Leaving Granada

We had a nice enough time in Granada but were happy when it was time to leave. It’s a pretty colonial bustling city and we got our shopping done, we arrived in Granada with 3 pairs of shoes and left with 8 pairs!! I only bought two pairs and Alex bought one, the rest are for others. We now have matching flip flops. Awwww how cuuuute! Hehehe….

Any way, we went to catch the bus to Rivas to take us to San Juan del Sur at 12pm. We, of course were running a little late so we approached the bus stop at about 11:55. Then some guy in a school bus starts yelling to us so we started running towards him. I couldn’t understand anything he said but thankfully Alex was there, although he told me later he didn’t understand much either. (heavy Nicaraguan accent) Anyway we got the point that we needed to switch buses to get to Rivas cause the normal bus wasn’t running because it was Sunday. Now we’re on this super duper packed bus with just enough standing space and every one assured us they’d tell us where to get off. I thought we’d get left off at another bus station. In reality they left us off at the side of the road and said cross the road and wait at that truck over there for the bus. We were literally in the middle of nowhere and it was starting to rain and we had a ton of stuff with us. About 5 minutes later, sure enough came along a bus to Rivas. We flagged it down and it picked us up. Again it was super packed but better than the first one. We couldn’t get my pack to fit so the guy was like here give it to me! And we were like okay… and he went around and brought it back on the bus through the back. It worked out rather nicely.

The buses here in Nicaragua are really fun cause every time it stops people come on and sell food and drinks, it’s just a fun cultural expereience. We asked a police officer where to get off and he told us where the bus to San Juan del Sur was. The bus station in Rivas is kinda dirty and there are people selling and yelling all over the place. We then got approached by a real sketchy guy asking for a taxi and we just kept ignoring him. Then another guy came up and said $10 to San Juan. This time he actually had a car marked “taxi”, so we felt good about it. It definitely made the rest of the journey faster and more comfortable, I think we only would’ve saved like 6 bucks on the bus.

We decided that we had a lot of luck in our travels thus far, especially on this day. And to top it off when we got to San Juan del Sur we went to a hotel I had read about and it was $20 a night but it was full. We decided to walk to another one that I had read about and on the way we bumped into this guy who owns Hostel Sunrise which is located about half a block from the ocean and was $15 a night with free internet. The other one was really far away also. So now we’re here and it’s beautiful and relaxing and we don’t know why we didn’t come here sooner! Let’s hope the rest of our journey comes with as much luck as this part did!

Nicaragua

Yesterday Alex and I departed for Nicaragua. We’re now in Granada and I have to say it has been a nothing but interesting journey so far! First of all we decided to take the cheaper route and use the local buses to get here. What this means is that the bus took us to the frontera (border) and then it was up to us to cross it and get all the paper work done. Ohhhh boy was that interesting! I went into it thinking that just because Alex is from Costa Rica and speaks fluent Spanish that it would be super easy, that was not the case. He’d never done it before and all of a sudden I was the one with experience. It’s just so hard at borders because everyone attacks and wants you to use their services. We exchanged some money and totally got ripped off, I knew that we should only do it with the “legal” exchangers, the ones with badges, but at the time with everyone yelling at us and us being really tired we just said the hell with it and went…. 20,000 colones is about $40, 21 cordobas (the Nica currency) is equal to one dollar. We exchanged 20,000 colones and got 420 cordobas back….thats about $20. So we basically got ripped off by half. That sucked, but whats done is done.

Then we went through immigration and customs, all the while having two taxi drivers following us around, which went really smoothly and quickly. I for some reason always get really nervous crossing boarders. But it was fine! Alex said that the immigration in the States should be as easy as it is in Nicaragua! So then we find out that we got in about ½ after the last bus to Granada left. It was dark and we were confused and tired and there were two very persistent “taxi” drivers hounding us. We eventually decided to go with one of them and he took us all the way to Granada. He ended up being really cool and gave us his number if we ever need anything. But the whole ride up here I was nervous he was gonna highjack us or something ridiculous like that. Oh and I forgot to mention that we had to walk across the boarder. From where the bus left us in Costa Rica it’s a 1 ½ kilometer walk to the immigration post in Nicaragua. Makes for an interesting walk though!

Alls well and good now. We found what seems like the last double bed room in Granada, thanks to a local who brought us around to all the hotels, by about 10:30 at night. We went out to the main strip after to get some food. I had an amazing papaya and milk batido (it’s like a yummy smoothy) and Alex ordered a plate of rice with vegetables. The plate cost $4 and it was huuuuuge! We didn’t eat it all and then this little boy came up to us from the street and asked if he could have it. We weren’t going to bring it home so I said yes. After it got packed up we left to find him. I just kind of put my hand out to give it to him and another little boy grabbed it from me. I said it was for the other one and just kinda left. When I looked back they were fighting over it, like for real fighting. I felt bad but I figured its better to get it into one of their stomachs than have it be thrown away. And that concludes our first exciting day in Nicaragua, only 60 more hours here! (I have to be out of the country from 72 hours to renew my visa.)

Photos!!

Me working hard on the rebar cages to make the foundation for the library project! Look at that awesomeness!

Mango Harvest! These are just a few of the mangos we harvested from some of the trees around the property. Sole was very excited about all of them!

The Cork. This is where I am living. It is a timber frame, waddle and daub structure and it is beautiful! For those of you who don't know timber framing is a natural style of building that is built to take advantage of the strength of the wood it's self. There are no nails in this whole structure and technically it could be disassembled, although I think it might be kind of difficult! Waddle and daub is an earthen building technique using a mixture of clay, sand, straw and manure. It is then applied to a bamboo frame that is woven like a basket to makeup the back bone of the walls. Last year I helped to daub all these walls so it's really nice to see it up and running.

This is just one view of the house, its actually the room that I'm living in too. You'll notice a pirate flag...the explanation for that is that the house has a nautical theme and is based off of an interpretation of a song called The Starboard Cork.
This is Ion plucking feathers off of our first chicken dinner at the Ranch! I helped him when I was involved in my first ever chicken slaughter. I saw it all the way from the chicken coop to the dinner table! It was pretty awesome. It really makes you appreciate the animal and the food you eat when you see the whole process.
A view of one of the beautiful gardens at the Ranch, with a ray of sun peeking through!

Alex and I in our friday night best!

Elote

Yesterday I accompanied Chepo (Alex’s Dad and a main player in the community) to pick corn. Here they use elote to say corn on the cob and after that it is maiz again. The farm is located in the town next to Mastatal, called San Miguel. I asked Chepo why his farm is all the way over there and not in Mastatal and he said because there is a fundation called ADALAI or something like that that promotes agriculture and they bought sections of land for people years ago, and now that is where his farm is. He also said it’s cause it has a beautiful view, and oh man…..he was right. The farm is on an incredibly steep hill and you can see the whole national park, La Congreja. It is a beautiful beautiful mountain range and there is nothing like that view! It was a really fun experience, tiring but fun. As I have been getting more into the gardening here it’s really an incredible experience to harvest food. The fact that I can plant something and then see it through to the kitchen is pretty amazing. Now I know why all of you gardeners love gardening so much!! I’ve always appreciated it but have never had my own experience with it.

Any way we harvested sweet potatoes (camotes), corn (elote) and plantains (platanos). And we also learned how to walk on this super steep hill. Chepo was just bopping around up and down the slope and Mary and I (another volunteer) were scrambling around and trying our best not to fall and knock down all the corn stalks! Chepo told us a story about how he moved from this area east towards the carribean coast where the terrain in really flat. He lived there for several years and soon became accustomed to the flat land. BUT then…. He moved back here to the mountains and had to recondition his legs again to the steep terrain. I don’t think I’m quite accustomed to the mountains yet!!

Terciopelo

The Tercio is the most dangerous and venomous snake in the region. If you get bit by one and can’t get to the hospital in an efficient amount of time there is a high possibility that you will not make it. In all the time I’ve spent here I’ve never had a close encounter with one. Sure, pretty regularly you hear about people killing a tercio (fer de lance in English) but I’ve never encountered one myself…until this past weekend.

Alex, Ion (Alex’s sister Kattia’s son) and I went down to the waterfall this past Sunday and we were walking along when we noticed there was a weird patch of wind above us. Very strange because there wasn’t much wind and it was only in this one patch that we noticed it. So we all stopped to look up to see what it might be. It was then that Alex heard what he describes as the sound of a fish moving in water and looked down to see a huge tercio pelo moving off the side of the path about 2 feet from where we were standing. It was probably about 4-5 feet long and a little thinner than the width of my wrist. I thankfully only saw the tail of it when it was scurrying away but Ion and Alex both saw the whole thing and were completely scared. The weird thing is that venomous snakes normally attack and don’t normally run off like this one did. We attribute it to the fact that we stopped and maybe didn’t scare it. And we stopped because of the strange patch of wind. Who knows why that wind was there and what would have happened if we had scared it enough to strike at one of us…..

Oh life in the Jungle!!