Colonial cities and crater lakes

Now that you've read Matt's treatise on the differences between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, I'll fill you in on all the fun things we've been doing! After leaving Cloudbridge we made our way directly to Granada, Nicaragua, stopping only to waste some money on a hostel in San Jose (the trip was not possible in a single day...). From San Jose we elected to take the Deldu bus instead of Ticabus like we did last time. Ticabus runs between the capitals of all the Central American cities, and will take you across the border, but you then have to wait for everyone else to clear customs too. Beyond the extra time, you pay a premium for the service (especially if you book online from the states through a third party like we did for our first trip...). So, instead we hopped on the local bus to the border. It was slower (6 hours instead of 5), hotter (Ticabus was air conditioned to an arctic chill, such as you are used to Tommy), and dirtier. But, it got us to the border for only $9! We crossed the border without incident (Matt managed to avoid all mud pits), and after fending off many eager taxi drivers we found ourselves on a bus to Granada. One of the men who was trying to sell us a taxi helpfully pointed out the bus in front of us and loaded our bags for us, then demanded a tip. This bus was slower, hotter, dirtier, and more crowded than our Deldu bus, but also only cost us a dollar or so for the remainder of the trip AND they blasted dance music the whole way! All of the buses in Nicaragua are old school buses, that have been painted awesome colors and coated in decals, stickers, and rope lights. They end up being a lot more fun to ride. Somehow I haven't gotten a picture yet, but I promise I will soon!

There are at least two people working on every bus - one driving and one who squeezes his way through to collect money, and also tells the bus driver when to stop and start again. In this way the buses waste less time collecting people, all you have to do is jump on and then the bus can start again. You pay sometime in the middle of your ride. Equally, the bus doesn't like to wait for people to slowly get off. Thus, we found our bags laid on the side of the highway and ourselves pushed out the door when the driver's helper said we were at Granada. Looking up, we did not see a beautiful colonial city. Instead, we watched a herd of tiny taxis descend from all around us onto the field in front of us. "Granada! Granada!" they yelled.

We squeezed into one (the driver held my backpack inside the taxi with one leg), and proceeded the remaining 20 km to Granada. 

Granada was lovely. We stayed almost a week, wandering around and looking at old churches, sipping cold drinks and people watching, and generally enjoying ourselves at a slow pace. We climbed up bell towers and looked over the city (and saw the volcano we climbed on Ometepe! It's huge!),

and took a day trip to Masaya, where we breezed through the big tourist market and walked along the "delightfully crumbling" waterfront,

 and took a boat tour of las isletas. Supposedly there are 365 of these small islands, thrown into Lake Nicaragua by a volcanic eruption 2,000 years ago. Now they are mainly private islands of the wealthy, though there is one island with 4 monkeys on it!

Our guide gallantly picked me beautiful flowers, but after some time in the heat they (and I) wilted.

Eventually we left, and made our way to Laguna de Apoyo. The lagoon is also delightful, with beautifully clear blue waters warmed by underwater vents from the crater. We spent two nights there, and it was a little like summer camp - we swam to a floating dock and dove off of it, then took out kayaks to paddle around, and then when bored of both kayaks and the dock we took inner tubes and lazed on the lake. Rinse and repeat.

Now we are in Leon, and looking forward to exploring another colonial town!

Costa Rica vs. Nicaragua

Here is my attempt to describe some of the differences between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  In short, it all comes down to a difference in money.  Nicaragua is A LOT poorer than Costa Rica.  Costa Rica is probably the strongest Central American economy, and as it turns out, Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti.  I know, it surprised me too! I would have thought Bolivia and Paraguay were perhaps poorer.  Anyway, because of this disparity, the Costa Ricans seem to look down on the Nicaraguenses.  It doesn’t help that the a large chunk of Nicaragua–Guanacaste—seceded to join Costa Rica in 1825 because it found Nicaragua too violent.  The two countries still have border issues (doesn’t everyone?) that almost escalated into a war in 2010*.  How you may ask? Because of a cartographic error by Google maps(!).  The eastern border created by the San Juan River has historically been controversial, but when Google drew a map placing the border slightly to the south (granting Nicaragua a few square miles) events soon escalated.  under Costa Rican pressure, Google changed the online map, but Nicaragua militarized the area with 50 soldiers.  Costa Rica promptly exacerbated the problem by deploying 70 police officers.  After a series of complaints to Google, the situation is on hiatus.  Here is a nifty map:

You can read the whole article about the situation here. 

But the monetary disparity causes a cultural shift, as well.  As soon as you cross the border into Nicaragua from Costa Rica, you are accosted by everyone in the vicinity.  The Nicas are desperate for some economic stimulus, so they pester you incessantly and loudly.  The Nicas know what they want, and say it vociferously.  As soon as you get off the bus, no line forms to collect your baggage, rather, everyone storms to the luggage compartment and sticks their luggage stub in the bus driver’s face.  The Ticos will passive aggressively cut in front of you in line, but for the Nicas, the line doesn’t exist. 

Likewise, the Nicas are friendly, and will talk to you (or anyone) they don’t know because in the end, they might make some money out of it.  the Ticos are friendly, but they blanche in comparison.  In Costa Rica, people are cordial and will greet you most times, but never get into full conversations with a stranger on the street.  This may also be a matter of acclimation.  Costa Rica is overrun with American expats and tourists.  So much so in some places that they could be turned into some kind of Disneyworld perversion (Welcome to Ticoland!).  This is kind of sad, because the majority of them don’t speak Spanish, or realistically, even try to.  The Ticos realize this, so when they see two white backpackers on the road, they just assume that they (we) don’t speak any Spanish.  It is refreshing to surprise them though :-)

It is a double-edge blade, however.  The high quantity of Americans has put a premium on conservation, so Costa Rica is exemplar in its national parks and conserved land.  The paragon of ecotourism, Costa Rica has the infrastructure to save our planet.  NIcaragua, sadly, isn’t even close.  The lack of respect for the environment here is blatant.  The majority of people will throw trash onto the ground/street/square/patio/out the window/into the sewer/etc./etc. as soon as they are done with it, without batting an eye.  Nicaragua has significantly fewer National Parks, and the ones that do exist are small and fragmented.  The general cleanliness of the country is much lower, and the water quality here is fairly abysmal (Sama just got sick in Granada).  But it has so much charm.  So we like it more than Ticolandia. 

  This is me in the Dump/Bus station in Masaya!

So far we haven’t seen any architecture worthy of a picture in Costa Rica, but Granada is full of old colonial houses and colorful churches.  Take a look:

 

Other geographical oddities I’ve noticed include the streets.  Those that are paved in Nicaragua, are more often than not, cobblestones, while in Costa Rica, asphalt.  My hypothesis is that Nicaraguan labor is so cheap, it makes sense to pays the extra workers and save money on an asphalt machine. 

There are many more stray dogs in Nicaragua, as well as rampant horses, pigs, and chickens.

Similarities include the climate and to an extent landscape.  Food is similar, but Costa Rican Gallo Pinto is made with black beans, and Nicaraguan Gallo Pinto is made with kidney beans—as well as served with cheese.  The Nicaraguans eat a lot more cheese than the Costa Ricans.  Finally, both of the Capitals (San Jose and Managua) are dirty, slightly dangerous, and not worth being in.

That’s all I can think of now, but I’m sure more will come soon.

Matt

*Despite the fact that Costa Rica doesn’t have an army.

The Itinerant Life

After three months of calling Cloudbridge home, we've repacked our backpacks and moved on. Today we arrived in Granada, Nicaragua, where we'll stay for a few days or until we get bored. Or maybe for a few weeks - we've already gotten an offer to rent a place for $70 for the month, which would certainly beat hostel prices. Either way, we're excited to be here. Granada is a cute, touristy, colonial city which claims to be the oldest European city in the Americas. We're thrilled to be in the first interesting Latin American city of our trip (Costa Rica doesn't have any particularly interesting cities, and we really don't like San Jose very much), as well as back in Nicaragua where we can actually afford to travel for a while. We're aiming to live here on $25/person/day, which should be feasible, unlike in Costa Rica where we could end up spending $25 on a meal pretty easily. Other than the money, Nicaragua also feels more welcoming and vivid. Everything is louder and more chaotic here, from the hundreds of vendors selling food and drinks on the streets and in the buses to the buses themselves, which tend to be old school busses blasting music while careening down the streets. Costa Rica seems so reserved and sterile in comparison - as soon as you cross the border from Nicaragua to Costa Rica the vendors disappear and instead you have to get your snacks from an American-style cafeteria for four-times the price.

Everything finished up pretty neatly at Cloudbridge. Neither Matt nor I got the results that we were hoping for from our studies, but we wrote up reports and gave presentations anyway. Despite the lack of significant carbon data (too many of the trees shrunk to really make any comparisons, and estimating carbon makes a lot of assumptions that we couldn't be too confident about), we're happy to at least have measured all the trees in the plot and left good data about how we did it. Hopefully, if someone comes to study the trees in the future, they will be able to use our data as a comparison. It was a little hard to leave (we were feeling a little settled after 3 months), but then we remembered the mold, and the mice, and the bugs, and how we'd hiked the same trails a million times, and decided we were ready for the next adventure. It's nice to be on the road, and have 3 weeks stretching ahead of us before we have any serious plans.

So for these 3 weeks we'll travel around Nicaragua. Spend some time here in Granada and probably do a few day trips, and then maybe go up to Leon, and from there down to the coast somewhere. There's a chance that we'll band birds with Casey during our 3rd week in central Nicaragua, but that's still up in the air. Then, after rambling around here, we head back south to meet George in Liberia, Costa Rica. We'll travel with George for a little over a week, spending some time in the cloud forest near some volcanoes in the north, and then a few days at the beach on the Nicoya Peninsula. When George leaves, we'll continue heading south and make our way to Panama City. From there we travel to the Caribbean coast and catch a boat through the San Blas Islands and on to Cartagena. In Colombia we'll hike to the Lost City before flying back to the States on December 11th. So there's the plan! An exciting couple months of travel before returning home in time for Christmas. We'll keep you updated as we go, and share some stories of hopefully awesome adventures. I also promise to include some more pictures - the camera was naturally dead when we got here today (I really wanted a picture of the little motorized two-seater taxi that brought us here), but it's charging now and I'll get some pictures tomorrow. In the meantime, as a reward for getting through this post, a few random pictures:

A crazy fly that was bothering us while we were resting one day (also, Matt's filthy work pants)

Crazy caterpillar that was writhing its way up a strand of silk over the trail

Another picture of the huge moth (I agree that it deserved more stage time, Brad)

A rare sunset at Cloudbridge

Settlers of Catan, the board game we made one Saturday and haven't stopped playing since

And of course, San Gerardo de Rivas, the booming population center near Cloudbridge. The bus is our trusty Yendry Magally, while if you continue up the road past the church for a few miles you get to Cloudbridge

Here's the other side of town. One grocery, one bar restaurant, a school, and a soccer field

More to come soon, I hope! 

A Play, Per Se

The Theatre:

The Stage:

The Characters (in order of appearance):

-Green Bird-

(our picture)

-Townsend Warbler-

(our picture)

-Giant Moth-

(our picture)

-Summer Tanager-

-White-winged Tanager-

-Bay-headed Tanager-

-Scarlet-thighed Dacnis-

-Green Honeycreeper-

-Red-headed Barbet-

 

ACT I:

SCENE 1--Sama and Matt were sitting in the theatre crunching tree data, when green bird slams into their sliding door (stage right).

Thud!

MATT: I think that was a bird that just hit the window!

SAMA: Look you can see feathers!

MATT: Let’s go look at it!

GREEN BIRD: (dazed) Cheep! . . . . . . .Cheep!

30 minutes later

GREEN BIRD: Cheep!

MATT: I think it’s still there, you should go look at it Sama.

SAMA: Yeah, it’s still there, but now it’s hopping away when I get close.

15 minutes later

MATT: I think it’s gone, I don’t see it anymore…

END SCENE 1.

SCENE 2—The next day, Sama and Matt were sitting in the theatre crunching tree data, when Townsend Warbler slams into their window (stage left).

MATT: I think that was another bird!

SAMA: That’s the second one in 36 hours!

MATT: We have to be fair and go look at this one too.

SAMA: Oooooh this one’s pretty!

Townsend Warbler: (dazed) Cheep!

20 minutes later:

Townsend Warbler: (flying away) Cheep!

END SCENE 2.

- END ACT I -

 

ACT II

SCENE 1:

Matt and Sama are leaving to go hiking.

MATT: (putting on shoes) Oh man! Look at that Moth!  It’s Ginormous!

SAMA: What moth? Oh my god! It’s HUGE!

END SCENE 1

- END ACT II -

ACT III

Enter the rest of the cast over the next week, stage right, stage left, center, etc.

 

- END ACT III -

END.

Thanks to Google for all of the pictures of the birds we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks.