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:
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!
Wonderful pics! Thanks for the honorable mention, too!
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