Lobsters, Bananas, and Birds, Oh My!

Ok, so we're a little behind. After climbing Telica and seeing lava, we made our way directly to the beach to cool off. Someone had told us that the shuttle offered by one of the hostels in Leon would be easiest, so we went to the hostel and signed up. After 2 hours of waiting (we expected 1) we learned that there weren't enough people signed up for them to run the shuttle, so they were going to call us a taxi. This discouraged the other two girls who wanted to come, at which point the shuttle driver decided he'd take us anyway. And that was how we ended up in the back of a huge truck all by ourselves barreling down the road to the beach. It was really quite exciting.

At the beach we met back up with our friend Casey (can you find him in this picture?) and relaxed for a couple days.

 

Matt and I stayed in a cute hotel that had a delicious on site restaurant where we ate almost every meal. Sadly, a hungry family had eaten all of the lobsters our first night! But we got an insider tip, and asked early the next day. At 3:00, there were no lobsters, but by the time we sat down to dinner they had rousted up 6 delicious spiny lobsters for us to feast on. Thus it was that we had two lobsters a piece for a measly $10. We love Nicaragua.

After jumping around in the surf for a few days, we headed back to Leon for a big Halloween party. Casey went as a banana tree, and Matthew and I attempted Tron. We were in lots of pictures, but I think just because people wanted evidence of Casey's costume.

In the morning we bussed our way to the Nicaraguan highlands. We really liked the highlands - the part we were in had lots of rolling hills and agriculture, but no other tourists.

We went to a reserve called El Jaguar, where Casey had arranged to help band birds for a week. We tagged along for a day and a half, and despite a rather cantankerous woman running the show, we had a good time. We caught many beautiful birds, including several hummingbirds, many warblers (several of which Caseyand I recognized from bird banding in Vermont), wrens, euphonias, tanagers, and a dove. Matt and I mostly helped by untangling the birds from the mist nets and bringing them back for the others to take data about, but I did process a Crimson Collared Tanager. It was not very pleased to have me measuring each of its extremities and blowing up its feathers to look for fat and muscles and such, not to mentioned being stuffed in an undignified manner into a tube to be weighed, so it responded by keeping at least one of my fingers clenched in its beak at all times. Of course, once we had finished and I let go of it, it decided to hang out on my hand for a while.

After our exhausting day of banding birds (5:30 am - 4:30 pm), we left Casey to it for the rest of the week and started our journey back towards Costa Rica. On the way we stayed in Matagalpa, a nice highlands town. Matt played kick the trash with a toddler, and I took pictures of the church. We also went to a coffee museum (it's a big export of the region), and learned that Brazil both produces and consumes the most coffee of any country in the world. But not per capita, the Finns take the prize for that. 

Finally we traveled back to the beach, but this time in the southernmost part of Nicaragua. The town here is called San Juan del Sur, and it is by far the most touristed and developed part of Nicaragua. We were underwhelmed, but enjoyed a few days splashing around before heading back across the border to meet George. Matt will write about our adventures living the good life! But first, a few of the pictures I promised of the Nicaraguan buses. 

A Whirlwind Week

It’s been a while since our last update, due to a busy schedule, hangovers, and lack of internet.  But now that I have time, I’ll fill you guys in.

I believe that last you’ve heard of us was just after we left the Laguna de Apoyo.  From there, we arrived in Leon.  Leon is like a bigger, dirtier, and busier Granada.  It was and remains the seat of Sandinista political power.  FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, or the Sandinista National Liberation Front) propaganda adorns every corner of the city, and the population is as fervent as it was thirty years ago. 

The city itself boasts the largest cathedral in Central America, and has a funny history.  When the city proposed the construction of the cathedral to the Pope, they submitted plans for a smaller less impressive cathedral.  Then, once they got the approval from the Church, they ditched the plans and built the monstrosity that dominates the skyline of the city.  It looks more like a temple than a church, and has a quartet of Egyptian-esque slaves holding up the façade.  The bell towers are sturdy square towers almost as thick as they are tall.  It is completely white, but to my understanding was pretty badly burnt, and is still in the process of restoration.  One little known fact, is that there is a tunnel that leads from the church 30 miles to the coast.  A secret escape route! There are also lots of lion statues around —all different!  Behold:

Leon is also very hot!  It feels oppressive because of the lack of water nearby, unlike Granada.  We’ve figure out that there are two sides of the street: the Right side, and the Wrong side.  They change constantly, but the Wrong side of the street is the side without any shade. 

We stayed in Leon for a couple of days waiting for Casey to show up, and also until we could book a hiking trip up the another volcano (more of that later).  While we were waiting we checked out the museums that were open, and probably the coolest was the revolutionary museum.  Upon first inspection, it looked pretty bad, and just a compilation of pictures of revolutionary heroes.  After a while though, we figured out that our guide was a survivor of the revolution.  Certifiable Bad Ass.  He showed us his scars, and graphically eviscerated me like he knew what he was doing.  He also made Sama pose with a grenade launcher:

That is not what he was using, that was what was being used against him.  He was using Molotov cocktails.  So after hearing his story, and some of the revolutionaries that were his personal friends, he took us to the roof of the old post office/Government bastion and gave us great views of the city:

The next day we woke up at the crack of dawn, and went to Quetzaltrekkers, a tour company that sets up hikes where all the profits go to charity for local children, and embarked on a trek to the top of Volcano Telica.  In all it was a  27 km hike with overnight camping at the top of the crater (17k the first day 10k the second).  It was a very flat hike for most of it, and wouldn’t have been bad except for all of the shit we were carrying.  Sama and I got to the office late, so both of us ended up carrying tents.  We also had to take a ludicrous amount of water.  I drank maybe half of what they made me carry.  We started pretty far away, and hiked up to the volcano through man/cow made canyons that were pretty and (thankfully) shady.  But it wasn’t until we got near to the top that the views started getting good.  The landscape really does look like the seal on the Nicaraguan flag, a series of volcanoes rising out of flat plains. 

But the crater was the coolest!  The biggest surprise was the noise.  Sulfur steaming from vents made a noise akin to a jet engine.  Even from the edge of the enormous crater, we could still hear it.  The crater walls were also surprisingly steep.  after the lip, the crater dropped down at pretty much a 90 degree angle, and then hit a floor several hundred feet below.  In the middle of the crater was another concentric circle, this one about 10m across that had the actual lava bubbling (I imagine, couldn’t see the bubbles) in it.  The Lava was hard to see during the day because it was covered in cooling rock, but at night, red light emanated from beneath the rock crust on top.  It stormed just after sunset, so we ate dinner in our tents, then climbed the crater again to look at the lava when the rain subsided.  we got some cool pictures of the lightning illuminating the volcano though.  When we climbed up, we imagined the volcano was out very own giant faceless Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween.  We camped the night in the Caldera just below the crater, and woke up for sunrise.  Then we hiked down.  On the way down we hiked through rolling countryside and walked through our Halloween corn maze.  At the end of the hike there were some boiling mud-pits, too.  The safety precautions taken with them were substandard. I think the pictures speak for themselves:

Lightning!

Lava!

And the bus ride home. 

Sama is writing more about our adventures in the highlands as we speak (yeah, right).