Those were pictures Nina took.

Just so you know. 

The class day!

Hi again. Continuing the story of Nicaragua! 

The next day was the day with the class led by Miguel on how to prepare your cacao for fermentation. It was really very interesting, and about an hour and a half along jouncy roads from Boca de Sabalo by truck, only this time with the bed filled to the gills with people. 

The class looked a little like this:

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

And this when it was outside: 

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

I don't know how much in the way of details you care to know about this class and the process, but rest assured, I now know details if you want to ask. Basically you separate the pods by type, ripeness, disease, and size. The two groups of large-enough, undiseased, ripe pods of the two different types get fermented in special ways, and all the rejects go into the "local market" bean piles, where they are fermented in the old, traditional way. 

Ethically it's ok to leave the locals with only rejected-and-possibly-diseased pods and beans because they'll be getting a lot more money with the good ones that they can export, and they would have used the rejects anyway if the class wasn't in place. At least that's what we decided to tell ourselves. 

For a period of time I was entertaining myself with how to best take pictures of broken beans (my main function for Miguel), and I made friends with this little guy, Jorge:

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

He was thrilled to help, and didn't mind that I asked random numbskull me-being-bad-at-spanish questions all the time (like, "how do you say not.. nearby?" - "uh, 'far?'" - "ok. 'Far.' This here is only good when this other thing is far" - when describing lenses). He learned really fast how to take pictures with my camera, too - though him handling it at all made me super nervous for a little while, but he was careful. He even figured out how to change some settings on his own, which made me a little more concerned that he'd randomly press the button sequence that would delete all pictures without knowing it, so I had to lay down the rule that he can turn the knobs and dials, but not to push any buttons but the shutter. It worked out ok in the end. Then I went outside and he went to work helping them all gather banana leaves and cracking open cacao pods. 

Speaking of which, look at what chocolate comes from:

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

That's an open pod held by Nina. Neat, huh? There's all this white, melony stuff inside the pods that you can eat, too, but the real stuff is in the beans, which you put into a box to ferment for a few days, seen here: 

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

Maybe it was my imagination but it seemed like the women, who comprised about half of the class, did about 80% of the work. 

Anyway. See the banana leaves in there? Apparently banana leaves have with them the necessary microbes to ferment the cacao beans correctly. Neat. 

You can go to my picasa album from the class for more details of what the process is like. I wrote a lot in those captions. 

Oh, and here's an example of a bad bean next to a good bean: 

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

Bad on left, good on right. This is post-fermentation, and the purple color on the bad one comes from... well I wasn't too clear on what it comes from, but "some kind of problem during fermentation" is probably general enough to be correct. Whether it was too hot, too cold, unripe, diseased - I really don't remember. Oh well. I'm not the expert. But you can see there's a difference, clearly. (These are about quarter sized, for reference.) 

So yeah! bascially this was a really cool thing to see. And, supposedly, if these farmers/fermenters follow the process laid out by Miguel, their cacao beans will be worth 4 times as much as they were before (pending inspection). 

I talked to a guy there who knew a little english. He said that his friend said that I didn't speak spanish, but he corrected him: "I said you don't speak spanish, more-or-less." I thought it was an appropriate way to put it. He insisted I come to a house nearby and have some of their water with him. I'm still not sure if he knew them or anything or if he just figured they wouldn't mind us barging in. As for the water - so far so good...

Then we went home and had dinner. We had worn our tall rubber boots ALL DAY because Jan said that we should, in order to "better fit in." Yeah. Wearing tall rubber boots in a tropical climate only to come home that night with them perfectly clean, but with the parts of your pants tucked into them soaking with ankle sweat, is not worth the minor level of "fitting in" that they provided. Just so you know. We did not wear them for dinner.

Then we planned the next day!

....To be continued!

Continuing the saga...

... from where I left off. 

Now. The town we were in was called Boca de Sabalo. I don't know why I couldn't remember that. I guess all the car-jouncing kinda loosened my brain or something.

The town is called that because it is where the Sabalo tributary river meets up with the bigger Rio San Juan, so, its mouth ("boca"). 

Uh oh, re-reading what I wrote before I now also realize I skipped almost a whole day. In this day, we did, indeed, go to Jinotega. It was nice. We were pretty darn lucky because a DED professional whom Nina works with was able to take us in her truck all the way there and back, so we had a very relaxed trip. 

Nina in Jinotega:

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

Part of the mission was to see off a DED volunteer who will be living in Jinotega for a year and a half. Jinotega is a very, very pretty little mountain town (about Marquette sized, but surrounded by cloudy forested mountains) that unfortunately had the opposite of a warm welcome for this nice girl, whose pre-arranged living arrangement-keepers basically told her "oh, we're not ready for you. I guess we forgot. Get a hotel or something." We all felt pretty bad for her, especially because she was a volunteer and not making money, so couldn't really afford a hotel for this undisclosed amount of time. But being white meant having money to her future landlords, so on the street she went. There was another nice couple who agreed to take her in for the time being, but what a crappy welcome to your new home!

And we bought boots and things for our voyage. When I told  my dad that I wasn't bringing a hat he said that I should get one like the locals wear, and they'll be happy with it. So I did, and bought a NY Yankees cap. Seriously. Baseball, and it seems the Yankees in particular, are huge there. Plus my head was way too big for the Boston and Oakland caps I tried on first (hey, the yankees cap was black. I didn't really want to deal with that extra heat). 

THEN we went to Managua, stayed at Anja's house, THEN went to Boca de Sabalo. Phew. 

Crossing the Sabalo river itself: 

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

Ok, now we're up to speed.

Boca De Sabalo. At time of last posting (with actual content, that is) I still had no idea where we were going to spend the night. I wandered back up to the mayor's office (where the development meeting was taking place and where Nina and Miguel were), just in time for: the sun to set, a storm to roll in, and the power to go out. All 3 of these things lasted pretty much all night, (especially the first one,) and made everything awfully dark. 

Like this:

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

We had dinner at the same place that we had lunch at (there were apparently only 2 options for sit-down, roof-over-your-head dinners in the entire town, and one of them was across the river and so was not an option during the storm) and it was good and candle-lit, but the exact same food as their lunch. This is where I met Jan, the DED guy trying to start up a new program in the area, and so the in-charge DED guy there. 

But then as I found out, it was our very own Miguel (the one who drove us down the entire way) who is the seriously big-cheese of the whole event. He is the representative from this german chocolate company who is basically in control of quality of exports to Germany. (You can find these chocolates in the US in World Market stores, at least.) Nina said she was surprised to hear everybody referring to him by the most formal "you" and "him" words in Spanish. It's sort of like saying "sir," but in Spanish you have many more parts of speech where you can express that kind of respect. Make sense? Anyway. He was the bottom line here, clearly, because exports had to pass his inspection to be bought by the company, and most of this workshop was to explain how to achieve the quality he was looking for, as well as how he will be doing the testing. 

So he's basically a supply quality engineer, like Vishaka. Only he's one that's supposed to be able to taste smoke contamination in raw cacao beans, for instance. So basically Vishaka would've loved to tag along, I'm sure. 

We ended up staying the night, and the next couple nights, at the company house that Jan lived in. It was a really nice, big, wood-interior house, and we woke up each morning to a combination of roosters crowing and howler monkeys going insane outside. 

This was "my room" of the house:

From Nicaragua! Matagalpa, Jinotega, Rio San Juan

Pictures!!!!

Pictures of Nicaragua are up, alls. 

This is the first album, with pictures of Managua, Granada, and Masaya (and the Vulcan Masaya, and Las Isletas near Granada):

http://picasaweb.google.com/keith.pennington/NicaraguaManaguaGranadaMasaya#

This is the other album, featuring the rest of my trip there. This includes Matagalpa, Jinotega, the car ride to Rio San Juan, Boca de Sabalo, the cacao bean fermenting/quality class, El Castillo, and a bunch from a boat around Rio San Juan:

http://picasaweb.google.com/keith.pennington/NicaraguaMatagalpaJinotegaRioSanJuan#

They all have captions! so read up!

ALSO: Might I suggest using Picasa's new-and-improved "slideshow" setting, only pausing it and advancing as you want so you have time to read the lengthier comments. That's just a button in the upper left you click, then use the controls on the middle of the bottom of the screen. It's pretty neat. 

good ol" bells...

Hi everybody. I'm sitting at bells in kalamazoo waiting for my tempeh reuben, and things are good. So i made it all the way home, with luggage, with no problem whatsoever. I've gone about a third the way though my pictures which will be posted as soon as they get captions, and of course i will continue the blog for a bit with the last few days of CRAZY ADVENTURE. SO expect more tomorrow.

back

... in houston. man i have a lot to tell you guys... (pretty much good news only, don't worry). 7 hours on a boat two days ago, 10 hours 4-wheelin yesterday, and 13 ish hours in planes and airports today.

tomorrow, probably a spaceship! for... 16 hours!

So I was wrong about this place being without its comforts...

...Because I apparently found an internet cafe! It doesn´t exactly have even 3 walls but it does have an aluminum roof and 3 computers side by side, so it´s ok.

But yeah. Nina and Miguel and Jorge (those were the two guys we rode here with) are at this meeting that they said would be very boring and last 2 hours. It´s kind of a preparation of the presentations that they´re going to do in the next couple days here, and lots of the presenters haven´t really met each other yet. I think. Something like that. In any case, we all decided I would be bored witless and I set out to explore the town of ... I can´t believe I forgot the name of it, but I´ll tell you later so you can look it up on the map. (Note: it may not be there.)

In Nina´s guidebook this town has a population of 1000. That´s an "eh?" figure if I´ve ever heard one. This town has one street. No exaggeration. One short street that ends at the river. The town took approximately 5 minutes to explore. The town is really not that big. I seriously doubt the ´1000´ figure.

But it does seem to have this internet place, kind of back from the road and denoted by an extremely faded sign that seemed to used to say a lot, but I saw this: INTERNET... De SKY! that was originally written with marker, and it caught my eye. Other than that it just looks like every other shack around here. (No offense.)

So remember how I said it would take 7 hours to get here? Within a country about the same size as New York state? well, somebody decided that because of something of a drought they´ve been having here in this part of the country (yeah, what with all the rain just a couple hundred miles away I would never have guessed) that the road that we would otherwise have to bypass by riverboat is indeed passable, so we drove the whole way. It was 9 hours, 2 hours longer than it would´ve been had we taken the boat. Arg.

It is pretty far, but not that far on a map (by american standards, anyway). It seemed like the last 5 hours were all on very, very, let´s say "rural" roads. Poor Nina must have a headache as big as anything because of how many times her head smacked against the inside handles of the truck. (and sometimes her head hit her fingers holding that handle, so her fingers are also probably very sore.)

Therefore it was not the kind of road trip that you can get any sleep on - and when you get picked up at 4:00am, well, you kinda want that kind of trip.

We stopped for breakfast, which were quesillas. They make a good breakfast food in addition to the other controversial things i suggested them for. They also had coffee there, but it was ultra-sugared instant coffee. Not so good.

Most of the ride, despite being jouncy, was very scenic. It turns out that really most of this country is very, very nice to look at. And that when you need to pee, you say that we need a "technical stop." Everybody thought that was pretty funny for longer than we all should´ve, I think.

Now, I told you about the animosity between Nicas and Ticos. I should tell you that the river I am on is either the border between the two countries or very, very near it. (it depends where you are, see.) Supposedly the ´famously ecological´ Costa Ricans have plantations all over where they have deemed protected area, where the always good Nicas have made no such promise, but still don´t have plantations down by the river. From what I´ve seen this isn´t really true, but maybe it is somewhere else along the river. I don´t know.

Anyway. Nicas>>Ticos is a common theme, basically.

Now, this river we are on: has sharks! has caymans! has big ol fish! and shrimp! and didImention SHARKS! Not too many rivers have actual sharks, so this is cool to me. Don´t worry, they don´t really get bigger than a person. But about that big.

There are also hot springs somewhere nearby. We may investigate, time permitting.

There are now several people crowded around me, talking. It´s sunny out. I guess they´re just hanging out here. I don´t blame them though; there´s a nice fan in here.

I decided that the next time I decide to come to Latin America I will definitely want to know about a hundred times as much spanish as I know now. Well, 4 or 5 times as much would be good. I basically understand the gist of what´s being said about 1/4 of the time, what is exactly said much less - and don´t even ask about when it comes time for me to say something. If for some reason I have more time, then I´d want to go to a spanish language school which seem to be everywhere for $190ish/week, which includes room and board.

But those are all just thinkin´s.

(PS: I bet you all are interested in what exactly Nina is doing here, huh? she tried her best to explain to me the whole situation, but that would take patience and concentration for me to repeat. Plus I need to go to the bathroom right now, so that may have to wait. But you know what? My very own pictures may be in a kind of single-sheet instruction manual for fermenting cacao and/or PR thing that Nina is preparing! I need to actually shoot them still, but some of the people in the DED seem pretty excited about my camera being here right now. I´m just happy I have some kind of role on-site, what with my limited communication skills and all.)

Hello all again.

So I found Nina at her work shortly after ending the last post. It worked out pretty well except that I was one block away from her office when the cabbie dropped me off (go figure, with that address..). It turned out that she was counting from one corner of the old cinema and he counted from a different corner. So I was a little confused for a little while, but we both had phones so it worked out ok.

Let me just say this: Matagalpa is beautiful! I´m actually disappointed I´m not staying more time here. It´s surrounded by these huge, beautiful, lush hills, and the climate is very nice. (It still rains occasionally, but there isn´t the crazy heat and oppressive humidity of Managua or Granada, even.)

I said I´d have pictures up, but there are problems with that plan. The main problem is that I don´t have my camera cable. Stupid mistake. I think I took it out of my luggage when I decided not to bring my computer. And no, spare cables like that aren´t as easy to find as they should be. (The internet cafe we´re at now actually tried to sell me a USB adapter, but it cost 500 Cordobas, which is outrageous.)

Anyway. You´ll all see it in time.

Yesterday: we went to this small scale chocolate maker, where they make the kind of chocolate with ONLY cacao and sugar, no other ingredients at all. Except for the bars that have coffee and the bon-bons that have rum, that is. The owner is this young dutch guy with a keen interest in marketing. We talked with him actually quite a while, and he had a whole new perspective for the both of us on Nina´s position with the DED.

Then it rained like mad and we stayed there for a while. They were very nice about it. (the facility is also their house.)

I have TONS of chocolate now. Let´s see how much makes it home!

-------------------------------------

In other things going on: I met a lot of Nina´s coworkers at the annual corn festival. No you will NOT be getting pictures of that. I would have felt very uncomfortable taking my camera out there, so no pictures for you.

I even stopped a little kid from pickpocketing one of the german girls´bags. he had the whole zipper open and everyhing, and a friend or brother standing by, presumably to throw whatever loot he finds to.

But the corn festival was nice. Very enthusiastic dancing done by little girls yesterday, very enthusiastic corn food product eating done by men today. And plenty of live music. At least that´s what I saw of it. And vendors.

And I had some corn too.

I finally tried the Nica rum they´re so proud of here. (Nicaragua only produces two, seemingly identical beers, and only one company makes rum as far as I can tell.) It´s ok. I probably won´t bring any home, though.

Today, Nina and I hiked through the jungle up a nearby mountain. It was the most I think I´ve ever sweated ever in my entire life, saunas included. It was more warm and humid than Matagalpa is normally, I think. Plus the trail was mainly going up a big hill, after all. We had breakfast on the top, then came down quickly because we had been invited to one of Nina´s Nica friends house for lunch (well, Nina had been invited and was told I could come too).

Nina hasn´t been invited to a genuine Nicaraguan household before, and we were brainstorming beforehand what the customs must be, and how to figure out when it may be time for us to leave. We swapped culturally-awkward stories for a while, but we had to just play it by ear.

In the end, they offered us a ride home. So that was the end of that question, at least this time.

But the lunch was really good, and the first chicken I´ve had in ... um... maybe 7 years? I didn´t want to offend, you know. Plus we were told that the chicken dish was the husband´s specialty. The main course tasted to me like it had interestingly-spiced scalloped potatoes, but it turned out there was no potatoes in it at all and what I thought was potatoes were actually broken up corn tortillas. Shows what I know. And there was black bean paste (that´s what I´m calling it, anyway, it´s probably more like refried black beans - nothing special), cubed ripe avocadoes, and a fresh salad. We supplied the beer - which they served in mugs with huge chunks of ice and lime already squeezed in. It was a little weird, seeing that some of the beer we brought was Heineken and didn´t really take that treatment well. The Nica beer handled that better though.

We talked for a while about New Orleans and the U.S. political stuff, which I could not even begin to express in spanish so Nina gracefully translated for me. (Ok, she translated both ways almost the whole time.) And I learned that there is a lot of animosity between Nicas and Ticos (Ticos are what Costa Ricans call themselves, apparently). They say there is reliable information saying that there are over 750,000 Nicas living in Costa Rica - where the money is, apparently. That´s over 10% of the population of Nicaragua, so that´s pretty darn significant if you ask me. (But I kinda still feel like I need to look that up sometime for myself.)

Tomorrow we´re probably going to Jingotega - a more rural mountain town - to see what there is to see there. But then that night we go back to Managua, where we begin our crazy trip to Rio San Juan. (That´s what it´s called. I finally found out. And it not only takes 7 hours to get there, but some of it has to be done by riverboat. Neat!)

We also need to buy big ol´ galoshes tomorrow. They are needed, apparently. I´m taking their word for it.

I may not be able to write again for a while, but then I may write as soon as tomorrow. Who knows. But don´t be concerned if I don´t write for a while. It is actually possible that from here on I won´t really have internet access... We really don´t know what to expect on this extended field trip.

Uh oh everybody. I told Nina about this blog. She says that the bus ride to Rivas would have been more like 1 hour and not 4. So I guess they wanted me to stay in Granada when they told me that. Oh well, I still don´t regret it. I did more that day that I would´ve expected to in a week, so it was good.

Anyhoo... Talk to ya´lls later. And rest assured, many pictures have been took.

And yes,

..after giving you the recipe, I will say what I´m doing now.


Right now, I am waiting for Nina to get off work. She has half an hour to go, and I´m at an Internet cafe by the bus station in Managua, just having arrived from Granada.


This morning I took my guide from yesterday´s bike down the coast and rented a kayak for a bit. It was nice, but they didn´t let me go far enough to get out of site because I was alone. I bet they´re used to people not knowing what they´re doing, but I couldn´t effectively communcate that I am actually pretty ok at kayaking. Not that it would´ve mattered anyway. It was still very nice. They even gave me a drybag for my camera.


Something I found interesting was that the kayaks they had looked home-made by somebody good at molding fiberglass. The paddles were definitely made out of an aluminum pole with lopsided fiberglass flat shapes at the end - not exactly what I´m used to, but it worked fine all the same.


So I am off to Matagalpa tonight (or possibly tomorrow morning if we get a ride - the busses are very uncomfortable for my knees... and just on the hour-long trip from Granada I felt all sorts of leg muscles starting to cramp) and see where the coffee and cacao comes from! I´m excited.


Nina says that this weekend in Matagalpa is actually pretty special. Since it´s in a large agricultural area, there will be the annual corn festival over saturday and sunday. Apparently people dress up as tortillas and everything. (yes, I´m bringing my camera!)


Other things I did today: I ate breakfast at this old dutch man´s restaurant that´s only open certain days of the week, and then only for breakfast. He was a really nice guy that wanted to talk. He has lots of opinions on gas and plane ticket prices, as well as the cost of going back to europe for him. I should´ve said he could charge a lot more than the prices he does, and me being nearly the only one in his restaurant. (3USD for a large eggs, toast, and gallo pinto breakfast with unlimited coffee. It´s not India cheap, but it´s cheap compared to the restaurants nearby in Granada.)

Speaking of India, they have autorickshaws here! only they call them something else. I thought you´d want to know. And they only seem to be in the small towns.


Well, now I´m off to see if I can successfully communicate to a cabbie the ´address´Nina gave me of her work in Managua. Translated, it is, literally, word-for-word:

From where the old cinema used to be,
2 toward the lake,
half downward

Seriously. That´s not only directions, but the mailing address. Exactly as I wrote, but in spanish. They really need to name their streets and put numbers on the doors in Managua. Granada does it, even.

(ps, downward means ´where the sun sets,´so, West. ´Toward the lake´ means North. I am glad Nina told me this beforehand...)

as promised: the recipe!

This is some kind of dessert-snack food. It is good, and probably pretty bad for you.

Take:

Onions, cut them up, put them in white vinegar with a bunch of these crazy little blueberry-sized-and-looking hot peppers with a single seed inside (adding a bunch of tabasco sauce would work too, he said, seeing that these are peppers I´ve never seen before and I doubt you have access to them) and leave it for a few days so the onions pickle and get spicy. No garlic or anything, just onions and mashed peppers/tabasco in vinegar.

Then take:

a small tortilla, heated

a small slice of provalone, about the same size as the tortilla (they used some other kind of cheese, but I bet provalone would substitute well.)

Put the cheese flat on the tortilla, put the onion stuff on the cheese, with a lot of its juice. Roll it up, it'll be super messy. THEN IT'S NOT YET OVER. Quickly take a plastic sandwich bag (actually very important) and wrap the whole thing in it, except the top. Then dump a ton of the liquid kind of sour cream all over the top hole, so it leaks all the way through to the bottom and collects in the bag.

Then eat it, rolling the bag down as you go. It is so good! then when you get done with the solid stuff, bite off a corner of the plastic bag and suck out the rest of the pinkish stuff that leaked out the bottom. That part's the best. And for some reason, the spiciest.

Man oh man

For those curious, no, I did not get kidnapped. My guide is one of the nicest guys ever, and when I was short the cash to pay him tonight he said "oh just come by tomorrow." (But I insisted we went to an ATM.) I'm probably going to borrow his bike to go down to the kayak rental place tomorrow anyway, actually. He insisted.

I am really tired now but I'll try to describe both what I did and what I will do.

Did:

- Went to a volcano. It was awesome. And active!
- Went to an old fort on a hill that has been used as a prison/torture center as recently as 1983, and is the creepiest place I hope to ever go to. Where the newer paint was chipping off you could see what was unmistakably blood spattered on the walls. It is an awful place. And dark, moist, and filled with bats. And don't ask how it was unmistakable.
- Went to Nicaragua's premier artisan market, or that's my translation anyway. I got Vishaka a cool present that I would tell you all about but don't want to spoil the surprise. And it's not a "ball in a cup" even though those tempted me.
- Went to a big ol' lagoon like a crater lake. It was pretty, and where all the pottery artists live for some reason, so we saw them too. If I wasn't currently limited to my little backpack some of you would have awesome presents coming your way that would probably cost 4 digits in Ann Arbor, but here they only cost a hundred or so bucks. These are some seriously awesome vases and pots that are stained, carved, stained again, and painted and possibly carved yet again to be very, very awesome looking. (For instance, think about an entire pot made with loosely arranged fancy woven leather belts, except it's all one piece of original pottery.) However, I was shy in the store (that was really the lead-artists living room, it seemed) so I don't have pictures of them.
- Went zip-lining in the jungle on the side of very large volcano. It was crazy, and pouring rain very very hard. 14 different zips. Or lines. Or whatever they're called. I came down from it covered inexplicably in mud. Apparently treetops are not very clean areas.
- Went to the top of some church, eating some neat food i've never heard of. I wrote to vishaka the recipe. will post here later.
- Went out to dinner and had the biggest, meatiest little fish that has ever existed. Think of a bass, less than a foot long, but its post-gutted height off my plate was probably 5 inches. It was very, very good and very, very fresh. But seriously, the size of the fillets was something I would expect on a tuna or a marlin or something, not a funny little fish only a foot long. I couldn't even get 3/4 the way through it and had to stop because I was so full. I DO have a picture of this (the fish, duh).
- That's that.

Will do:

- Go on some awesome-sounding, ultra-rural "site visit" with Nina (awesome-sounding if only because she sounded so excited about it on the phone). This'll be next Tuesday through... Friday! Which means I had to change my flight, which I did without much fuss. This "site" to "visit" takes about 7 hours to get to, apparently - and my understanding is that that's by 4x4. This is why there was the inflexibility with my previous flight time of 8am friday morning.

But, as I said, I'd love to talk more now but I am really, really tired. And I think all of my body's resources have been diverted to handling the enormous amount of fish I just gave it.

Hello again

It rains here.

Who didn't tell me this was the "rainy season"??

oh I guess I knew it. But with a better idea of what can be done in the rain vs what can't, I changed my plans pretty considerably for the next couple days. This "better idea" was supplied by a guy who has nothing to gain by me going to Ometepe, but will get a bunch of money out of me by taking me personally on crazy tours nearby tomorrow. (And yes, he is from a legitimate company so stop worrying. I talked a guy from Arizona he took out a couple days ago. He said it was definitely worth it.)

So this means I'm staying in Granada for two days, and my too-long legs will be spared a further 4 hour knee-banging bus ride to Rivas, to get a taxi, to get a ferry, then to get another taxi somewhere on the island, then do it all again except in the reverse order tomorrow.

At first, in retrospect, I thought to myself "Man! I just got totally taken advantage of because this guy just got my business by telling me to not follow my original plan, which I thought for some stupid naive reason he would be impartial with me about!"

But then in further retrospect, I'm actually really happy I'll be with a good guide (for pretty much all day) tomorrow, and not on a jouncy bus right now wondering where I'm going to sleep tonight. Plus I just went on a boat tour of the lake and saw monkeys and ospreys. No good pictures of them though, sorry. - I think. I didn't bring along my big telephoto, I thought I was going to just walk around town and take pictures of cathedrals (very large and very old, like from the 1500's old. That's as old as anything called a "cathedral" can be in this hemisphere.) Then i met this guy by the docks with a tourboat, and he took me out. I practiced spanish with him for nearly two hours, and he tried to sell me property. "Mira! Este isla es 800,000USD solamente! Este es 'rugged.' Mira! Los monos! Ohhhh. Tres monos. Mama, Papa, y baby." - meaning monkeys. He made sure I told my family that this is a good investment, and gave me his business card with his realtor-ish information. And, the values are appreciating! (I had to look up a bunch of those words when he was telling them to me so I would understand.)

So what do you think, family? I actually think most of the islands that are currently unsold aren't really suitable for building, though. They kinda seemed like you should wear waders - or even a life jacket - when standing on them. Most of what you see of them - the vegetation - is probably floating.

So you see, Granada is on the same lake as Ometepe, and it has a big ol' volcano behind it too. And I have my own cheap room at a hostel with free internet for two nights. So I'm still happy I'm here.

Volcano tomorrow! Canopy tour tomorrow! Kayaks tomorrow!

Pictures won't be up until the weekend. Unless I'm feeling super enterprising tonight. The free internet here comes at a cost: these computers are the oldest I've seen anywhere but junk heaps for years. I'm not sure how my camera will confuse them.

ALSO: there's a vegetarian "hindu" restaurant here in Granada! Vishaka wins. I thought I wouldn't see any Indian places.

AND: has anybody heard of "dragonfruit"? It is weird. But at least in smoothies it is very, very good.

GOT HERE!

Hooray! I got in to Managua yesterday night and Nina was there to greet me without a hitch. And I´m glad I went without bags so I could be the first one out the door where everybody had to stand around for presumably a lot longer, THEN all go through customs at once.

So anyway. My Spanish is awful , but not so bad I wasn´t able to: 1) get a cab to the bus station, 2) get a bus to Granada, 3) apologize to the guy next to me that my feet were so big (we were kind of crammed in there and I had my hiking boots on,) and 4) get on this computer.

The place I stayed at last night was a nice-sized apartment that two girls normally share, but currently it was holding both of them as well as myself, Nina, and two other germans. And, for some reason, they had mattresses enough for everybody. At least when layed out in a grid, occupying most of the living room. Oh, and they have a cat. A fiesty one. They are all very nice.

And yes, I said thank you.

In anticipation to your questions: no, I have not yet had Nicaraguan food or coffee. That is my next stop. Also, Managua is ok. It´s kind of big and confusing and it doesn´t really have a downtown, and the part of it on the lake is not a nice place to go to because it smells. Or so they say. So this is why I am in Granada instead. (that and to not further feel like I was intruding, no matter how welcoming the apartment-havers were. plus Nina is in meetings and seminars all day, starting at 5am today until late tonight, and tomorrow would be the same. So sounds like time to go somewhere else on my list!)

Granada is like the Pondicherry to Managua´s Chennai. At least in my opinion. It´s supposed to be the oldest european-built city in the Americas. I don´t know for sure about that, but it certainly is very old. But even nice, tourist-friendly cities make me feel awkward when I´m alone and have no idea what´s going on, so I´m going to try to head all the way to Ometepe island tonight. That´s the island with 2 big ol´volcanoes on it, and the primary reason I brought my hiking boots.

I´ll let you all know how that works out! As for now, onwards to coffee and food and hopefully some kind of tourist center.

conSARN it!

So. This feels familiar. I'm stuck in a random hotel at the halfway mark going to my vacation destination. Only this time it's not in oh-cool-we-got-stuck-in-exotic Dubai, but reminding-me-angrily-of-work Atlanta.

You all probably know that I am not an inexperienced traveler, and that I can say this with some sound statistically sampling behind it: Delta has the worst customer service EVER. Of ANY company, as far as I can tell, too.

First off, my flight from grand rapids was about an hour late. With about an hour and twenty minutes connection time in atlanta, I was rightly concerned, so I asked what I should do. "oh, just go on and they'll take care of you when you get to atlanta," was the basic reply.

I run to the train in atl, i run off the train, I knock old people out of my way I rush so hard (ok not really, but you get the idea). I get to the gate with 10 minutes before the departure time. "Great!" I think, "I've made tighter connections, I made it!"

but no. Upon closer inspection, I see another passenger at the counter having a very heated arguement with the airline person. Actually, it was more one-sided than that. The airline guy just kept repeating that he already shut the door, no you can't go in. I have gone in several times with this exact situation previously, but those gate attendants were much more reasonable than this guy. My dad said that they do this when they've overbooked and don't want to offer vouchers, so they shut the door as soon as they can when the plane is full. So we got jacked, basically.

So I waited in line for over 3 hours (NOT an exaggeration) to see a customer service person. The one on the phone I talked to (you didn't think I'd just stand there, did you?) said that the best she could do for me was - now get this - THURSDAY. If today was wednesday, that might be ok. BUT IT'S NOT! It is Monday. So not a reasonable response. The real live actual person I talked to got me in tomorrow, with another connection. Houston this time.

But the part that bothers me the most? No information changed after I got on the first flight in grand rapids, where i first expressed concern about my connection. If they had been thinking about me when I asked them what I should do, they would have said that i will end up having to stay in atlanta tonight, no matter what. They had all that information then: when my estimated landing was after the delay, the on-time status and overbooking of the second flight, everything.

And I'm still paying for my own stupid hotel room.

On a funnier note: I called a former coworker (the one who lives in atlanta) to see if he was around tonight, and it turns out we were actually in the airport at the same time, but just missed each other. He was stuck there for about 4 hours as well, but got on his flight just before I got in the line.

Man I don't miss that job one bit.

Unrelated note: I wrote this whole post from my phone. Awesome, huh?

test from phone

howdy ya'lls. I'm just seeing if this works. It took more figuring out than I thought it would... but it seems to work now!

we'll see if I can get a sim with data usage allowed in nicaragua so i can update this thing from AANNNNYYYWHHEERRRREE!

That said, i'm still at home and all packed, ready to go! - I just hope that this "Fey" i keep hearing about isn't going to hold me up in Atlanta, which is my only connection. We'll see, I guess.

Test!

I am going to Nicaragua tomorrow so I changed the name and address of this blog to something more vacation-y instead of strictly India-y.

This post is a test to see if the RSS feed still directs here! I think I set it up right... we'll see though.

Hi everybody that's RSS'd this blog!

I have a few other things that you may want to see, that, due to laziness, I had not posted online for a while.

They include: pictures of people making saris, the Rajaram family, Vishaka in a sari(!), the marketplace near home, and a couple of attempts at HDR (High Dynamic Range) images near the house.

other india pictures

AND: some birds (these have been online for a while, but I don't think I ever linked directly to them):

india birds!

... after returning from Omaha...

(that's where I was the last couple days).. I picked our bags up at the airport!

all of them!

hooray!

.. so you can all stop biting your nails.

Except for the two of you that I got rather exceptionally fragile presents for, as we haven't opened the bags yet to inspect damage.

back in k-zoo

so Vishaka and I made it back to kalamazoo last night, but none of our bags did.

...just so you know.