shot of volcan concepcion from the porch of Finca Magdalena on New Years day
9 January 2010
Hey, chochachos! Happy New Years, etc. I hope you guys all spent it the way I like to in America, which is drinking an entire bottle of Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider all by myself and steadily working my way through a tub of Red Vines while reading online comics. God, I miss the states. Instead, I had to settle for 12 crummy days in lame ‘ol Nicaragua…the soaring, smoking volcanoes, the immense monkey-rimmed lakes and lagoons, the stretches of pristine beach with sexy curly waves, all totally rideable and such…what I would have given to trade it all for 30 minutes on YouTube and some FunDip. But alas, the sacrifices I make as a selfless Peace Corps volunteer are mighty and I was forced to welcome the New Year in my new favorite Central American country. I know. I know. It’s sad. Sucks to be me!
With plans to meet my PC buddy Gabe in the southern Honduran town of Choluteca, I waved goodbye to a howling Igor and strolled down the road at about 9am. After a delightful jalon in the back of a nice couple’s pick-up, I grabbed a bus headed south at about 11:00am and was high-fivin’ Gabe by 2:00pm. We shared a Tupperware of tortillas and pesto I’d brought from home (the neighborhood kiddies and I had made a huge batch the night before, with plans to give a plate of it to everybody, only to discover that if there is anything Hondurans hate more than cold milk with their cornflakes, it’s pesto) and silently mocked the first of many European dirty hippies who choose to stroll around barefoot in the nastiness that is a Honduran street, amidst the people who actually are too poor to have shoes. We hopped on a little white bus to the border, Guasaule, followed by a 15-minute bicycle-rick-shaw ride across the border and through customs. Once money was changed to the Nicaraguan cordova, we grabbed another bus to the city of Chinendenga, then another to the first stop in our odyssey, Leon.
Gabe and I wandered alongside the pinworm-infested hippies till we found the part of town where our buddies Ana and Justin were waiting for us. We settled into our hostel, a chill little place called Sonati, complete with hummingbird garden, rocking chairs, and the tallest bunk-beds in the history of stackable sleeping arrangements. We spent the night wandering around the historical city, getting into minimal amounts of trouble and wondering why all the bars were empty. The next day, we headed to the market and from there took a very crowded chicken bus to the coast, about half an hour away. We spent the day at Poneloya beach, rolling around in the warm black sand and struggling to maintain upright in the fierce waves, which were the strongest I’d ever been in. I would not be the least bit surprised to discover a dirty little creek leaking steroids into the ocean. We ate lunch at a seaside restaurant which had no seafood—actually, it didn’t have anything, except curry chicken, which is what we all ended up ordering. Fortunately, it was hells of delicious. That evening, we took the same bus back to Leon, but it managed to morph from “crowded” to “jesus I can feel at least four different crotches pressing up against me.” They packed so many people onto that bus I didn’t need to hold on to anything to remain upright. It was like a sweaty, salty, smelly cattle truck, only instead of cattle it was Nicaraguan dudes and instead of a truck it was a bus I paid to be on. But despite the unfortunate degree of boners touching my butt and armpits touching my head, we all made it back to Leon alive. Then we wandered around, took pictures of the millions of old cathedrals and statues (except for me, because I was too lazy to tote my camera), and then had delicious Mediterranean food and mojitos. God I love mojitos. So sugary, so minty, so fizzy…but I digress.
The next day, we got up bright and early and headed out looking for a tour company who could take us up the nearby Cerro Negro volcano (the most active volcano in all of central America!), which offers the unique extreme “sport” of volcano boarding. We found our guide, and after a slight detour during which I had to dig around in vast bins of used shoes in the market to find a cheap pair (open-toed shoes are not allowed for volcano boarding, apparently, and the only footwear I’d brought were my sexy Chacos), we headed down a black, sandy road toward the volcano. Once we got to the foot of the mountain, our guide handed out giant slabs of wood with plastic on the bottom and a loop of twine on the top. Our “safety gear” was stuffed in a little burlap sack with he slung over his shoulder, and up we trooped, staggering around with our unwieldy sleds acting as unwanted sails as the crazy winds whipped around us. The volcano, extremely active as she is, is devoid of any vegetation and is covered with sharp, crumbly black gravel. After about an hour and a half of melting under the vicious sun, exacerbated by the vast sea of black around us, we made it to the summit and then humped it along a windswept ridge, peering down into the sulfur-stinky, yellow-smoky crater below. The guide then admitted that since he only had safety suits for two, the ladies would get them (yay boobies!). Everyone got elbow and knee pads, but the goggles the company promised were nowhere to be found and those of us without sunglasses (Ana) were given the “slow” sleds as a compromise. First went Justin, who was given a “fast” sled and promptly sat down, grabbed his little rope, stuck his legs out in front of him, and zoomed off in a spray of gravel. Then went Gabe, who had a slow sled, and had to scootch his way down the mountain like the fat kid who gets stuck in the slush. Really, Gabe. Lay off the Hot Pockets and maybe volcano boarding would be more exciting. Then it was my turn, with my ‘fast’ board, and I made it to the bottom in about 15 seconds. It was exhilarating, but not so much that I couldn’t sing “volcano boarding, volcano boarding, la-la-la, volcano boarding,” to myself as I flew down. I made it to the bottom without skidding off and getting a nasty roadburn, which is the main danger involved in this activity, but I was cleaning black dirt out of my ears, nose, ears, and mouth for about two days afterwards. Then came Ana, on a “slow” board, moving at such a ladylike clip that she placed one hand on her hip and the other in a slow, regal Queen-Wave. Then our guide came down, carving up the gravel on a crudely fashioned snowboard, gave us all high fives, broke open a cantaloupe, and drove us back to our hostel.
The next day, the four of us bussed it to the capital of Nicaragua, Managua, where we immediately caught another bus to Granada, another large, colonial city. Granada is on the shore of what must be one of the biggest lakes in central America, Lago de Nicaragua, which features a huge, mystical island in the middle composed of two volcanoes (more on that later). Granada, like Leon, is overflowing with old crap, like cathedrals and parks and cobblestones and such. We met up with Ana’s friend Beth, a buddy visiting from the states, and sprawled out in our new home for the next couple days, a rad hostel called Oasis—nice beds in the dorms, each with its own locker big enough for a backpack, free computer use, a pool, a garden atrium and tasty breakfast…doesn’t get much sweeter than that for $6 a night. Granada, unlike Leon, has a raucous nightlife and we enjoyed tasty sandwiches and far too much tequila, which was necessary since we were celebrating the 24th anniversary of Gabe’s birth. The exact sequence of events that evening is a little hazy, though I do recall walking all the way back to the hostel before we decided NO, it was too EARLY to go to bed on Gabe’s birthday, even though all the bars were closing, which resulted in all of us trooping back for one more round of beers. The poorly-decorated sports bar (they had half an English-style jumping saddle sawed in half and glued to the wall) gave us the stink eye but grudgingly slid five more Victoria’s across the counter, which, by the way, are better than Honduran beer, sorry to say. The next day we spent the morning floating in the pool and drinking coffee, and after much pleading on my part, rented retro Shwinn’s in the afternoon and biked along the lakeshore, pausing only to wait out a five-minute rainstorm and, later, to rescue a tiny baby turtle who was crossing the road way too slowly (Gabe and I were the terrapin rescuers, to be fair—SOME PEOPLE felt it was not worth stopping and continued biking on to the Flaming Gates of the Fiery Lakes of Smoldering Indifference). Anyway. Later that afternoon, our fellow PC friends Bug and Emilie joined the group, and we passed the night at a resoundingly disappointing restaurant called “Imagine,” created by a Lennon-obsessed New Mexico ex-pat whose menu featured fancy-sounding dishes, all listed at prices easily triple what we had seen anywhere else in the city. Since it was our last night in Granada, we tried it anyway. Like all things involving New Mexico and starfruit, the night ended in regret. But it was okay, because the next day we blew smooches to Granada and bussed it down to Rivas, a little town that is the jumping off point for many places, including our next destination, the Isla de Ometepe.
The ferry ride across the lake took about an hour, which we passed sitting on the upper deck and gazing at the two green humps rising out of the approaching island, their peaks shrouded in a perpetual ring of clouds and mist. Once we docked, we hooked up with a cool British pair named Barney and Chris (lady), and a lone Aussie dude named Blair. Now 10, we managed to avoid the slow three-hour bus ride across the island and instead rented a mini-van taxi and sped cheaply to the rad hostel we decided to stay at, Finca Magdalena. It’s actually a working farm, growing coffee, rice, and other products, and functions as a cooperative, collectively owned and operated by 20-some families on the island. It’s a huge, funky old barn converted into “rustic” (fancy word for shitty) sleeping quarters for the poor travelers who seek its eaves. However, make no mistake, I ain’t complaining, I am actually a fan of crappy sleeping conditions (as are all campers) and the place had such an awesome vibe. Migrating artisania-makin’ hippies from Spain and Argentina sprawl everywhere, braiding bracelets and threading earrings, while backpackers from all over the world sip the organic coffee made right in the backyard. The folks who work there are all locals, extremely laid-back and goofy kids who don’t really care what anyone does as long as it’s all friendly and good-hearted. We arrived there in the early afternoon on New Year’s Eve, and immediately fell in love with the place. The finca is pretty isolated, nestled at the literal trail-head of Volcan Maderas, the smaller, jungle-covered of the two volcanoes (Concepcion, the other volcano, is active and located at the other end of the barbell-shaped island). Bars unavailable, the staff did the next best thing which was provide a huge radio and an unlimited supply of ice-cold liters of beer, which we ticked off honor-style as we drank them. There were maybe about 30 of us that night, a nice hodgepodge of folks from around the world, and we passed the warm hours dancing around, stomping about the smooth wood floors of the barn and frequently dashing outside to twirl a bit under the gloriously full New Year’s moon. The countdown was in Spanish, and christened with a spray of warm Nicaraguan beer. It was beautiful.
The next day, Justin headed to the capital for health reasons and the rest of us rented bikes and rode to a nice beach about an hour away, where we passed the afternoon, enjoying the surprisingly strong waves and keeping a constant watch out for the endemic Fresh Water Bull Shark, the only species of shark found in fresh water. The aggressive, dangerous shark used to be found in great numbers in this lake, but due to over-hunting, is only now making a slow comeback from near extinction in these waters. I’m pretty good at punching sharks though, so I think everyone felt pretty safe as long as I was in the water with them. That night, we chilled in the moonlit jungle behind the finca, listening for howler monkeys. The next day, the girls decided it was time for some tropical beach action, so they headed south to the famous, Cancun-esque town of San Juan del Sur. I wasn’t ready to leave the misty magic mountain yet, though, and neither was my trusty sidekick Gabe, so we woke up early, packed a daypack, and hired a guide with our English friends Barney and Chris to take us up the volcano. We left at about 8:00am and began the four-hour slog up the mountain. And I do mean slog. Because the volcano is so tall, steep, and jungly, it’s surrounded by a constant veil of mist. And the spongy moss on the trees grabs that mist and makes sweet, sweet misty-mossy love it to, and the mist falls like drippy-droppies to the ground below. So it’s sort of like climbing up a vertical mud puddle. It might have been one of the hardest hikes I’ve ever done, due only to its steepness and slipperiness. And the fact that 40 minutes into the hike, I reached for my Nalgene, only to discover I’d packed it near empty, meaning to fill it on my way out and totally forgetting to do so. Gabe had two liters of water, but one of those was nearly gone and I didn’t want to drink all his water. I suffered for another hour or so, makin’ Nala eyes at the glistening water drops all around me and contemplating ripping moss off the branches and sucking the liquid out of them. Finally, I was so desperate that I quickly ducked off the trail and filled my bottle with the creamy-colored muddy run-off and chugged three quick gulps before our guide could spot me and yell at me. Whatever! Gringos love giardia! We can’t get enough of it. Everybody knows that.
At about noon we made it to the summit, a little pocket protected from the howling winds by a Tolkien-y cluster of gnarled, moss-covered trees and hanging vines. We then began a short but incredibly steep descent into the volcano’s crater, aided by a series of ropes and switchbacks. Once in the crater, we were disappointed to see that the mist hung so low and thick that one couldn’t see more than three feet off the shore of the (allegedly) blue lagoon nestled in the bowl. It was still beautiful, though. We quickly ate our sandwiches and drank our water (Gabe shared his with me), posed for a picture, and clamored back out of the crater lake to begin the grueling descent. While not as sweaty as the ascent, it was just as hard and took just as long, because one has to pick one’s way down the steep, muddy rocks with extreme caution. Ass-sledding is not an option, due to the boulders. However, I didn’t wipe out once, so I guess that’s a good thing. We arrived at the finca in late afternoon, hosed off our entirely brown lower-bodies, and treated ourselves to mugs of hot, tasty coffee and thick slices of homemade chocolate cake with cookies on top.
The original plan was to leave for San Juan the next day, but Gabe and I decided the island was too awesome and warranted one more day of adventures. So we shot an e-mail to the ladies and headed out the next day, blowing more smooches to our new friends at Magdalena and hoofin’ it down the road with our pretty little thumbs out in the wind. Pretty soon a truck pulled over and we swung into the bed, cruising along toward the junction between the two volcanoes. Then we hopped out and began to walk down the dirt road toward another finca we’d heard about, and before long we had another free ride to that place too. Hacienda Merida was definitely higher-class than Magdalena, with slightly higher prices ($5 a bed instead of $2.50), fancier food and crazy signs all over the place demanding NO WALKING BAREFOOT and NO ILLEGAL DRUGS. Gabe and I had a damn tasty lunch, took a little nappy-poo, and rented kayaks at about 3:00pm, heading out along the shore toward an alleged river-mouth that was supposed to be pretty and tranquil. It was a gorgeous ride. Every 10 minutes or so we’d pass a little clapboard house right on the edge of the water, with little half-naked kiddies sitting in the tree-trunk canoes each family owns for fishing. After about an hour and a half of leisurely paddling, we finally swung into the “river,” which was actually a wide, lazy-flowing marsh surrounded by the most gorgeous wildlife and flora I’ve ever seen. Huge flowering trees bent over the river, their enormous roots forming little caves and mangroves for the multiple species of giant birds to stand in and look pretty. Gabe practically peed himself with glee, and could be heard exclaiming “Ohmigosh! An egret! And oh, oh! Look! A HERON! And a stork! And—oh jesus—are those CRANES?!” They all looked pretty much the same to me (giant birds bigger than a 5th grader that sound like bears), but it was nice having a friend with such a bird fetish around to distinguish them for me. Intricate webs of lilies and other flowing water plants fanned out toward the middle of the little river, and thick green vines hung down all over the place. Gabe and I separated for a while, and spent almost an entire hour apart, slowly paddling around with our eyes falling out of our faces and our mouths agape, listening to the strange cries of the water birds and the eerie splashes of unseen animals sliding into the water. I had my heart set on seeing howler monkeys, a promise I’d made to my little buddy Max back in the states, and was starting to feel like I was never going to get a chance. Suddenly, Gabe cries out quietly, “Hayley! A monkey!” I whipped my kayak around and, sure enough, there was a huge howler hanging low in the canopy, shoving flowers in his mouth. We paddled closer and he turned to watch us. He grunted a few warning herr, herrs and we sat, mesmerized, watching him and his four friends leap from branch to branch, grazing happily in the late-afternoon sunshine. It was the first time I’d ever seen a wild monkey and it was in perhaps the most beautiful setting I could ask for. Then, I saw a rainbow. Thanks, Nature.
As the sun dipped toward the horizon and spilled metaphorical gasoline all over the surface and lit it on fire, we realized we had to get going, because the water is rougher at night and we didn’t want to have to navigate the entire trip in the dark. Kayaking at sunset was so fun I thought my eyeballs were gonna explode, and doing it under the stars was awesome, too (though finding the dock of the hacienda in darkness was a challenge…Gabe gets total credit for finding it). We finally made it back just in time for the 7:00pm dinner buffet, made us some friends, and passed the night relaxing on the dock. The next morning, Gabe decided he wasn’t feeling up for Girl Talk on the Beach, so he headed back to Honduras and I headed solo toward the south, to meet up with Ana, Beth, Bug and Emilie in San Juan del Sur. I got there easy as pie, but their hostel was full so I quickly found a room in a dirt-cheap, and dirt-dirty, place down the street (Soya…not recommended). San Juan del Sur is so full of foreigners it didn’t even feel like Nicaragua—I’ve never seen so many white people in a Central American town before. That said, I had a pretty bitchin’ time, so I guess I can’t complain. There seems to be a growing colony of Canadians there, and I met more of them in the two nights I was there than I have in my whole life. I had a great time though, and Bug and I went on crazy Adventures with our new Canadian buddies, Lucus and Travis, until daybreak. The next day, we headed out to a gorgeous local beach called Maderas, a chill little spot with medium-sized, beautiful waves and not too many people. I rented a boogie board and spent the day catching waves, skipping around in the sand and playing Frisbee. It was awesome. Then we headed back to San Juan and had a fun last night (sort of…Ana and Beth stayed in and Bug was sick, so Emilie and I wandered around and harassed people/drank expensive cranberry juice/made friends with some real-live Cougars. We all departed early the next day for Honduras. In seven hours I was at the border and we all spent the night in Emilie’s site, which is about 30 minutes away from Gausaule. We made spaghetti and watched “I Heart Huckabees,” a perennial favorite, and crashed hard. The next day, I bussed it home and was hugging Igor by four pm.
Brevity version: I climbed a bunch of stuff and slid down a bunch of stuff and ate and drank a bunch of stuff and had a bunch of fun and it was hella awesome and Nicaragua is the best.
The End.
Love
Hayley
beach day! the whole gang...except for little andri, who was passed out in the shade.
esau found some cangrejas...which he brought back to alubaren in a pepsi bottle and then fried in lard and bullion cubes.
douglas playin with the boats.
splashin' around with grandma
SO SALTYYYYY
cute swimsuit little lady
grandma tina and her nietos
ah, cedeno...
esau, nuria, lisbeth, alison and noel...in the swishy swashy warm waters
douglas in his little sand lounge chair
they'll be pickin sand out of their butts for weeks
diggin and jumpin
playin soccer!! before some chumps swiped it
douglas playin in the sand
"I'm on a boat, ******-******!" says Andri. "Got my flippy-floppies!" agrees Douglas.
the kids and igor with some side-walk chalk art they did on my house...yeah i been doin some external decorating lately.
the serious shot.
