On my own again...
This morning I am waking up in Granada again. From here I will be contacting the teachers in Jalapa and Elena´s family in Managua and perhaps finding a place to spend a little time. It will feel good to cool my heels and get back into operating mostly in Spanish. The last couple of weeks have been fun, but constantly on the run. I was reminded though of how lovely it can be to make new friends while traveling because a closeness can be developed within a very short time. Yesterday I said goodbye to my friends Lyndsay and Megan. They went on to Costa Rica before heading home and I went in the opposite direction. We knew each other for a grand total of 2 weeks, I think almost exactly, and yet we now have loads of exciting shared experiences in many different countries.
Last week we left Granada and headed for Isla de Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. This is a place that all travelers who have already visited will recommend. It is beautiful and wild. We took a bus, boat and taxi to get to Finca Zopilote, a jungle, eco-friendly, mostly organic farm. The goal of this place is to create as little waste as possible, and grow as much of their own food as possible. In their tiny store they had homemade jams and nutella, canned in recycled glass. Mango jam in a coke bottle anyone? The place is owned by a couple of Italians and three times a week they fire up a wood oven and make pizzas. We were there on one of those nights, and the pizza didn't disappoint.
On the farm we stayed in a little thatched shack, with an upstairs loft, hammocks, and many holes in the mosquito screens. My dear friends, who have lived their entire lives in the far from tropical climate of England and Northern Ireland, had a hard time getting used to the idea of living so intimately with the `creatures`. The bathrooms were all compost toilets, outside peeing required. While sitting on the pot one could read abou'Mierda Sagrada', literally sacred shit, and how rather than polluting the earth with our waste we could actually use it to grow our own food. Good idea, although difficult to convince many that they want to have anything more to do with their waste than the simple flush. The showers were completely open air, essentially raised water spickets in a banana grove. I personally loved showering in the jungle.
The first morning we woke up at 6 with plans to climb the closest volcano. A local guide arrived with his machete and we started off walking through people's fields to the volcano. The hike was meant to take 8 hours. An hour in it started to rain, harder, and HARDER, until 2.5 hours in we were completely soaked and standing in the middle of a rushing stream that had one been our trail. Aborting our mission to summit the volcano was a hard decision to make. We must have stood there in one place for 10 minutes praying for a change in the weather. Our guide agreed to do whatever we wanted, continue or go back, but said higher up the climb is more difficult. Someone else has since told me that the top involves rope climbing in spote, so I think turning around was the right decision. We made it back down hot, starving and disappointed. At that moment the other girls decided that they wanted to spend their last few days here at the beach, so we packed up and went back across the water.
We spent 4 days in San Juan del Sur, one highlight being a nightime epedition to a nesting beach of sea turtles. We saw two turtles come out of the water, dig their nests, lay about 100 eggs apiece, cover the nest and return to the water. Apparently of those 100 eggs, only one of them is likely to become a mature turtle. Not very good odds. Sadly we were asked to leave a little early because some people could NOT follow the rules and took several pictures, with flash, of the turtles faces. They had repeatedly told us that light disorients the turtles, making them temporarily blind and more vulnerable to predators in the water. ALthouh they allowed photography, they preferred that each person only take one picture. It is in situations like this that people's greedy and selfish tendencies reveal themselves. As we were leaving, the mother of a family from the US pitched a fit about how much money they had paid to go on this expedition, and that they were being shortchanged. The poor girl who was our guide barely spoke English, and I felt really bad for her. It was a memorable experience, but I actually felt bad for the turtle being surrounded by 30 people taking pictures of her as she gave birth. It seems quite stressful. During certain times of the year and moon cycle thousands of turtles will come to nest in the same night. That would be an incredible sight to see.
Last week we left Granada and headed for Isla de Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. This is a place that all travelers who have already visited will recommend. It is beautiful and wild. We took a bus, boat and taxi to get to Finca Zopilote, a jungle, eco-friendly, mostly organic farm. The goal of this place is to create as little waste as possible, and grow as much of their own food as possible. In their tiny store they had homemade jams and nutella, canned in recycled glass. Mango jam in a coke bottle anyone? The place is owned by a couple of Italians and three times a week they fire up a wood oven and make pizzas. We were there on one of those nights, and the pizza didn't disappoint.
On the farm we stayed in a little thatched shack, with an upstairs loft, hammocks, and many holes in the mosquito screens. My dear friends, who have lived their entire lives in the far from tropical climate of England and Northern Ireland, had a hard time getting used to the idea of living so intimately with the `creatures`. The bathrooms were all compost toilets, outside peeing required. While sitting on the pot one could read abou'Mierda Sagrada', literally sacred shit, and how rather than polluting the earth with our waste we could actually use it to grow our own food. Good idea, although difficult to convince many that they want to have anything more to do with their waste than the simple flush. The showers were completely open air, essentially raised water spickets in a banana grove. I personally loved showering in the jungle.
The first morning we woke up at 6 with plans to climb the closest volcano. A local guide arrived with his machete and we started off walking through people's fields to the volcano. The hike was meant to take 8 hours. An hour in it started to rain, harder, and HARDER, until 2.5 hours in we were completely soaked and standing in the middle of a rushing stream that had one been our trail. Aborting our mission to summit the volcano was a hard decision to make. We must have stood there in one place for 10 minutes praying for a change in the weather. Our guide agreed to do whatever we wanted, continue or go back, but said higher up the climb is more difficult. Someone else has since told me that the top involves rope climbing in spote, so I think turning around was the right decision. We made it back down hot, starving and disappointed. At that moment the other girls decided that they wanted to spend their last few days here at the beach, so we packed up and went back across the water.
We spent 4 days in San Juan del Sur, one highlight being a nightime epedition to a nesting beach of sea turtles. We saw two turtles come out of the water, dig their nests, lay about 100 eggs apiece, cover the nest and return to the water. Apparently of those 100 eggs, only one of them is likely to become a mature turtle. Not very good odds. Sadly we were asked to leave a little early because some people could NOT follow the rules and took several pictures, with flash, of the turtles faces. They had repeatedly told us that light disorients the turtles, making them temporarily blind and more vulnerable to predators in the water. ALthouh they allowed photography, they preferred that each person only take one picture. It is in situations like this that people's greedy and selfish tendencies reveal themselves. As we were leaving, the mother of a family from the US pitched a fit about how much money they had paid to go on this expedition, and that they were being shortchanged. The poor girl who was our guide barely spoke English, and I felt really bad for her. It was a memorable experience, but I actually felt bad for the turtle being surrounded by 30 people taking pictures of her as she gave birth. It seems quite stressful. During certain times of the year and moon cycle thousands of turtles will come to nest in the same night. That would be an incredible sight to see.
posted by Eva Hathaway at 9:18 AM
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