on the road

This week I left Denver for what is essentially a month-long trip.  This makes me very happy.  I hit the road Monday evening with my dog and my new truck to come back to Glenwood Springs for the rest of my Public Health clinical.  The drive was incredible - it was a clear day, the sky was that deep, rich blue that only seems to happen in the fall, the aspens were brilliant yellow, and there was a fresh dusting of snow on the peaks.  It was so beautiful I spent the whole drive smiling.  Not often you get a day like that. 

Thor, the bike, and the camping gear, ready to hit the road

Stage 1 of my trip is two weeks in Glenwood Springs.  I've been here almost a week now, and I really like it!  It's a lovely little town of about 10,000 that is squished into the Roaring Fork Valley.  It looks like someone poured a bunch of houses and businesses into a valley and they slid down the sides and settled at the bottom.  The sides of the valley are steep - like really steep.  I tried to hike straight up the valley wall behind our apartment the other day and was seriously challenged to even keep my footing.  But the view was worth it.  The town is full of interesting shops and restaurants (including a delicious ice cream shop...) and cute little houses.  I've started seeing people I know around town, which makes me so very happy.  I love small towns and the feeling of community that you get in them, which is so much harder to develop in big cities.

 view of Glenwood Springs from the super steep hillside

Couch surfing has turned out to be a great thing.  Allie has been a great hostess, introducing me to her friends, showing me around town, and making sure to include me in all the fun things she does.  Last night we went to an awesome film festival in Carbondale.  You should look up liquid mountaineering, it gave me a good laugh. 

I'll be in Glenwood through Thursday night, at which point I'm done with my clinical and ready to hit the road for stage 2 of my trip.  The current plan is to head to Moab Thursday night, ride Porcupine Rim (yay!) on Friday morning, and then breeze through Zion on my way to LA.  We'll follow the coast up through San Fransisco, then on to Oregon and across to Montana, where I'll spend the better part of a week visiting with all my old friends in Missoula.  As with almost every trip I've ever taken, I'm already feeling like I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to have.  So many things to be seen, so little time! 

alright, already, we all float on

Tomorrow begins my next adventure.  This one is neither so grand nor so glamorous as my last one (Nicaragua is pretty hard to top), but it has equally important implications for my future.  My clinical in Public Health begins tomorrow.  For a variety of reasons, I requested and was given a rural placement for this clinical rotation.  I'll be in Glenwood Springs, CO at the Garfield County Public Health Department.  Glenwood Springs is a little town about 2 1/2 hours west of Denver on I-90.  It sits right at the mouth of Glenwood Canyon, which may be one of the most breathtaking stretches of interstate I've ever been on, and I've been on a lot of stretches of interstate!  The canyon is a several-hundred-foot-deep chasm, complete with dramatic rock faces and the mighty Colorado River.  The highway runs through the bottom of the canyon, next to the river, at times so cramped for space that the westbound lanes are stacked right on top of the eastbound lanes, which are stacked almost on top of the river.  If you live in Colorado and haven't taken a drive out there yet, it's time. 

I'm excited about this clinical.  At one time, several years ago, I had considered pursuing a Masters in Public Health.  Clearly that went by the wayside.  Somehow, in spite of the fact that I knew I was interested in public health, it didn't occur to me until about 3 weeks ago that I should be excited about this class.  But now I am!  If you've heard me talk about my life mission and my goals, you know that I feel a pretty strong pull towards working in developing countries.  In situations where basic healthcare is lacking, public health nursing can have a huge impact on the overall health of a community.  I'm excited to see what I can learn that will be applicable to my future career.

My lodging situation during this clinical is going to be yet another new experience for me.  Ever heard of couch surfing?  Essentially, it's a network of people all over the world who open their homes, free of charge, to travelers who need a place to stay for a few days or a few weeks.  It's an indirect exchange system; I go stay with Allie in Glenwood Springs, and because Allie is part of the network, she might go stay with Sarah in Phoenix, and Sarah might go stay with Andrew in San Francisco, and maybe Andrew might come stay with me in Denver.   By inviting people into our homes we gain the opportunity to stay with others when we travel.  It's a great way to meet interesting people and learn about the world, and get free lodging in the process!  Over the next 3 weeks I will be staying with Allie and her roommates for 3 or 4 nights each week, and more than likely will be sleeping in the woods on weekends.  Which brings me to the other thing I'm really excited about: my new home on wheels. 

This may be more exciting to me than to anyone else, but this week I acquired a 2003 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck!  Today I had it outfitted with a lovely blue camper shell, so I'm pretty much ready to go hobo and live out of my truck.  I've got a big road trip planned in October to break in my new toy.  In the mean time, I'll be testing it out on weekends around here.  The aspens are changing but the weather is still pretty warm.   It's a great time to be loose in the mountains in Colorado. 

back...

I'm back in Denver.  I'm not terribly happy about this.  So, I'll spend a few more minutes pretending that I'm still in Nicaragua and tell you about my last few days.

Last time I wrote, on Sunday morning, I was still in Granada.  I went to mass, which was an interesting cultural experience that would have been even more interesting if the speaker system in the cathedral worked well enough for me to understand the priest.  After mass I dropped by another hostel to see what my friends Will, Julian, Kyle, Hanna, and Ellen were up to.  Turned out they were about to hop on a boat to tour las isletas de Granada, a set of islands in Lake Nicaragua just outside of Granada.  I joined them for a lazy afternoon boat ride through the tightly clustered little islands, which are about what you would expect if a jungle and a mangrove swamp had a few hundred babies.  Each island had its own character.  Some were uninhabited, some had ruins of old manor houses or hotels, some had falling-down but still inhabited shacks, and some had private houses of the sort you might see in a travel magazine.  Most were between one and three acres in size.  Very interesting place.

After our boat ride we all piled into Julian's truck (6 of us in a truck that is supposed to seat 3, max) and drove up to the treehouse hostel.  I had been there Friday night, and Will had been there a week or so before, but the rest of the group wanted to check it out so we went along.  I think the treehouse is one of the most magical places I have ever been.  The hostel itself is fun, the attitude there makes for a good time, but the location and the structures are what really hook me.  The richness of the jungle, with its hundred shades of green and endless little bits of mystery and wonder, combined with how completely safe and at home I feel there, is completely irresistible to me.  I absolutely adored just sitting on the deck looking out through the trees into the valley.  Now that I am back in the US, when I think about the one place I loved the most on this trip, the treehouse is it. 

I left the treehouse Monday afternoon (I had meant to hit the road earlier in the day, but I had a really hard time making myself leave) and followed my friends to Leon.  They had left that morning in Julian's truck, but I wasn't terribly inclined to spend 3 hours crammed into a 3-seater truck with 5 other people on a hot, humid day.  So I rode the bus.  Unfortunately I managed to miss 2 connecting busses in Managua, and miss dinner in the process, so by the time I got to Leon at 8pm I was exhausted, starving, and very cranky.  When I realized that the hostel I was staying at was yet another party hostel, complete with VERY loud dance music, I was not excited.  I spent about an hour being very pissed off, and then I found dinner and my friends and suddenly life was really good again.  Gotta love problems that are easily solved. 

Tuesday we went volcano boarding, which is almost exactly what it sounds like.  Cerro Negro is an imposing, visually stunning cinder cone volcano just outside of Leon which has become probably the biggest backpacker attraction in the area.  Everyone who backpacks in Nicaragua has heard of volcano boarding.  Our guide explained to us that the volcano always erupts to the east, but because of the prevailing winds all the ash and lighter debris from the eruptions gets deposited on the steep, black western slope.  Which makes it perfect for sliding down on boards.  I envisioned that it would be something like snowboarding, but, as usual, I imagined wrong.  It's more like sledding.  You spend 45 minutes hiking up the volcano, then put on a gigantic, ragtag orange jumpsuit that makes you look something like an escaped convict who has been on the run for 6 months, slap on a pair of goggles straight out of chem class, plop down on your board, and take off down the mountain.  For about 30 seconds you blaze down the hill on your board, trying not to get bumped off, flipped sideways, or smile (because then you get a mouthful of rocks) until you get to the last 200m, when it's time to let it all loose and see how fast you can go for the guy with the radar gun at the bottom.  The all-time speed record is somewhere around 89kph.  I made it to 61kph and am still picking volcanic rocks out of my hair.

Wednesday morning my friends left pretty early to head north through Honduras to El Salvador.  After saying goodbye to them (which made me quite sad) I spent my day exploring Leon.  The coolest thing I did was to go to the Museum of the Revolution, where I got to hear the story of the Nicaraguan Revolution from a war veteran.  I wasn't aware of how large a role the US played in Nicaraguan history, and I can't say that I'm exactly proud of us for it.   I recognize that it's almost impossible to find a storyteller who isn't biased in one way or another, but regardless of the politics involved, I was moved and inspired to hear about how fiercely and passionately the Nicaraguans fought for what they believed in.  We in the US are lucky to not have to fight for our liberties in that way, although I do believe a little struggle now and then might give us more cause to appreciate how truly blessed we are.  The other cool thing at the museum was the bazooka they let me play with.  The rest of my day was taken up by shopping for gifts and visiting historic cathedrals (including the largest one in Central America) and then traveling to Managua.  I spent the night there and then woke up at 3:45am to catch my flight back to the US.  I arrived back in Denver around 3pm and have been working on readjusting to home life ever since.  I'm having a hard time throwing toilet paper in the toilet.

At the risk of writing too much and possibly over-sharing, I'm going to write a little more.  This is mostly just my philosophical thinkings, with a bit of soul-baring, so feel free to stop reading if it's not something that interests you.  This trip was life altering for me, but not in the way I expected.  When I planned the trip I had no idea what to expect, so I planned on what I thought would be best.  As usual, I had no idea what I really needed, but was lucky enough to get it anyway.  What I got from this trip was myself.  After years of being shy and insecure, I found a way to be comfortable with who and what I am.  I learned how to relax and connect with the people I like, and not worry about trying to connect with the ones who don't value me for me.  I discovered how much I like being alone, but also how gratifying it is to have a group of cool people to spend time with.  I found out that people really do want to be my friend because of who I am.  All of this is elementary stuff, the kinds of things that I've known for years but never really got around to believing.  This trip, and the people I met while I was traveling, made me believe it.  Almost by accident, I also learned to live fully in the moment, enjoying life for whatever it is at any given time and not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.  And I rediscovered my love of traveling, my deeply rooted desire to live and work in another culture, and the joy of finding somewhere that really feels like home.  In other words, I'm totally hooked on this travel thing.  I'm back in the US now, and I'll enjoy it for what it is (because goodness knows there's plenty worth enjoying here!), but you'd better believe I'm already looking for opportunities to get back out on the road. 

cultured

Not surprisingly, my plans are changing again.  I guess this is what happens when you go with the flow and do whatever seems to work out best at any given moment.  I was planning to hop on a bus to Leon today, but also kind of wanted to stay for the rest of the fiesta today, since today is supposed to be the more interesting of the two days.  As it turns out, the roads between here and Managua are all closed because of the fiesta, so if I were to travel today it would take me at least twice as long.  Why waste all that time traveling when I could just stay and see the fiesta today, and then spend a normal amount of time traveling tomorrow?  So, one more day in Granada. 

The fiesta last night was pretty interesting.  I met up with my friends Will, Julian, Ellen, and Hanna, who I had met in San Juan del Sur, and went to see the parade.  The parade consisted of dance troupes from each of the 15 different departamentos (similar to our states) competing for a cash prize.  Each troupe had a minimum of about 15 dancers dressed up in fantastic sequined matching outfits of the sort you might expect to see on an olympic figure skater.  Without exception, each troupe had some pretty incredible hats.  I saw everything from 6 inch tall sequined headpieces to hats with 3 foot long peacock feathers coming out the top.  The dancers all looked to be in their mid to late teens, and were both male and female.  I was really interested to notice that the male dancers were dressed very similarly to the female dancers, in that their costumes were decidedly feminine, and that they wore makeup and had their hair done equally as nicely as the girls.  Essentially they were cross-dressing.  And it wasn't just one or two, it was usually at least a third of the troupe.  Clearly this is something that is very accepted in Nicaraguan culture.  I tried to imagine how Americans would react to having their teenage boys dressing up like that, and I'm pretty sure the reaction would be a lot different than it is here.  Yet another example of things we could stand to learn from other cultures. 

On a typical evening in Granada the streets are pretty quiet and empty.  Everyone closes up shop at around 5pm and heads home by around 6 or 7.  Not last night!  All day yesterday they were busy setting up stands in the central park, and by evening there were rows of street vendors grilling food and selling beer along the parade route.  The entire town, plus a large portion of the rest of the country, turned out on the streets.  It was a great atmosphere.  Unfortunately, large crowds mean lots of pickpockets.  Right now I am sitting at the computer in my hostel listening to 5 of the 6 people nearby talk about what was stolen from them last night.  The common denominator between all of them is that they were carrying valuable items like iPhones and cameras.  It's a good weekend to take mental pictures and carry a minimum of cash. 

This morning I had a bit of a cultural misunderstanding with myself that I found amusing.  Last week I bought a packet of what I thought was powdered milk so I could eat cereal.  At the store I just grabbed the packet that said Nido, because where I come from Nido is powdered milk.  I kept thinking, when I was eating my cereal, that the milk was ridiculously sweet.  This morning I bothered to take a good look at the package and realized that it's powdered baby formula.  So, cereal with baby formula.  Not bad, really!

I've been wanting to write about life in Nicaragua, and now seems like as good a time as any.  I've really enjoyed getting to learn bits about this culture firsthand, and I wish I had more opportunities to truly immerse myself in it.  When you stay at hostels it's pretty easy to get more immersed in Australian or British or German culture than in Nicaraguan culture.  Some bits of Nica culture are there no matter where you go, though.  Things like the plumbing.  None of the plumbing here was designed to handle toilet paper, so none of it goes in the toilet.  Every bathroom has a trash can next to the toilet where you toss your used toilet paper.  Woe to the traveler who forgets and clogs up the toilet and pisses off the rest of the hostel.  Luckily, I have yet to forget!  Showers here are cold, which sounds unpleasant except that it's pretty hot and humid, so after the initial shock it actually feels really good.  It's rare to find a cheap room with air conditioning, so we all sleep with a thin sheet and a fan.  Again, this suits me just fine, I love being warm!  I have really enjoyed being able to wear a tank top and shorts all the time and never feel even remotely cold.  Lovely.

More on the cultural side is the way men interact with women.  For you women reading this, if you have ever spent much time around Latino men you may have noticed that they like to whistle or catcall.  In the US I think it's pretty easy for us to be taken aback by this, not really realizing that it's just part of their culture.  When men see a woman walking around alone in Nicaragua (and in most other Central and South American countries, I understand) , it's natural and culturally acceptable for them to express admiration in some way.  The woman, however, is meant to completely ignore it.  A response of any sort is actually akin to an invitation: even making eye contact is seen as encouragement.  At first it feels strange to completely ignore someone who is addressing you, but after a while it gets pretty easy. 

As a continuation of my cultural education, I'm going to head to 'la misa', or mass, at the cathedral around the block in about 45 minutes, then go out and see more fiesta! 

zumba and treehouses

As usual, this week hasn't really turned out the way I expected.  However, it did turn out great, so I can't complain!

I finally left San Juan del Sur on Thursday morning.  There are a few different ways to get around in this country.  You can take a taxi from town to town, which generally will cost you a relative fortune, although it's nothing compared to the cost of an American taxi.  You can also take tikka busses, which are apparently pretty nice and are a lot cheaper than option 1.  Or you can take the chicken bus.  The name itself gives you a pretty good idea of what a chicken bus is like - it's the way all the locals get around with whatever they happen to be travling with, sometimes including chickens.  The chicken busses are mostly old school busses that have been converted into passenger busses.  You first have to give up any concept of a personal space bubble, then you cram in with about 70 of your new best friends.  If you're lucky you get a seat, or at least a decent stretch of space in the aisle.  Your pack generally goes in the back of the bus, if you got there early, or on top of the bus, if you got there late.  When you are sitting in the bus station waiting for the bus to leave, sweating like a fountain, vendors walk up and down the aisle selling everything from bags of fried chicken to hammocks.  It's actually kind of fun, and it's certainly more of a cultural experience than taking a taxi would ever be.  I took the chicken bus from San Juan del Sur to Rivas, and then from Rivas on to Granada.  My plan in Granada was to look around for volunteer work, so I spent most of Thursday afternoon walking around to different clinics and asking if they needed any help.  For various reasons, none of them did.  By that time it was too late to travel on, and I had decided that I wanted to stay in Granada for the big fiesta this weekend anyway. 

In San Juan del Sur I met a Dutch girl named Milou who had been living in Granada for the past 5 months.  We hit it off pretty well and spent an afternoon at the beach together before she headed back to Granada.  When I got here I dropped by her hostel to say hi, and she invited me to go to Zumba class with her.  I never expected to be going to Zumba in Nicaragua, but it was a blast!  It was a great way to spend my Thursday evening, and it was really nice to finally get a workout. 

Getting off the bus from Rivas on Thursday I had chanced to run into two other backpackers, one from Australia and the other from Alberta, who were planning to go to a treehouse hostel called El Poste Rojo just outside of Granada for the weekend.  I decided I'd go along to kill a day.  We left Granada Friday afternoon to go out there.  It was definitely the most unique hostel I've been to yet, and maybe one of the coolest settings as well.  The hostel is about 20 minutes outside of Granada on a hill in the jungle.  To get there you drive up a bumpy dirt road and then walk up about 1/4 mile of steep trail through the lush, green, damp forest.  The rooms are in a wooden building on a slightly flatter patch of hillside.  From the dorms you walk up another 200m or so (more steep trail with large rocks set as stairs) to the common area, which is the real gem.  It's built out from the hillside so that when you stand on the edge of the deck you are looking down about 30 feet through the banana trees and coffee bushes to the ground.  It's a 2 story structure that is entirely open to air, with a bar and a row of hammocks strung up under the 2nd floor so you have somewhere to sit when it rains, which is often this time of year.  The view from the deck is incredible - looking out through the trees across the rich green vallley, which is a combination of jungle and farmland.  There are howler monkeys all over the place, hanging out in the trees around the hostel and making a general racket.  They make a pretty creepy sounding noise; if you didn't know better you might think it was a jaguar yowling at you or some such thing.  Poste Rojo is what is known in the backpacker world as a party hostel.  Being fairly isolated from any other type of civilization, it's a great place to get a captive audience pretty rowdy.  The owner is an expat Texan in his 40's who talks like Matthew McConaghey and seems to party harder than anyone I know - every night he leads the charge and manages to whip anywhere from 5 to 25 backpackers into a drinking and dancing frenzy.  The man is truly talented, if a bit crazy.  Last night he pulled out a bunch of costumes (Captain America suits, lion suits, evening gowns) and a bunch of cans of paint (water based, I think) and went to town on his guests.  Several people woke up this morning painted all shades of the rainbow, many of them with very little memory of how they got that way.  I had a great time observing the festivities, but managed to avoid the costumes, the paint, and the hangover.  There's a lot to be said for knowing when to slip off into the background.  I spent most of my evening hanging out with one of the volunteers at the hostel, Jeremy, who is from Arizona but has been driving around Central America with his dog for the past few months.  I've mentioned before how much I enjoy spending time with people who are living the travel dream, and this was no exception.  He's doing it differently than most backpackers in that he outfitted his Tacoma with a camper top and so has a lot more opportunities to go where he wants when he wants.  Definitely enough to make me very jealous, and very inspired. 

Today I am back in Granada.  This weekend they are holding a big fiesta known as the Desfile Hipico.  Apparently tonight will be a carnivál-type thing.  I am excited to have the chance to see something so authentically Nicaraguan.  It sounds like people come from all over the country for this fiesta.  Tomorrow I'm planning to head north to Leon to see what there is to see.  Pictures coming soon of the treehouse. 

pictures!

the floating dock Laguna de Apoyo, which I love

 Bar and restaurant at Laguna de Apoyo, our dorm room is up the hill on the right.  Yay open air!

 la Playa Santo Domingo on la isla Ometepe

 Concepcion, one of the two volcanoes that makes up the isla Ometepe

 Sunset in San Juan del Sur

 San Juan del Sur as seen from the water. It is a very small town but this makes it look downright tiny!

Downtown in San Juan del Sur

week 1, part 2

So here I am in San Juan del Sur, at least for another hour or so.  I'm being indecisive, as usual, and can't make up my mind how much time I want to spend where.  My current plan is to head north to Leon for a few days, then go out to the Corn Islands, which are a set of absolutely gorgeous Caribbean islands on the opposite side of Nicaragua.  The alternative is to stay on the mainland and go between Leon and Granada, trying to find some Spanish classes and healthcare related volunteer work.  I'll keep you posted.

San Juan del Sur is possibly one of the most tourist-visited towns in Nicaragua.  It's a small but very busy port town set in a horseshoe-shaped bay right on the Pacific.  I think it's almost mandatory to come here if you are a tourist in this country.  We got here by taxi on Sunday afternoon, and the first thing I noticed was how very many non-Nicaraguans there were.  The vibe here is like Boulder meets LA: it's a cool little surf town, and it knows it.  The town consists of about 10 blocks of restaurants, hostels, internet cafes, and surf shops all scrunched up next to the bay.  Because of the tourist population there's a fair bit of nightlife, although compared to the rest of the country it's pretty expensive to eat or drink out.  The surf in town is mediocre, but you can buy your way out of town on a shuttle for $5 and within about 25 minutes you can be on any number of quieter, cleaner beaches with good surf.  My plan was originally to spend a week here in Spanish school, but pretty much as soon as I got here I decided it wasn't where I wanted to spend the bulk of my time in Nicaragua.  Hence the hazy plans to go elsewhere.

On Monday, which was my first full day here, I spent the morning in Spanish class and the afternoon at the beach in town.  In Spanish class I learned a lot about Nicaraguan culture but not very much about the language.  I think if I had stayed a few more days in class I would have gotten a lot more out of it, but it didn't fit into the schedule.  My teacher told me a lot about how the education and health systems work here.  Everyone has access to public universities for a very small fee (about $50 a year), but having funding for education is contingent on academic performance, so if you want to stay you better work hard.  Healthcare is also free, but as with most such systems there's a significant wait for non-emergent services like elective surgeries.  On my own I've found out that Nicaragua is the poorest Central American country, with an average per capita income of about USD$3,100.  My teacher found it very odd that I live so far away from my family; in this country it's very rare for anyone to move out of the family home, even once married. 

On Tuesday I spent the morning volunteering at a school for kids with special needs.  I had found out about the school from the director of my Spanish school.  Will, an Australian I met through Ruairi and Paddy, decided to tag along with me.  The school, which is called Los Pipitos, provides care and education to about 15 or 20 kids with a variety of special needs.  I spent the morning working with two 10 year old boys with some pretty severe developmental delays.  At 10, they were both able to speak but not clearly and not in complete sentences.  I worked with them on identifying numbers, colors and objects.  It was really rewarding work, but incredibly draining!  I have the utmost respect for people who work with kids on a daily basis, especially kids with special needs.  Definitely not one of my strengths, but I'm so glad I got a chance to do it.  Will did a great job teaching math to 12 year old boy with Down Syndrome.  At the school we met a Dutch guy who has been living in San Juan del Sur for a year.  He has been working at Los Pipitos for a while now, and seems to be one of the driving forces behind providing a solid education for these kids.  I'm always so inspired by people like that who create a life for themselves so far outside the cultural norm, and who do it in a way that contributes a lot to the greater good. 

Tuesday afternoon I impulsively hopped on a shuttle to a nearby surf beach and spent the day in the waves and sand.  It was my first real beach day since I got here, and I have to admit it was pretty nice.  I had met a Dutch girl at my hostel who happened to be at the same beach yesterday, so we hung out most of the afternoon.  It was fun to have some girl time for a change.  I've learned so much about the rest of the world during this trip, I actually feel like I'm closer to European culture here than I am in the US.  Did you know they eat jello with ice cream??

I had to say goodbye to Paddy on Monday night, because he left to go north on Tuesday morning.  Ruairi left this morning to go to Costa Rica to meet up with a friend from home, so we said goodbye last night.   Even though I was only with them for a few days, and I was only a tiny part of their trip, they were a big part of mine and I really enjoyed spending time with them.  I was sad to see them go.  But I guess there's always more friends in the next town! 

week 1, part 1

Somehow a whole week has gone by since I got to Nicaragua.  It seems like it went quickly, but also like I've been here forever.  I love it. 

I left Granada last Thursday and went to spend a night at a hostel on Laguna de Apoyo, which is a lake in the crater of an old volcano.  The area is now some type of nature preserve, with a few options for lodging and eating but largely undeveloped.  Lovely place.  The water is crystal clear.  My hostel had a floating dock about 45 feet offshore, which was an absolutely perfect place to lay out and have a drink and visit with other backpackers.  My overall impression of that day is of being the perfect temperature all day long - the water temperature was cool enough to be refreshing but warm enough that it would be impossible to get cold (which, if you know me, is important).  The air temperature was also just perfect, never too hot or too cool.  My idea of paradise.

At the hostel at Laguna de Apoyo I started chatting with two Irish guys, Ruairi and Paddy, and as it happened our plans were similar so I decided to travel with them.  It turned out to be a great decision, they're super nice and very fun, and they've been in Central America for a few months so they know how to get from point A to point B much better than I do.  I followed them to an island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua known as Ometepe.  It's a volcanic island about 31k long and 10k wide at its widest point.  The larger of the two volcanoes, Concepcion, is a gorgeous cone shaped volcano that has about 10 different shades of green on it if you can catch it on a clear day.  Stunning.  Maderas, the smaller volcano, is less impressive from a distance but is still quite a sight.  The island as a whole is small, quiet, friendly, and overall pretty laid back.  We spent a day exploring the island, checked out a local beach, and found our way to the Miss Ometepe contest on Saturday night, which was more like a disco with an occasional girl walking across the stage in a beauty pageant sash.  Our hostel was possibly the most colorful place I've ever been, someone appears to have had a bunch of red and yellow and blue paint and a little too much time on their hands.  Out back there were 4 monkeys, 2 deer, and 2 squirrel-type critters.   Like a petting zoo.  There were also no fewer than 9 cats in our dorm room.  Somehow we managed to sleep alright in spite of it all.

We left Ometepe on Sunday morning and headed down to San Juan del Sur, which is a tiny surf/tourist town on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, about 2 hours from the border of Costa Rica.  We've been here ever since.  I'll tell more about that in my next post though.

I'm starting to get the jist of the backpacker culture that I'm suddenly part of.  There seems to be a steady stream of people from all parts of the world traveling through Central America, most of them headed south from points north.  Because most everyone is traveling to the same spots in the same order, you quickly start to run into familiar faces as you go from town to town.  Everyone is a friend but even when you are with friends you are still on your own.  You make your own agenda and if it so happens that someone you get along with is doing the same thing, then you go along together.  But then your plans diverge, and you have a quick hug and go your own way.  I find it to be a pretty cool way to live.  On your own but never alone. 

Tomorrow I plan to travel north for a few days to a town called Leon that comes highly recommended by everyone I've met.  More to come on San Juan del Sur when I find myself with a computer and some free time!

These are a few of my pictures from my trip so far.

My nest in the Houston airport

 Courtyards inside every doorway!  Wish we had these in the US. 

 La Merced Chapel, 2 blocks from my hostel

 View across Granada to the lake from the top of La Merced Chapel.  The Cathedral is in the foreground.

 The back of La Merced

The market, just like in Tanzania!

Granada

I wasn't planning on blogging on this trip (because I think there may be about 3 people who actually like reading other people´s blogs) but I´d be writing all this in my journal anyway, so for the sake of those three people who might actually get a kick out of this, I´ll make it public.  I tend to write too much, sorry for those of you who might be interested if it was a briefer synopsis.  Once I take some pictures you can just look at those instead.

I got to Granada today after an unnecessarily long trip down here.  Total flight time was in the neighorhood of 5 hours but I booked my flight to have an overnight layover in Houston so I could get to Nicaragua during the daytime.  If you´re ever planning to sleep on the floor in the Houston airport, bring earplugs. 

Nicaragua is a lot like Tanzania and Kenya.  So much so that when I arrived it was initially Swahili coming out when I tried to talk.  Luckily I got over that relatively quickly, and I´m getting by pretty well with my moderate Spanish skills.  It´s the rainy season right now, so everything is very green and lush.  There are mango trees and flame trees and banana trees and palm trees, all mixed in with the usual assortment of shanty-type houses that most Americans wouldn´t even consider to be houses.  There are horses and cows tied up by the sides of the roads all over the place, and stray dogs to fill in the gaps.  It´s hot and ridiculously humid.  Feels like breathing in a fishbowl compared to Denver.  When it rains, it does so abruptly and dumps buckets and buckets.  The streets in Granada are narrow and soggy and crowded with the type of traffic you´d expect in a developing country - beat-up pickups and taxis, bicycles with two or three people on each, motorcycles, pedestrians - all with almost no sense of order whatsoever.  By some unspoken (and apparently unwritten) system, most of the streets in town seem to be one way, but I think you have to know the secret handshake before they´ll tell you which ones go which way.  Some streets aren´t even streets any more, but outdoor markets of the type that I grew up with in Tanzania.  It makes me smile to walk through them and see the same things and smell the same smells even though I´m a few continents away from the ones I grew up in. 

I spent some time checking out Granada today, browsing the shops, buying groceries (cereal and powdered milk, because goodness knows I can´t survive without my cereal), getting a feel for the town.  The entire center of town is a combination of indoor and outdoor market selling everything from limes to motorcycles to cell phones to jewelry.  The merchants are friendly but not pushy, so it´s a pleasant exploring experience.  Granada is a colonial city that was founded in 1524 and the history really shows.  There are colonial-looking buildings all over the place, mixed in with the houses and the shops.  There seems to be very little distinction between indoors and outdoors.  The streets are lined with unbroken walls, with doors every 10 to 15 feet leading into residences, but once you´re inside they seem to almost all be built around a central, open-air courtyard.  Most doors are just wrought iron bars, which keep people out but still make you feel like you´re outside.  Hammocks are everywhere. 

When I got hungry during my exploration I stopped at a cantina and ordered the first thing on the menu, which was something called vigoron.  I had no idea what it was but figured that I´d be adventurous.  When in Rome, right?  When it first showed up I had a moment of panic, thinking it was some sort of deep fried intestine.  I ate it anyway and then looked it up once I got back to the hostel.  Turns out it was yuca topped with pork rinds and a type of coleslaw.  Apparently this is a really common dish, and Granada is known for having some of the best vigoron to be found anywhere.  It was good, but probably not something I´ll be dying to recreate when I get back to the US. 

I´m happy to be on the road, out of the country.  It´s sort of strange traveling solo, and being somewhere that feels so similar to where I grew up, yet is very fundamentally different.  I´m excited to start to get a feel for this new place and the people here over the next few days before I head to my next spot.