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Here's what I wrote while I was still in Nicaragua:

8-04-08

I have arrived at my final night in Nicaragua, and I find that I am a bit sad to go. Despite all of my trials, this has been a great trip, and Nicaragua is a fascinating place; I have learned a great deal about it’s language, history and people, and still there is so, so much to explore and discover here. One day I would like to return in the capacity of teacher—either teaching English as a second language, or, later, teaching at a university here. It would be fun to switch roles from student to teacher…

My last day in San Juan was great fun! I had my surfing lesson with two girls from England who had also never surfed before. I’m quite pleased with my performance: the first time out, on about the third or fourth try (with tiny waves…) I was able to stand up, and I had a few good long rides on little waves. Despite the invisible filaments of jelly fish that stung us all day (initially not very bad, but I got a couple of bad stings which luckily are now just red marks on my legs and wrist), I stayed out waiting for waves, enjoying bobbing up and down on my board, and speaking spanglish with our teacher. Then we went up to the restaurant for a snack/lunch, and nursed our stings for an hour or two. Then the three of us went out again for just a short stint of bobbing before heading home. As we paddled in, along came a nice wave at just the right time for me. It was a pretty big one (as the waves were going that day), maybe three feet high, and I actually stood up! It was thrilling, but only lasted a few seconds before I fell in. Success!

The hardest part of surfing for me was definitely fighting the breakers to get out to where you wait for a wave, and then fighting the breakers to get back in to the beach. A few times on the way out I got slapped in the side by my board, and I think I must have gotten hit with the fins once because I now have two very lovely shiners on my left side (one at hip level and one on my ribs) and a smaller one on my right. A few minutes after my great last wave, I got swept in to the rocky part of the beach quite fast, and then didn’t have time to stand up and recover before a second wave slammed my board into my thighs, knocking me down into the rocks. I escaped relatively unscathed, but I got a gash/bruise on my right knee and a big, hard egg (which is only now starting to turn purple) on my left thigh. Ouch!! Although I’m really, really sore today and have been walking around like an old woman, my war wounds make me feel pretty tough; I get excellent gasps and oohs when I show people the bruises (though they do look worse than they feel). I definitely want to surf again, and I think that Conor and I will try to go in Santa Cruz when we get back to California!

After my surf lesson I went back to the hotel to take a shower and realized that I had gotten a bad sunburn, but only on the backs of my upper thighs. It is a very silly place to get burned (not to mention rather uncomfortable), and I did have 50 spf sunscreen on, but I guess the flesh up there was just so tender and pale that it couldn’t take the couple hours of sun! I lathered on some lotion, and then headed up to the Pelican Eyes Piedras y Olas Resort, just up the road from my hotel. I had arranged to meet up with the two girls from my surf lesson there to have dinner at the fancy hotel restaurant, but I went up a bit early to use the internet and watch the sunset from the side of their infinity pool. Very posh, as my companions said when they got there! And what a lovely view! The sunset was picturesque with the sun dipping into the water right at the end of the bay, and turning all of the clouds all orange and pink and gold. Somehow, no matter how clichéd describing sunsets might be, they still manage to be knock-the-wind-out-of-you beautiful, every time! At about the middle of the sunset, my English friends arrived, and we got a table for dinner. I had a salad, seafood pasta, a glass of wine and to finish a piece of DELICIOUS cheese cake. Everything was excellent, and I feel that my pampering was complete!

Earlier that day at breakfast, I had struck up conversation with some people from a Colorado-based church group who were in Somoto (a town in the north of Nicaragua) building houses and providing medical expertise to the locals. San Juan is a small town, and it happened that they were going to the same beach where I was having my surf lesson, so I ran into them several times during the day. When I got back from Pelican Eyes, a few of them, including the director of the program, Cheryl (I think…) were hanging out in the hotel lobby/courtyard, and I chatted with them for a bit before heading to bed. As it turned out, they were also leaving San Juan today for Catarina (the small artisan town near Granada that I visited a few weekends ago), and Cheryl offered me a ride on the group’s bus to Rivas. Que suerte! I of course accepted, and at about 1:00pm today (after spending the morning walking around San Juan for the last time, and getting a last lunch at a beach side restaurant) I piled into the bus along with everyone else, and they dropped me right at the Texaco station next to my hostel.

After dropping my big bag in my room, I went out across the highway to the Ticabus office, and bought my ticket for the bus tomorrow. I’m interested to see how this goes—there’s not a stop per say in Rivas, rather I’ll go stand outside of the Ticabus office (which is right on the Pan American highway) at 8:30 tomorrow and wave down the bus when it comes from Granada. After buying my ticket it, was approximately 2:30 and I had a good couple of hours to kill here in Rivas. There is close to nothing to do here… It has some interesting history, including a church that was here before William Walker came through, and—since Rivas is so close to the lake—was a marker that everyone passed on their way from the pacific to lake Cocibolca and up to California during the gold rush. It is also apparently an administrative center, which does not make it much for tourist attractions. However, I went a got myself an ice cream cone, and proceeded to walk around for as long as I could get myself to. I found that the town of Rivas is actually very pretty, and has a few lovely old houses in the same style as the houses in Granada. Also, it was nice to walk around a town that is NOT set up for tourists, for a change (especially after San Juan, which I think was the most touristy place I’ve been to here in Nicaragua), and get to see the smaller churches and actually functional, local businesses that survive independently of foreigners.

After making my way around town (and stopping for a while at an internet place…) I returned to the central park and sat down in the gazebo to watch another very nice sunset (though without a view of the water this time). The park is the happening place to be in Rivas, and a bunch of kids and young people were skateboarding, using the swings, and pairing off behind trees with their sweethearts. Universal pastimes…. It made for very good people watching. When the sun had gone down, I went over to Chop Suey for a very nearly convincing plate of chow mien with shrimp. It’s the only Chinese place that I’ve seen in Nicaragua—not that I’ve been looking for them—and it was actually pretty good. I debated about going local for my last dinner in Nicaragua, but I’ll most likely be having gallo pinto y huevos for breakfast tomorrow, so I’ll get my last fix then.

So then tomorrow, I’m off back to the zoo at the border—I’m interested to see if it’s different (better or worse) crossing in this direction—and then into San Jose to find a room at the Posada at the bus station for me and Lisa! Then, around 9 or 10 pm (whenever she gets through immigration and customs, etc), I’ll pick her up at the airport. It’s strange to think that I’ve already been here 6½ weeks; time is doing that weird thing it does, going faster and slower at the whim of my adventures. I will be sad to leave Nicaragua, but I am also psyched to see Lisa, and go back to Uncle Ed’s!

8-13-08

Here I am back in the states—it’s a bit disorienting. We are able to travel so fast that it seems like just the shift of a movie scene to get from Costa Rica to here, back in Plum Island (our family summer beach spot in northern Massachusetts).

On Tuesday (the 5^th) I caught my bus to Costa Rica without incident—it was a long day, but the border crossing was actually simpler (maybe just because I knew what to expect…). We got to San Jose a little late, and when I tried to get a taxi to take me to the bus station, none of them seemed to know which station I was talking about. After being turned away a few times (with my heavy back pack in the rain), I finally found a driver who was at least willing to try to help me find the station, and to my relief I found it. I asked about the Posada, and a very nice security guard bustled me upstairs to get the keys, and I dropped my bag in the dingy (but with private bath) room. The bus station was already closed by this point, so I wasn’t able to buy mine and Lisa’s tickets for the bus, but I figured that since we would be staying right above the station we could buy the tickets in the morning. Then the security guard got me a taxi driver who took me out to a mall near the airport to wait for Lisa’s flight. Talk about culture shock! The mall had a Burger King, Taco Bell, TCBY, and Subway, not to mention various American clothing stores and a Payless Shoes. I wandered around in a haze until about 9 when the mall closed and I headed back to the airport to pick Lisa up.

As per usual, her flight was delayed, but only by about 45 minutes. I met a girl who had been working with a youth church group for the last few months and was waiting for her mom, so we talked as we waited and passed the time quite easily. I was so excited to see Lisa walk through that gate! We caught a taxi back to the bus station, and went right to bed since we had to get up at 4:30 to buy tickets for our 6:00 bus.

When we got up, and got downstairs to buy our tickets, we found a sign on the door to the bus station office saying that there was no 6:00 bus. I asked the people at the shop next door to confirm, and they told me that the bus hadn’t come in the night before, and therefore wouldn’t be leaving that morning. Bummer! (welcome to Central America….). There are only two busses a day out to my uncle’s place, so we had to wait for the 3:30pm bus. Lisa and I sat down to wait for the restaurant to open enough to give us breakfast, and sat eating and talking for as long as we could stand it before getting in a cab to go into the center of San Jose at about 7:30am. We had a lot of time to kill! It all went fairly quickly though. I’m glad that I got to see a bit more of San Jose; my first impression of the city with Antonia hadn’t been that great, but there are some nice churches and every part of town is quite distinct. Lisa and I walked around and around, not wanting to stray too far from the central part of town as San Jose tends to start feeling very creepy as soon as you leave the downtown area. We watched the morning commuters going to work—it’s a commercial center, and looks (in this one respect) like most other large cities at 8:30 or 9 am on a weekday—and hit up as many parks as we could find. Then we found our way back to the supermarket that Antonia and I had found, and sat upstairs with coffee for the remainder of the morning. We bought some snacks for the bus, forgot to buy good coffee for gifts, and caught a taxi back to the bus station for lunch. That took us up to about 12:30, after which we sat in the little shop and had a heated and very close match of cribbage, which took up the rest of our time.

Then for the epic bus ride, once again! It was just as long, bumpy and uncomfortable as I remembered, but not so bad since I knew what to expect. We were both very happy to see Uncle Ed’s lit up sign and car waiting to meet us when we arrived (at about 11:00pm).

Our time at Uncle Ed’s place flew by; on Thursday morning we slept late-ish, and then sat on the kitchen porch enjoying the view and feeling the day heat up. Then we packed a lunch and walked out to Playa Bejuco—it was very convenient to have done this all before since I could then take Lisa to all the cool spots without having to walk the long way around to get there! We climbed on rocks, watched the crabs doing their thing on the beach, and generally had a lovely afternoon. The sun was behind some clouds, and the breeze was up, so we were able to sit on the beach for several hours without feeling suffocated by the heat or getting burned.

Friday we went for a great trail ride with Uncle Ed. We went through fields with grass that was taller than us on top of the horses (!!) and wound our way through the neighboring farms, including making our way through a herd of cows. Then we plunged (literally!) into the river; I have never ridden a horse so willing to leap without fear into water as the horses in Costa Rica are—they must have been doing it since birth. We walked along through the river, and then crossed up into some other paths. On the road back we met one of Uncle Ed’s neighbors who said that they were going to cut the horns off of a bull, and asked if we would like to go watch. Not a hard choice! It was an in-depth process: there were several spectators and two cowboys (plus Uncle Ed, who helped out a little under their direction) who first had to separate the bull they wanted from the rest of the herd. Then they lassoed it around the horns, and pulled it over to a tree with the intention of tying the bull to the tree. That step took quite a bit of time and finagling, switching trees a few times, changing and re-adjusting ropes, nearly losing the bull, having it go the wrong way, blaming each other for mistakes, etc. The cutting of the horns (the bull was to be ridden in a rodeo the next day, so they wanted to prevent it from goring anyone too badly should it escape) was actually a bit anti-climactic; the catching, tying up, and releasing were much more fascinating to watch. Both the horsemanship and the training of the horses throughout were very impressive. I wouldn’t have the first clue about dealing with a 2000lb thing with horns from the back of a horse except to run away, as fast as possible!

After our ride Lisa and I got beach ready and went to have lunch at Rossi’s (where Antonia and I went for Pizza night). We then spent another lovely afternoon at the Playa San Miguel, getting tossed around in the waves, and enjoying another day in paradise.

On Saturday, we were planning to leave on the afternoon bus, and so we had time in the morning to take the tour of the butterfly farm set up by one of Uncle Ed’s neighbors. Lisa woke up with a crick in her neck, and couldn’t stand straight. She has no idea what she did to it, but it certainly didn’t bode well for the bus ride! We had a great time on the tour—Mike, our guide, is an entomologist who very clearly loves what he does. He used to work on bees and wasps, and then became an army entomologist (clearing areas of harmful insects before the troops got there). I’m not sure how he ended up in Costa Rica, but once there he decided to set up a tourist attraction having to do with insects, and picked butterflies as the one most likely to get people to come in the gate. So, he has a series of wonderful paths set up through gardens and then through the rainforest where he says they see between 130-40 species of butterflies each year! In addition to the butterflies (which were numerous and beautifully colored, despite the drizzling rain) Mike keeps bees, and is the local bee-guy who takes bees from kitchens and properties and puts them to work in his boxes. We both bought some honey at the end of the tour. Mike told us that honey is the only food in the world that never goes bad, and it is also the only food that can’t be reproduced in a lab. How cool!

After our tour we went back to Uncle Ed’s, and Lisa took some Advil and lay down for a while to rest before getting on what Uncle Ed very accurately terms the “bang-bang bus.” Then we had a good bye lunch with Uncle Ed at the little store in Pueblo Nuevo, and boarded our only slightly late bus. About 7 hours later, exhausted and stiff (Lisa much more so than me!), we checked in to the Hotel Aeropuerto, blearily ate some dinner and fell into bed for another 4:30 am start. Our trip back was surprisingly smooth; the biggest line we had to stand in was the one to pay the exit tax (yep, you have to pay to leave the country…), and though we had to go through lots of security silliness, the only delay we had was on our second flight—only about an hour late, all told.

And so here I am, suddenly, back in the US, feeling a little like it was all a dream, or maybe like this is a dream now. It has been lovely for the last three days to sit around doing absolutely nothing, and no longer worrying about food, water or bus tickets! It has also been lovely to want a blanket at night and a sweatshirt during the day! Considering that I usually do pretty badly in hot weather, I adjusted well to life in Granada, but I am very much enjoying NOT being sweaty all the time.

What a trip! Thanks to everyone for comments and I hope you all enjoyed reading this blog—if I go anywhere exotic, I’ll start writing again. Otherwise, I’ll just be living the California grad school life!