt Trakker announces in an even tone, “V.E.N.O.M. will pay for what they did to Scott,” Scott materializes in a doorway, having been saved by a magical arrowhead he was wearing around his neck. His father, upon discovering that his only son is in fact alive, simply declares, “Scott. You’re alive,” and runs to him. Ross and I recreated that poignant moment with several variations containing the same emotional depth:
1. Scott….of all things! You’re alive.
2.Scott….well, color ME surprised.
3.Scott….well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. You’re alive.
4.Scott…………….....Well.
Care to join us for some 80s cartoons?
Our hostel was also a forum for brilliant conversations. When Ross asked me to hand him a pen off the dresser, I tried to hand him one. I stared at him, wondering why he wouldn’t take it. After a few seconds he said, “That’s a razor, dumbass.” At least Ross wasn’t one to run a joke into the ground with lines like, “time to go edit my face now”….oh wait.
In my defense, though, I wasn’t traveling with Einstein. When referring to his crush on “The Office” actress Jenna Fischer, who was married at the time, Ross said he would like to go out with her but didn’t want to be a “housebreaker.” “You mean a homewrecker?” I asked. “Or do you mean you don’t want to be the one training her not to pee on the carpet?”
Life outside of the hostel wasn’t really any less weird, though. A lot of the places we frequently visited had split personalities—for example, the restaurant would be a business but their bathroom would be part of someone’s house, with toothbrushes and shampoo sitting around, or in one case, with a bike resting in the shower…..or the laundry place would have a blender sitting out on the counter with the folded clothes (After an episode in which the owner of that laundromat showed up at our hostel to retrieve someone else’s socks that she had mistakenly thrown in with my laundry, Ross and I decided they should have a checklist for customers to fill out when dropping off their laundry—Wash, Dry, Shred, Lose).
Ross continued to be offered weed by passing strangers (once from a passing taxi driver who beeped and called out the window, “marijuana?”). I, on the other hand, was offered the gift of romance by teenage boys practicing their English on foreigners (my favorites were “I loave you” and the under-the-breath “Good-bye my love.”)
But don’t let this fool you—our stay in Granada was not just about glamour and sex, drugs and rock-‘n’-roll. I spent most of my days volunteering at La Esperanza Granada (www.la-esperanza-granada.org), a nonprofit organization that works in 4 pueblos outside Granada by tutoring students, offering health services through the school, and organizing other community development projects like a library, a community center and women’s co-ops.
La Esperanza Granada (LEG) is very grassroots, in that it came together just a few years ago when a group of expats and locals decided they wanted to do something about the conditions in some of the small towns on the outskirts of Granada. In 2001 a Dutch family donated money to provide school supplies, backpacks, shoes and tuition fees (needed for secondary school) for the students in poor schools in the Granada area. While this benefited those attending the schools, it also provided an incentive for a lot more kids to come to school regularly, and teachers and resources that were already stretched thin became a little overwhelmed. So La Esperanza Granada, which has a Board of both expats and locals, was created in 2002 to organize volunteer efforts and donations.
The main focus of LEG is providing educational resources in all four schools. Its main goal is for every child to be able to read, write and do math well, because even if their school system isn’t good, this foundation at least gives them a chance for a fair future. The volunteers also help in other subjects, like art, science and physical education, and provide support services for the kids who go on to secondary school (since their primary school education is not as good as some of their secondary school classmates’, this support is important to prevent dropouts).
The volunteers don’t try to take over the roles of the teachers, but they do provide valuable help to the schools because often there is one teacher for every two to four grades. The educational system is also a little archaic in some ways—often the teacher will write a lesson on the chalk board and the children are supposed to write it down and memorize it, so the children who can barely read and don’t get past the first couple words can get left behind. So, extra help from volunteer tutors improves this situation. LEG isn’t trying to change the culture in the schools—it is mainly providing extra resources and manpower to improve the children’s learning opportunities. The volunteer tutors at LEG (expats from the US, Europe and other places) work with the approval of Nicaragua’s Ministry of Education, within the curriculum it has set, to provide supplemental tutoring to students outside of class.
In addition to supplying tutoring, LEG uses private donations to provide tuition assistance to secondary school students, pay the salaries of extra teachers at the schools to improve the student-teacher ratio, and support other community improvement projects (for example, re-roofing and installing windows, doors and electricity in run-down classrooms, installing ceiling fans and whiteboards in all classrooms, supplying uniforms and equipment to a baseball team so it could join the local league, repairing desks, building swings and see-saws on the playground, building a cement stage area for shows and presentations, installing a system of water supply to the school, and building a shelter for cooking the school meals). Since LEG is a small organization with very little red tape, it is able to respond quickly to practical school and community needs like these, so their work is very hands-on.
LEG has also built a health clinic at one of the schools and pays the salary of the school nurse (who also serves as a general community nurse), and supplies medication for the clinic (through in-kind donations and by purchasing medications locally, since it is much more cost-effective to buy them cheaply from local manufacturers with donated money). LEG also pays for and supplies vouchers for students and community members who need to visit the Alabama Clinic, a medical facility in Granada, and has recently started a dental program in collaboration with the Archdiocese of New Orleans Mission Group.
In addition to the medications, LEG also tries to supply vitamins to the children. Since most of these families have a diet of rice, beans and oil for all three meals, they are not underfed, but they are often malnourished. The community health projects benefit from one the organization’s strengths, which is that if there is a need for something, current and former volunteers will quickly rally to take care of it. For example, one former volunteer recently donated enough vitamins for all of the children ages 3-7 in these schools to take vitamins for a year. When the dental program produced a higher bill than expected, since there were so many untreated dental problems that were caught, several former volunteers quickly raised funds back home and made donations to help cover the unexpected expenses.
LEG also works on some community projects—volunteers help train groups of women in making handicrafts that they sell through LEG’s office gift shop, with the goal that these women’s co-ops eventually become self-sufficient and are able to purchase their supplies, make their handicrafts and do the bookkeeping themselves. Selling the jewelry enables the women to provide more for their families—for example, adding more nutritious foods to meals—without requiring them to change their lifestyles. It was really cool working in the shop and selling tourists the jewelry, because each piece is marked with the name of the woman who made it, and the money goes directly to the women.
LEG has also built a community center where volunteers can hold workshops on anything from health and hygiene topics to computer skills. The community center also houses the library of donated books, which is helpful in tutoring activities. Since I was only in Granada for a few weeks (to tutor in the schools, you have to be there for at least 3 months), I did a lot of work in transforming the donated children’s books into something the kids could use when learning to read. Since a lot of the donated books are in English, some of the volunteers who were fluent in Spanish would print out translations (often simplifying the reading level as well, so it could be used to teach younger kids to read). My job for the books was to match up the labels, cut and paste them onto the pages, and keep inventory. It was fairly easy, concrete and practical, which was nice. It was also the type of task that allowed you to talk to the other volunteers in the office while working, which was cool.
La Esperanza Granada Headquarters
Jewelry made by the women's co-op
The volunteer coordinator, Pauline, is a middle-aged Australian woman who moved to Granada a couple years ago. She’s great and she would crack me up because she was so frank and blunt, but always with good intentions, and I liked hearing her chat about different challenges and happenings in the schools, communities and in LEG itself over the past few years. I also loved that the volunteers were from all different places—there was the Austrian girl who liked to go out partying in the few bars Granada had to offer, the young Dutch couple who came back from a weekend trip with a story about how they almost died when their minibus drove over the side of the mountain and caught on a tree, the Spanish girl who was in university at Australia and would tell me we had “heaps” (pronounced: “hips”) of books to translate….and a handful of other interesting characters of assorted nationalities. At one point, when I was doing inventory of the medical supplies for the school nurse, I came across some medicine that had a generic drug name that I didn’t recognize, because it was in French. So I asked the Swiss-Italian girl, who spoke French but very little Spanish, what the name of the drug was in English. I recorded that, then asked the Spanish girl, who also happened to be in the office, for the translation from English so I could record it in the books in Spanish as well.
Just outside the office in "downtown" Granada...
Being in the office was pretty cool because there were always people coming in and out, and there was always something to do. Plus, it was close to some good cafes, so I got to take lunch breaks and meet up with Ross! But there were also some challenges working there—there is kind of a drug use/glue sniffing problem among teenage street kids in Granada, so a lot of the time they would come in, high, and try to do things to the office or the women’s co-op jewelry we were selling. I wasn’t afraid for our safety or anything, but they were doing things to be deliberately disrespectful to us, like trying to kiss our arms or lick us or sit on the furniture. And they looked harmless, like they were 8 or 9, but they were actually teenagers who just looked much younger.
They were mostly a nuisance, and they would usually leave when Pauline threatened to call the police. But one day while Pauline was at lunch, when we were trying to ignore them instead of forcing them out, they decided to steal some jewelry to get our attention. So Pauline told another volunteer and me to go down to the police station and file a report, so that they would come back looking for the kids, to show them that they couldn’t get away with that behavior. I figured, Pauline knows this place much better than either of us did, but I still felt ridiculous trying to explain, in broken Spanish, how some street kids had come in and stolen some jewelry from our shop—I’m sure they had other things to worry about and we sounded like spoiled girls, even though it wasn’t our own jewelry we were complaining about. But finally, when things were starting to get frustrating (the police were very nice but I have a feeling they were smirking behind our backs), Pauline’s local friend from the hostel next door to our office showed up at the police station on his bike, and said that the kids returned the jewelry to the store (probably realizing it would be a stupid way to get in trouble) and that we didn’t need to file a police report. Phew!
As much as I enjoyed the gift shop/office and the weekly volunteer happy hours I went to, I also loved walking through the pueblos when volunteers would give tours to interested travelers, which took us through the villages and school areas. The people in these communities were very friendly, and the land itself was tropical and bright green and beautiful…but the houses were a disaster. There were a few nice ones, but most of them had dirt floors and were made of tin and flimsy plywood hammered together, often with an electricity meter mounted to the outside wall. Most of the homes were assembled right along the main path near the schools, which is a problem because the land doesn’t belong to them—about 200 families are just squatters. That’s fine for now, but as the area develops more, they will probably get forced off the land. So that leads me to…another cool organization whose founder I met with, Casas de la Esperanza (http://www.casas-de-la-esperanza.org/).
Casas de la Esperanza was started by a Spanish couple living in Massachusetts, and also works with Americans and Nicaraguans to help the squatters in one of the poor pueblos outside Granada (la Prusia) to buy their own land and build their own houses with micro-credits, paid back without interest.
I met with Angel, the “husband” part of that Spanish couple, who told me that he and his wife had purchased several plots of land near the schools that the community residents could build their houses on. They didn’t want to give handouts, so they instead they just substantially lowered the amount of money that villagers would have to pay for one of the blocks of land to build a house, charging just $50, to be paid back over time. Interested families are also supplied with loans of up to $1,000 for building materials, water and electricity, which also is paid back over time without interest. One of the local community leaders, a friendly and well-liked woman named Angelica, is in charge of ordering the supplies and collecting payments, and her brother has designed the houses that are being built, which include two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen/living room and a porch. The buildings are made of cement and are simple and clean. I found it interesting that families and in-laws were purposely building their houses so close that they were almost touching—I guess that is what is familiar and comfortable to them.
Angel seemed to know everyone we passed along the road up to the new housing plots, and it was obvious he truly loved the place. But he was also very matter-of-fact about how, while many people were benefiting greatly from the project, others didn’t take Casas de la Esperanza up on the offer because they are wary of spending the money or are holding out for someone to give them a house that they won’t have to pay for. He also told me that, despite the very poor living conditions in some of the houses, an elderly couple who was offered one of the new houses almost free of charge simply did not wish to move, so instead some volunteers just installed a new roof to make their current house a little more livable. Still, it was exciting to see the plots where the residents-to-be had started their construction (they help each other out with the labor). It’s also great that one of the plots Angel has purchased has a natural well, because water is scarce in la Prusia, and is only supplied to the homes for a few hours every other day, at a very high price. The well will allow the community to access its water more frequently and affordably.
Once the building is more complete and includes a community center, Angel has plans for educational workshops on technical skills and other activities. I’m excited about staying in touch with both La Esperanza Granada and Casas de la Esperanza, since I’ve walked through the villages, been introduced to some of the families (and ridden in one family’s pickup truck), and can see that both of these organizations do really cool work. I plan to stay in touch with Pauline about things I can do to help out from here, like searching for places online to recruit volunteers, or providing Spanish-language health materials for volunteers to give health and hygiene workshops down there (since it’s much easier and cheaper for me to do online research from here). I’ve also given out a lot of the co-op’s jewelry as gifts…so you know, I’ve gotten that back-breaking part out of the way.
I enjoyed staying in Granada for three weeks, volunteering and getting to know the city a little bit, but I’m also glad Ross and I got to take advantage of Granada’s prime location as a jumping-off point for other cool activities. We were just quick chicken-bus ride away from Masaya, famous for its market and baseball games. My favorite part of the market experience was when, among the crowded stalls of handicrafts, a true masterpiece appeared: a taxidermy collection that included preserved lizards, raccoons, and a turtle standing on top of a small alligator. If only I’d had unlimited space in my luggage for gifts...I have to say, though, that I also enjoyed when Ross spotted a middle-aged Nicaraguan man, walking around with his family and cluelessly wearing a tshirt that said, in English, “I’m not looking for Mr. Right…I’m looking for a fixer-upper.
After the market, Ross and I headed to the baseball game at Roberto Clemente Stadium (named after the Puerto Rican baseball star who died in a plane accident while en route to Nicaragua to do earthquake relief work in 1972).
Baseball is bigger than soccer in Nicaragua, but this popularity doesn’t translate into a fancy ballpark experience. It was modest and low-key, and we particularly enjoyed the “bar” (a plank of wood placed across two barrels) and the rum vendor, who walked around with a tray of rum and drink-making products tied around his neck, just as casually as if it were popcorn and soda.
See Ross’s game recap here:
http://themiddlefoamfinger.blogspot.com/2006/11/take-me-out-to-el-partido-de-besbol.html.
Granada also proved to be a prime location when Kathleen visited, toward the end of our stay there. When she arrived at our hostel, Ross and I were both sitting in the common area—Ross in the café area, and me at the computers. When the front desk asked if they could help her, Kathleen said “I’m looking for Ross Conkey and Jessi Steinitz,” expecting to be shown to our room. Instead, they pointed and said “Well, Ross is over there, and Jessi is over there…” Guess we’d been staying there a little while.
We spent the next few days wandering around exploring Granada, trying out restaurants and cafes (and in my case, embarrassing myself while attempting to pose with rusty bike on the street en route to one of the cafes—in slow motion, in front of a long line of people waiting outside the bank, I felt my 2-liter bottle of water slip from my fingers. It landed in a thunderous crash into a big rain puddle, projecting brackish water everywhere, as a line of heads all turned at once to see who the idiot was posing with the rusty bike and splashing around in the puddles).
Passers-by are about to get a show in 2 seconds...
Kathleen also joined us in people-watching at Bearded Monkey—she was a co-witness to the aforementioned Super-Suave Face Rub pick-up move, the short-shorts extravaganza, and other social skills showcases.
We figured we should take advantage of the fact that Granada is on the coast of Lake Nicaragua, which is the largest lake in Central America (so large, in fact, that investors at one point considered building a canal through Nicaragua instead of Panama to join the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans). The lake is also home to a freshwater shark—the bullshark—which has adapted to the point of migrating up the Rio San Juan from the Caribbean Sea and surviving in a freshwater environment. There used to be a large bullshark population in the lake, but a few decades back, during the Somoza regime, most of the shark population in Lake Nicaragua was killed for a Japanese sharkfin plant built nearby, so these days there supposedly aren’t too many sharks swimming around the lake.
Lake Nicaragua has around 430 islands. We decided to visit Isla de Ometepe, one of the most famous ones, which has two volcanoes (Volcan Concepcion is still active, and Volcan Maderas is extinct and has a crater lake), as well as small coastal villages and lots of forest. We took a 4-hour ferry ride across the lake, from Granada to Altagracia, one of the two main towns on Ometepe.
Boarding the ferry to Ometepe...
We found a new “friend” in the 62-year-old American guy who started talking to us while we were waiting in line for ferry tickets. Once we were on the boat, when he started talking to Kathleen about how he had been to Florida and was familiar with the different exits off the highways near where she was from, Ross and I figured this was our cue to extricate ourselves from the excitement in that conversation.
We moved to another side of the ferry to sit and enjoy the breeze and gentle spray, which quickly turned into water splashing up and threatening to soak us and our bags. While this was happening, Kathleen was busy documenting the establishment of the “hammock colony,” during which a population of hammocks sprung up around us, slowly but surely trapping us where we were sitting. Early on, our 62-year-old American friend had tried to sit in one and it overturned, throwing him on the ground. He laughed and let Kathleen take his picture, and she later noted, “the hammock colony rejects those that are not their own.” Kathleen documented our forlorn expressions as we gazed out at the horizon, and also laughed at us as we tried to make our exit a few hours later—Ross’s bag was trapped underneath one of the hammock ropes, and I very smoothly woke someone up when I attempted to sneak out of my corner by ducking under one of the hammock ropes.
THE HAMMOCK COLONY, as observed by Kathleen
Captions courtesy of Kathleen
The first hammock colonists get settled.
Provisions for the long voyage. High hopes.
More hammock colonists heed the call.
The hammock market is exploding; potential colonists Jessi and Ross debate whether to commit.
Ross makes the seminal decision: Hammock life it will be. 
More new hammock colonists heed the call.
They reject one who is not their own.
Hammock colony life is great.
Look at all of our new hammock colony friends. Sigh.
Dreaming of bright futures in hammock colonizing.
Maybe we should stake out our land first.
Let's get further acquainted with our fellow colonizers.
On further thought, maybe we should talk about how we can commandeer a hammock of our own. 
Our plan's not working out so well.
More colonists; guess we're stuck in the corner.
When we finally disembarked from the ferry that night, we took a van along bumpy dirt roads and arrived at our hostel, Casa Hotel Istian. We entered through a dirt-floor restaurant and were greeted warmly and then warned that we could only stay a maximum of two nights because they had reservations. We assured them that was fine, since we had plans to move on to other parts of the island the next day. That, and we figured we’d be able to tear ourselves away from the dead-bug-covered beds and tabletops.
After dropping our bags off in the room, we came back to the dining room for dinner. The waiter shook the bugs off our table cloth and flipped it over, and brought us our menus. When he came back to take our orders, Kathleen asked him, “The sandwich—does it come with fries?” to which he replied, “Okay, the sandwich,” and moved on to take Ross’s and my orders. I ordered a pineapple licuado, but after tasting it I figured they had confused it with “pineapple and ham licuado.” I passed it around to Kathleen and Ross to sample, and they had the following exchange:
Kathleen: It just tastes like not quite ripe piña…
Ross: Wait for it…
Kathleen: Yep. Barbecue.
(Kathleen later referred to this as “20 Questions: What was last on this cutting board?”)
There were several dogs who came over to our table—we were joking that their ears perked up when they heard Kathleen order “the sandwich,” as if they were thinking, “Oh, the sandwich! There are always leftovers from that one!” Each dog had a distinct personality—one had a bouncing twitch, one was a spaz running and jumping everywhere, and one seemed to be the most adept at finessing these situations to get food. When we returned to our room, after shaking the bugs off our sheets and peeking through the holes in them, we took pictures of how we figured the dogs would hide in our room—the twitchy one would be hiding under the sheets, suspiciously bobbing up and down, the smart one would somehow figure out how to climb up the random rope hanging from our ceiling, and the spaz would run around in a frenzy, jump into a wall and knock himself out, collapsing in a heap on the bed.
We woke up the next morning to begin what would be the Worst Day Ever. First of all, we woke up in Casa Hotel Istian, with a blanket of dead bugs on top of our sheets. I thought this might still be a good day when we wandered out to the beach in front of our hostel, and when I took in the gorgeous views of volcanoes and all the lush green vegetation around us.
But it was all a trick—that was to be the last highlight for a long while. Due to the erratic and inconvenient bus schedule on the island, we packed up all our belongings and carried them on what turned out to be a two-hour trek across the island, in the heat, on dirt roads.
We tried to hitchhike a couple times, with no luck, but there was very little traffic across the island at all. The walk itself was nice and scenic, and we passed interesting houses and lots of farm animals.
This, however, was overshadowed by the heat and billions of pounds of bags we were unexpectedly forced to carry across the island.
Also, it was lovely when cute little kids wandered down from their houses, curious, to greet us with an outstretched hand and the national warm welcome, “Una cordoba?”
We finally, finally arrived in Merida, and we thought it would all be smooth sailing from there.
We dropped off our bags in our rooms (so what if my bunk bed had a huge spider living in one corner above my pillow?) and ate lunch in the hostel’s café.
The fact that they had a sign saying “you must fallow these rules” should have clued me in that the word “filet” on the menu meant nothing to them, but I stupidly ordered the “fish filet,” which came out as a whole fish, bones and scales and teeth intact.
Despite that little brush with nature, the lake was beautiful and the water beckoned to us, so Ross, Kathleen and I decided to rent kayaks.
We had the bright idea to put Kathleen in one by herself, and for Ross and me to try to handle a two-person kayak together, despite that fact that neither of us knew what we were doing.
We can see where this is headed...
We had flipped over within minutes of getting in the water, but laughed about it and hoped that my camera would be okay. Apparently, however, the inside of these kayaks fill with water pretty easily, so when we combined an off-balance kayak with our stellar kayaking expertise, it got to the point where even a strong breeze would tip us over.
The lake looks beautiful...and deceptively peaceful...
The lake shows its true colors...
After wrestling with our kayak for an hour or two, and watching our sunscreen, water bottle and other belongings float away in the water (and praying that we wouldn’t come across any bull sharks), Ross and I decided to abandon our idea of kayaking all the way to the Rio San Juan (Kathleen would just have to fill us in on it, since she was already way ahead of us, on her way there with no problems).
Since it was pretty much impossible for us to get back in the kayak to paddle to shore (it kept tipping over), we just awkwardly swam and dragged it with us. We spotted some people on the shore and when we pulled up, two teenage boys found a cup for us and helped us clear out all the water from the inside of the kayak. We were eternally grateful for their friendliness and help, and when we set back out in our non-waterlogged kayak, it felt like we were in a different vehicle. We couldn’t wait to get back to our hostel, and I told Ross excitedly, “this time two hours from now, we’ll be clean and dry.” (Apparently this activity was more character-building than mind-building).
Even though my shower was cold that night, I think it ranks up there in my top ten best showers of all time. When Kathleen finally returned and joined us for dinner a couple hours later, we found out that she had also pulled up onto shore at one point to talk with some young boys. We wondered if it had been the same guys who helped us out; Kathleen said she wasn’t sure, but that she had gotten a kiss on the cheek after the guy asked for her necklace and she gave it to him.
She told us that when she looked back and saw how off course and inept we were in the kayak, she wondered if we were just going to kayak all the way to San Jorge instead of taking the ferry there the next day.
The next morning, Kathleen woke up at the crack of dawn to do a volcano hike,
View of Ometepe from Kathleen's hike
and then in the early afternoon the three of us set off with a driver (NO MORE WALKING!) who took us across the island to our ferry. It’s not even a super-long drive, but because the roads are all bumpy, sandy and unpaved, it takes a while. Luckily, Kathleen had her Toña beer in the front seat to keep her refreshed after her long hike. We stopped to pick up a Spanish girl and give her a lift (we did not want to see anyone relive the troubles of our Merida trek the day before), fought with cows over right of way in the road, and eventually arrived at the dock. From there, we took the ferry back across the lake to San Jorge, and took a taxi back to Granada to stay one last night at the Bearded Monkey. When we arrived at Bearded Monkey, the only room they had reserved for us was one with a full-size bed, so we made the most of our triple matrimonial room and passed out in it.
Goodbye, Granada!
The next day, Ross, Kathleen and I caught our bus to Tegucigalpa, and enjoyed a long ride of being entertained by awesome 80s music videos. At the border customs stop, we also had front row seats to a young officer flirting with a girl whose mother or grandmother kept playing matchmaker and egging them on (a scene Kathleen named, “How to Pick Up a Man in Uniform”).
Finally, we arrived in Tegucigalpa, and Kathleen and I stayed in a hostel while Ross stayed with Todd, Erinn and Kelly at Todd’s house. Their friend Tom was also visiting and staying with them, although he had left by the time I showed up the next morning. It was probably just as well for him--I came bearing gifts of donuts from the local Dunkin Donuts knockoff, DK Donuts, and they were um…not so fresh-tasting. That, however, did not stop me from eating one, because I never say no to donuts.
From Todd’s house, we headed to the airport to begin our long journey home. I was bummed that our adventure trip was over—what would I do without my ham-pineapple licuados?--, but I was also already planning what shampoo I would use for my first hot, clean shower at home. Plus, I figured if I got nostalgic and needed a reminder of one of those long inter-country bus rides, I could always look up the video for Total Eclipse of the Heart.
Oh, that reminds me, while sitting in a café in Central America, Ross and I discovered what we think is pretty much the best music video ever made: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2149699125105614146&q=miguel+bose+amante+bandido&total=72&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=7
Enjoy.
To see more pictures:
Nica
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZtGbhkzbNWV2&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5
Ometepe
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZtGbhkzbNWWJ&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5
