The Costa Rica / La Fortuna experience is rapidly winding down. Tomorrow we will head off to Nicaragua, specifically San Carlos. San Carlos is located at the southern end of Lake Nicaragua and will be our jumping off point to the Carribean Coast.
Our stay in Costa Rica has been a bit disappointing. Generally, Costa Rica is a much different place than Nicaragua, much more money, much different topography (bigger mountains / volcanos), much cleaner, etc. However, compared to the people in Nicaragua, I have found the people here in Costa Rica much less friendly, at times rude, and generally just don´t care.
If you are planning a trip to Costa Rica, I encourage you to avoid La Fortuna – a tourist trap of great porportions. If you decide to visit, I would not book a tour through Expediciones Fortuna. We booked two tours (walking tour of the volcano and boat trip to Caño Negro) that were very much misrepresented to us. A walk that was to last 1.5 – 2 hours lasted about 20 minutes. A boat tour that was to go into the National Park did not come close to the park. Further, avoid the Cangreja Lodge. This hotel quoted us one price and charged us another. When we questioned the price, they became very rude. With the exception of the lost passport, all of these things have been minor, but the cumulative effect has been large. It will feel good to cross the border tomorrow and be back in Nicaragua.
I have posted a few new pictures of the weekend trip to Masaya, a few additional pictures of San Juan Del Sur (the package I mailed and the orphanage home party), and of Costa Rica.
I doubt I will have email access for the next week. We are planning to be back in Managua on Saturday night, 3 January, to start our school on 5 January (and to give ourselves an extra day).
The past week has been at times quite funny and at times quite strange and stressful. First the funny. Last week, I sent a package to Alaska that cost 572 (Nicaraguan). I completely overwhelmed the system. Using stamps, the post office lady started with the lowest dominination (0.25) stamp until she was out, then the next lowest, and so on. After about an hour, she finally had calculated the number of stamps required to send the package. The end result was that my box is completely covered in stamps (literally). It will be amazing if the package arrives in Alaska (but I will not be surprised either).
Now the strange and stressful. On Saturday, we set off for Costa Rica to spend a few days in order to get a new visa. The border crossing into Costa Rica is completely chaotic and wacky. After crossing the border, we waited some 3 hours to catch a bus to La Fortuna (near a big volcano and wetland/wildlife preserve). The big twist to the story is that Mareike´s backpack was stolen on the bus (with everything important including passport and money). After this discovery, we got off the bus in a complete dump pretending to be a town, visited the police, got some really bad dinner, and had a really bad night sleep. The only nice thing about the town was the police. Early the next morning, we headed off to San Jose to get a new passport and get stuff figured out. San Jose is just like any other American city – could be located anywhere. Denny´s, McDonalds, KFC, etc etc. Anyway, to make the story a bit shorter, everything is pretty much resolved and we made it to La Fortuna. We will be here for a couple of days – today walking around the volcano and tomorrow maybe paddling through the wildlife preserve. We´ll see. Still no definite plans yet – typical I guess. If I had to guess that we will be back in Nicaragua by the end of the weekend.
I will try to get some new pictures up again soon.
This past weekend, I think I finally met a person truly worthy of giving a talk at the TED conference. Paulette Goudge is an amazing person that is really living out her ideals. In a nutshell, she originally arrived in Nicaragua in the 1980´s during the revolution. Afterward, she adopted a war child, moved back to England, sold all of her belongings, and moved back to Nicaragua. She has built an eco-hotel and Spanish school. The eco-hotel is pretty cool – runs on solar energy (put in by the group we will be working with in a few weeks), recycles her water, makes meals using products from the garden, and is fairly self-sufficient. She has also taken in many animals off the street, started a reforestation program, and employs only locals. My understanding is that she is trying to start a new school for the children of the small town. She has an amazing story and I am glad I was able to meet her.
The past week has been filled with many different events and travel. On Wednesday, we saw Daniel Ortega (president of Nicaragua) give a talk – sort of interesting, but fairly anti-climatic for me. Many people traveled in from all over the region to watch the talk, but nobody seemed to be really interested – lots of talking, no clapping, and many people actually walked out before the end of his talk (including me). I was expecting a much different reaction from the people and that is what I was interested in experiencing. My Spanish is not good enough to really understand what he was talking about.
We also traveled to Masaya, located north of Granada with the Spanish school. It was pretty interesting – lots of arts and crafts (the town is famous for it), a local lunch, visiting the Masaya volcano (which is active). On the weekend, we traveled back to the Masaya area and stayed at the eco-hotel – mostly to get away from the larger towns and the noise (we were successful with the larger town part, but not the noise). On Saturday night, we did a night tour of the Masaya volcano – we were able to faintly see the glow of the magma. We were a bit unlucky in that the gasses were pretty strong and the wind was blowing the wrong direction. On Sunday, we took a long walk around the hills of Masaya. It was also interesting – we saw some truly truly poor people. The amount of trash on the streets is also incredible to witness – at times unbelievable, even after walking through it.
This weekend, we are headed off to Costa Rica as our visas expire on Saturday. We will be there for at least 3 days, but the itinerary is far from set. We are hoping to make it to Corn Island for Christmas and/or New Years (a small island in the Caribbean Sea), but the plane tickets have not been bought yet (we actually have not started looking for them). This week also marks the end of our first phase of this journey – the completion of the Spanish school.
I will try to get a few more pictures posted tonight or tomorrow. Now it is time for me to go to the beach.
My daily life is now settling into a fairly constant and new routine. I usually wake up between 6-6:30 and study, eat breakfast, go to class between 8-12, eat/relax for an hour, participate in the school activity in the afternoon (1:45 – 5), eat some more, study (usually in a quiet bar along the beach), and go to bed sometime between 9:30 and 10 p.m. Weekends have been spent traveling (so far, Ometepe Island and Granda).
I spend very very little time on the computer. I have been checking email only 3-4 days. I have found this to be a pretty liberating thing. Although I feel like I am busy for most every day (for the entire day), I finally feel like I finally have enough time in the day to accomplish everything I want to do.
The daily activities at the school have been pretty good. Everyday, the school organizes a new activity for the students (if a student chooses to participate, his/her teacher also participates). Activities so far include learning to make Nicaraguan tacos, going to (numerous) beaches, and throwing a party for a school with special needs students. There is talk about going to an orphanage in the next weeks (I hope this happens). The party for the special needs students was a pretty cool experience.
Weekends have been spent traveling. Two weekends ago, we went to Isla de Ometepe. It is the largest island in the world that is located within a lake. Two large volcanoes form the island and we climbed one of them (almost to the top – the volcano burped about 2 weeks prior and the guides were all hesitant to climb all the way to the top. We made it to 1300 meters (of 1600 meters possible)). We saw a number of birds and two species of monkeys. Fun weekend.
Last weekend, we went to Granada to watch a large festival celebrating the ‘purity of Mary’. This festival took place on Sunday and today is the festival celebrating the conception of Mary. I guess time was measured a bit differently 2000 years ago with the time between the conception and birth lasting just over 2 weeks. Granada was a nice city (although incredibly hot), but it definitely felt like it could have been located anywhere within Europe. We did a sea kayaking trip yesterday around some small islands that were formed when the top of a nearby volcano was blown into the lake.
I am starting to get a bit grumpy at all the noise and people yelling at me to get into their taxi, get into their bus, buy their cheap plastic shit, buy a soda, following much to close to me (after saying no thank you many times) and continuing to ask for money, etc. etc. etc. I also feel like I have been taken advantage of a couple times – nothing major – but a bit annoying. It is good Mareike (aka The Supreme Guide) is here to help keep it in perspective, but it still makes me just a bit grumpy. This is very minor compared to all the good things going on right now.
I have managed to place a handful of pictures from San Juan del Sur into the image gallery. I have to admit I am more than a bit confused trying get everything done with a windows machine – no gimp, no ftp, no this, no that. I am pretty lost without a linux box nearby. I hope to find a better place to do pictures and blogging sometime soon, but probably this won´t happen for at least a while.
Speaking of linux, on the way from Denver to Atlanta, I discovered that the entertainment system on the airplane was based on a linux OS (I won´t mention the name since I have a bit of stock in the company). I was quite excited about this. The excitement soon turned to disappointment as the damn thing did not work at all. Typical I guess.
There is much more I would like to write, but that will have to wait for another time. My family, spanish class, the weather and life are all good right now. I guess my only possible complaint is that I managed to sunburn the top of my head pretty good the other day, but that is of my own doing.
Tomorrow afternoon after class, we are heading to Lake Nicaragua (about 30 minutes from here) to climb a volcano and will return on Sunday night.
In just over a week’s time, I have I have logged a lot of airline miles. Leaving Germany last Saturday morning, I have flown to Salt Lake City, driven to Salmon, Idaho, flown back to Denver, and finally onto Managua, Nicaragua. I arrived yesterday in San Juan del Sur (the location of my Spanish school that I will be attending for the next 4 weeks). After only 8 days since the beginning of this journey, I feel a long ways away from both my life in Germany and my grandparents in Idaho.
First of all, Nicaragua is hot and humid. I don’t want to sound like I am complaining, but it is true. One of the teachers at the school said today that this is the cold time of year for Nicaragua (and that she was a bit cold). I do not understand how anybody can believe this and I would hate to be here during the ‘hot’ period.
Today I moved in with my host family. I will be living with a large (4 adults and 3 children) extended family. They are very warm and friendly. I believe it will be a great experience. I start classes tomorrow.
The past few days have been spent traveling from Managua to San Juan del Sur (located on the SW coast of Nicaragua, just a few miles north of Costa Rica) and relaxing. Good food, lots of coffee, long mornings, swimming in the ocean (with my new surfing shorts) a couple days, and generally enjoying life. There have been (of course) a few experiences that are not completely normal, but I have come to accept these happening as just part of the ‘traveling bob experience.’ On Friday, we took a taxi from the hotel to the bus depot, where we were met by a couple people that were taking the backpacks, throwing stuff on a bus, and demanding tips. My guidebook warned me about the overly aggressive people at the bus station, but it was still a bit of a surprise. The same thing happened again in the town of Rivas (about 20 minutes from San Juan del Sur) where we were nearly forced into a taxi. A bit frustrating since we were not really given the opportunity (it felt anyway) to figure things out for ourselves. Hopefully after a few weeks of Spanish class, this will get better, or at least be able to handle myself better (athough it was not a bad experience).
Other first impressions of Nicaragua include lots of noise and sounds from all directions. People honk horns constantly for no apparent reason. I think there is some sort of psydo-code/meanings assocated with the horns: 1) hi, 2) watch out I’m coming through, and 3) get the fuck out of my way. My basic conclusion is that #3 is used the most. Along with the sounds are lots of bright colors everywhere. Great sunsets, warm nights and a continuous warm wind in San Juan del Sur.
I guess that is enough for now. I will try to get some pictures posted in the next days.
It has been a while since my last post and a lot has happened. I have been extrememely busy finishing up my life in Germany and I am now in transit to Nicaragua. I am now in Salmon, Idaho visiting my grandparents and I begin my journey to Nicaragua early tomorrow morning. I hope to write more tomorrow before leaving the states and I also hope to occassionally post while in Nicaragua. I have no idea how available the interenet will be, but I will try.
I really want to send this off to my family. I don’t think they would see the humor (at least the way I do). This is actually Ed’s fault – but I like it.
