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!

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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.