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.