Spanish school is over. Here is the blog accordingly. More to come about our day in Granada which was very cool too. Oh - and apparently you don't need to be signed in to Google to view my photo albums. Cool.
I'm back in San Jose. In about an hour I leave for base to begin my intern phase. Met up with Helen and Leonie last night which was really nice. They've been hearing gossip from Molly about the new volunteers and staff. I'll wait and make my own mind up I think :0).
Anyway here's Nicaragua:
 

DAY 72

21st March 2010

It's time for our journey to Nicaragua to begin. The bus leaves San Jose at 6:00am and for once it's a nice spacious coach with plenty of leg-room and good air-conditioning. It's a long trip along the Pacific slope side of Costa Rica which is much different to the Caribbean Coast that we are used to. It's much dryer and dustier, though still quite wooded and green. I doze on and off for a while before they decide to play a crappy Martin Lawrence movie on the small TVs along the aisle of the bus. The volume is cranked up so that it drowns out my Ipod and the language is set to Spanish. It's actually probably more entertaining that way. It takes a good 5 hours or so to get to the border where we have to leave Martin Lawrence and his basketball team of misfit kids and go and stand in a large queue to have our passports checked and stamped. It takes a while. Around 40 minutes or so I think. On the up side the area around the border control is quite wooded and I manage to spot three new species of bird – Orange-fronted Parakeet, Rufous-naped Wren and the rather spectacular White-throated Magpie-Jay. I don't have the chance to get any pictures but I hope to see more of these species during a more relaxed time. Eventually we get back on the bus, drive for about 10 minutes then disembark again, this time getting all of our bags out of the hold. We queue for about 30 minutes only for a guy to come and collect my Customs Declaration form and tell me to go and put my stuff back on the bus. He doesn't even look at it. We aren't allowed back on the bus. Instead we wait for maybe another half an hour, fending off hawkers and beggars that have gathered here in some numbers, then the bus simply drives around to the other side of a large concrete platform that we are already stood on to let us on. It's all a bit hard to follow really but all is well and there are no problems, so we can comfortably get back to seeing whether Martin Lawrence can coach these kids into winning a game.

Nicaragua is not a great deal different to Costa Rica on the surface. It's much flatter and continues with the dry scrubby look of the countryside although I think it gets even drier now. The thing that actually stands out the most to me is the fact that they use roundabouts in their road lay-out, which is something that doesn't happen in Costa Rica. Not much wildlife to see from the road although there are quite literally clouds of what must be thousands of Swallows circling above the fields next to the road. It's quite a sight. I also get glimpses of another Magpie-jay, which is a seriously amazing looking creature and one I need to see again with a camera handy.

We are heading for the capital, Managua which we reach a couple of hours after crossing the border. Martin Lawrence has saved the day and led his boys to victory in the State Final and turned down a lucrative contract to stay with them. All is well in the world again.

We have a brief stop in the capital of Managua. It's different to San Jose. Not as many tall buildings. It doesn't feel like a city so much. Part of it looks quite nice, part of it not so nice. We don't stay long in any case as we meet Johanna as we get off the bus and get taxis straight to the next bus that will take us further north to the city of Esterli. Johanna seems very nice and talkative and despite out initial language barrier we have a little bit of a talk on the bus.

Northern Nicaragua is dry and dusty. Kind of what I would imagine Mexico to be like I think. The one over-riding thing that I notice though which definitely separates Nicaragua with Costa Rica is that the roadsides are horribly choked with garbage, mostly plastic bags. It's really, really grim in some places. To counteract this image we do get treated to quite a nice sunset as we drive up into the hills near to Esterli.

We reach Esterli after sundown and go straight to out Spanish School to meet with Maria, the contact for GVI who organizes this course. I must admit I had this romantic image of our school as a large spacious building in a little bit of surrounding parkland. I couldn't have been further from the truth. It's a tiny almost unnoticeable doorway into a non-descript building on the main Pan-American highway as it runs through town, meaning that there is a constant rumble of traffic and layer of dust in the air. We quickly get some introductions and are assigned our house-stay 'families' and each go our separate ways back to the houses we will be staying in for the duration of our stay.

Our house is quite cavernous. It looks like a converted garage to be honest rather than a house – there is little furniture and the main entrance room is pretty much a roofed courtyard with a partitioned off section for the dining room and basic kitchen. Andrew and I are staying at the same place and we have rooms opposite each other that are quite spartan but spacious. There is a constant electricity supply and I am quite pleased to fin d out that there is an unsecured wireless network nearby as well. Hopefully I'll be able to get on top of my blog site in the next two weeks. There is only one other living with us, a nice lady named Hilda, who will be looking after us for the duration of our stay. She doesn't speak English so I'm either going to go crazy trying to constantly communicate or hopefully will be constantly practicing Spanish and getting better every day. There are also two very small and scrawny kittens that I believe Hilda rescued from the streets. They are very cute and pretty affectionate and both Andrew and myself are instantly won over by them. One of them is a real runt and due to her constant mewling we name her Squeak. The other is kind of fluffy so I call her Furball. Some of the other volunteers are staying with full families with children and although I could see this being fun I also quite like the relative peace and quiet here.




DAY 73

22nd March 2010

I get a cracking night's sleep though the neighborhood is not particularly quiet. Hilda has rustled up a great breakfast of Gallo Pinto and scrambled eggs! Muy bien!

We are scheduled to be a school by 8:00am and we all turn up eager to begin. They introduce us to our teachers who are all quite young (late 20s maybe early 30s) and very friendly. We have a quick introduction session, in Spanish, which is difficult but fun. I end up being assigned to Maria today. Maria is an older woman who runs the show here and she is very much a traditionalist type of teacher. She doesn't use any English with me, which I guess is the whole point really and we have an initial chat to break the ice and get my brain working. It's difficult but with the help of a dictionary I manage to tell her a bit about myself and what I have been doing although I manage to get in a bit to over my head attempting to describe what happened in Shantaram, the book I just finished reading. It is fun though and we do have a few chuckles, before we start working through a large textbook that is starting to show its age a bit. It's all good stuff though and I certainly start learning some vocabulary to with my basic grammar knowledge. We have an hour and a half break for lunch at 12:00 and then head back for an hour. It's just the right amount of time as by 14:00 I'm starting to flag a bit.

We all decide to have a quick walk into town as a group and head towards the central park, which amounts to little but a square with a few trees in it next to a very nice looking church. Charissa and Charlotte buy some doughnuts from a street vendor that turn out to be about 6p each. I'm unable to pass that one up and order two myself. They are quite tasty as well. The one thing that really becomes apparent here is that everything is really, really, really cheap – and being a fairly sizable town most things are available. I make a mental note to try and get some shorts, sunglasses and some consumables before I head back to the tourist prices of Tortuguero.

We meet up with Johanna for a proper guided walk around town which is really cool. She is very nice and though I'm still not fully conversant, I'm getting better at understanding and she is very patient. She shows me a second hand clothes shop where there are some shorts for a couple of dollars. I don't find any I like on a quick look but it is maybe worth coming back here at some point for a longer browse. We also have a look inside the church which is quite modern actually, and a small art gallery of mixed quality. Esterli is a lot more than a busy dusty highway which is the first impression I had. The streets in the town centre are all nicely cobbled and there is a wonderful mix of shops and restaurants and bars. It's quite a vibrant place too with lots of people and virtually no tourist influences at all. This gives the whole experience a real feeling of authenticity – like we are really seeing the true Nicaragua. Best of all nobody really pays us much attention. I quickly feel quite comfortable walking around the streets and because the whole town is so flat and laid out on a grid its really easy to find your way back home again using the hills surrounding town as a navigation point.

Another thing that stands out here in Esterli, is that it is a real motor city. More so than anywhere in Costa Rica. The main highway is full of garages and there is a real abundance and diversity of cars here. The three most abundant vehicles are the ex-American school buses (dating back to the 80s apparently and sold by the USA when the vehicles no longer met current health and safety standards) all custom painted and some of them looking really smart, motorbikes of many types and finally the most popular of all, the Toyota landcruisers, ranging from old 60s or 70s models to brand new looking 4-door versions, and normally with several guys hanging off the back.

It's been a good first day and our first impressions of Esterli are positive.




DAY 74

23rd March 2010

I have a new teacher today. He is a young chap named Edwin and he's wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt. That gives us some common ground straight away! “Me gusta Black Sabbath!”

I have a bit of a shaky start with starting speaking Espanol again and we have a general chat about things and of course I get in over my head trying to describe Jag-walks and dead turtles and trying to see Jaguars and dangerous crocodiles in the river and so on. It is good fun though and I soon warm to it – Edwin is a little more fluent in English as well to help me out a little, though we do not rely on this much. I feel that I am progressing pretty well.

The afternoon activity is a tour of the local cigar factory. The guided tour is conducted in Spanish so unfortunately I can still only understand about 1 in every 3 words and can't really keep up with what our guide is saying. I get the gist though just by watching people at work. The visit is seriously ruined for me though by the fact though that they have several exotic animals, no doubt captured by hunters/poachers and sold as 'pets', being kept in frankly atrocious conditions. There is an ocelot, a beautiful spotted cat and the first one I've ever seen, pacing back and forth in a bare wire mesh cage, three Capuchin monkeys kept in a cage of wire no bigger than a wardrobe, a toucan and three miserable looking parrots also in rough wire cages and finally a small river turtle covered in algae sitting in a bucket of dirty water. I am sure that there is no real malice on the part of the people here, clearly in poorer countries they do not view animals in the same way we do, as actual sentient creatures with needs and feelings (I say that without being some kind of new age hippy type), but that doesn't make it right. I am really quite moved by the plight of these beautiful creatures. I am determined to find some way of reporting this, some kind of Nicaraguan animal orphanage that can get them seized and rehabilitated or something. Sadly, a bit of internet research reveals the bitter pill that there are no animal welfare laws in Nicaragua. The government has just entered into some kind of international agreement to promote animal welfare laws but this is not helpful right now. It's horribly ironic than on a course sponsored by GVI, a conservation organization, that we would be taken to a place that directly contravenes the moral and ethical principles that we are all striving to uphold. Illegal trading of parrots, in particular, is one of the principal causes for their decline in the wild. I'm still toying with the idea of climbing the walls and opening up the cages in the middle of the night, but of course even if I could practically do this, the animals would most likely be killed or recaptured as there is nowhere for them to go. I even thought about popping the turtle in my bag, but I have nowhere to take it. I know this sort of thing happens all over the world in countries like this, but it doesn't make it any easier to accept.

I get some beer on the way home for 13 Cordoba a can (approx. 39p). I needed to unwind.




DAY 75

24th March 2010

We start the day today by meeting Patrick who is leading a group of volunteers on another GVI program here in Esterli. This program is a community program and is concentrating on teaching kids at primary school level. A squatter community has sprung up just outside Esterli with people moving into the area to work in the tobacco fields surrounding town and not being able to afford to actually live in town. GVI has helped to build a small school building and provided teachers (mostly volunteers) to help this community.

The little village is actually very well-kept and each hut though crudely constructed has a little garden area, many of which with pretty flowers and plants. The litter, a constant spoiling factor here, is at a minimal level and there is a very pleasant atmosphere.

We meet up with several other volunteers, three lads from England and two from the US (no girls strangely) and Carla, a native Nicaraguan teacher who is funded by GVI. The kids are a lovely bunch of a mixture of ages from 3 to 11 and they seem to absolutely love the volunteers. It's quite a sight to see a bunch of pretty big chaps running around and playing with these kids. We are sat down in the class room and treated to a round of songs in both English and Spanish with Patrick accompanying on guitar. It's a very pleasant experience and ends all to quickly. Patrick suggests that we all go out for a drink at some point, which sounds like a great idea. They are all taking Spanish lessons too at the same place so he will try and leave a message for us there.

Spanish lessons go well again today with Edwin. Again, I really feel like some progress is made.

I find a bit more out about the nearby nature reserve of Miraflor and it may not be possible to go there as it is Easter period, which is a big holiday and already places are closing down for this. Plus, we need at least a full day and one night up there to be able to visit the Cloud-forest. This is very frustrating for me.

It's been quite a hot and dusty day and I'm feeling a bit frazzled and really feeling the need to get out of the city for a bit, but that just isn't possible unfortunately. Must try and get an early night so that I'm ready to go again in the morning.




DAY 76

25th March

It's another hot and dusty day in Esterli. Lessons are still going well and my confidence is building. I'm able to have some basic conversations with Hilda at home over lunch.

We go out for a drink with the other GVI volunteers this evening and it's pretty good fun with ridiculously cheap beer – approx £1.30 for a litre bottle of beer. This sort of thing could get really messy but luckily we are all quite restrained. There's a live band on and they start with some traditional Nico tunes and then end up playing covers like Oye Como Va by Santana. We do end up staying out a bit late though til around 11:00 which is a bad idea when you have to get up for school in the morning. I feel like I'm at university again!




DAY 77

26th March

Last day of the first week of school. I don't mind admitting that I feel more than a little tender this morning. Andrew does too which makes me feel a little better. It's yet another hot dry day and the week as a whole has taken it's toll on all of us. This learning is quite an intense experience and we all feel a bit mentally fatigued. It's still a productive morning though and I'm really pleased with my progress. Andrew is also very complimentary on how my Spanish is progressing. I must get myself a grammar book or something before I leave so that I can continue to learn.

We get the afternoon off today and we go home for lunch and then head into town for a little while and get a smoothie from a juice bar and just hang out for while. We go to an internet cafe and check out the photos posted by GVI on their website. The jag-cam that we put up by the dead cow some weeks ago came up trumps and the developed film revealed some stunning pics of a jaguar right next to our base. It's good to put a face to the prints! Check out the pics on the GVI blog site for Costa Rica (can't remember the address off the top of my head). Hopefully when I return I will finally get to see my very own jag in the flesh?

My Friday night is spent listening to some Metal on my Ipod, and reading my Spanish textbook with a kitten on my lap.




DAY 78

27th March

Wow! A day off and we are getting up earlier than usual to get the bus up into the mountains of Tisey, a large protected area of mountain forest and scrub. Carlos, one of the teachers at the school is taking us around and we are also joined by Edwin, another guy affiliated with the school whose name I can't remember and a chap that though Nicaraguan, spent 5 years in the US Army. I can't remember his name but he's a really good guy and speaks great English with an American accent.

The bus ride is slow and bumpy, and there's a really sharp edge on my window which I don't notice until I'm getting off at the top of the road and I slice my shorts open on it. Though irritating I feel it could have been a lot worse. My bum could now be bleeding all over the place. That would not have been cool!

Our first stop is a walk along a dusty track through some beautiful dry forest which gets Jeremy and Lydia all reminiscent of the woods back home by them. There's a few new birds about and we are treated to the sight of some noisy pairs of Acorn Woodpeckers and a group of three spectacular White-throated Magpie-Jays. The village that we end up at grows lots of organic vegetables and makes cheese and milk. We get a little tour around and get to try some cheese which is actually really really good. It's like a rich, mature cheddar type cheese which they apparently learnt from a Swiss volunteer organization and now they make some money buy selling it to the supermarkets and markets in Esterli. There's also a spectacular viewpoint as part of the tour that you can see a distant dormant volcano from.

After our tour, we walk down the road, which in itself is really nice. The forest here is lovely and if I had more time I would gladly just wander up and down this road doing some birding. As it is I manage to spot a couple of species of dove and a beautiful yellow-headed warbler of some type.

We stop to rest at another brilliant view which looks out over an area of hillside vaguely reminiscent of Wales and then head down a track through some woods to meet with an old artist who is famous for his carvings into the rocks of the hillside here. He's quite a character and though apparently in his 90s still bounds up the steep hillside trail telling us about all his different carvings ranging in subject from birds, jaguars and Nicaraguan folk figures to the Twin Towers(!), smoking a cigarette all the while. He's certainly quite a character and though, to be bluntly honest, his carvings are a little crude, they are extensive and represent something like 50 years of work with a unique vision. The centrepoint of the carvings in a nativity scene surrounded by a seating area with a couple of crude wooden benches that overlooks a stunning view back out towards Esterli. Our guide perches on a stone niche above us regaling constantly with poems and tales, of which I understand almost nothing as he speaks with a heavily accented Spanish very quickly. You don't have to understand it to get the vibe and feel of the place and his work though. A thoroughly unique if somewhat odd experience.

It's a steep climb back up to the road and in the woods we see one of the most beautiful small birds that we have seen yet in the form of the Elegant Euphonia. We also see a woodpecker that's not in our Costa Rica bird guide and I also see a rich dark blue Jay which again is not in our book.

We get some lunch at a local restaurant which is quite frankly amazing. It's just rice, beans and chicken but it's cooked so well and with such flavour that it might just be the best thing I've eaten in a restaurant whilst I have been in Central America.

We have two options available now. There is a viewpoint nearby and we can hang around here for an hour or two before catching the bus. Or we can head down the road for 8 or so km to a waterfall. We have a good chance of being able to hitch a ride down to the waterfall so we decide to give it a go seeing as though we may not get the chance again. We do manage to get a ride after about half an hours walk – which is productive for me as I manage to get some photos of yet more new birds. The waterfall is really nice. It's not that big really as it is the dry season but there is a lovely big pool at the bottom of it. It has been a hot, dusty day of walking so we all strip down to shorts (except for the girls who cunningly have bikini tops on under their shirts) and plunge in for a swim. Very refreshing and relaxing, though surprisingly tiring.

We should be able to get the bus back from here but it is running really late so we end up hitching again. It's quite a sight to have ten of us all sat in the back of a Toyota pick-up along with an old guy who strangely nonplussed by the appearance of a bunch of gringos in his nice spacious ride. The situation is even more ridiculous when we stop to give a young Scottish chap a lift with his mountain bike that has burst a tire. To make things even funnier, once we tell him what we have been up to in Costa Rica, he mentions that he met a couple of girls who had also been to Costa Rica. None other then Nicky and Sophie who we left at Managua and who went on to Leon where they met this guy! Small world!




DAY 79

28th March 2010

More walking again today. This time we have elected to head to Miraflor, which is a similar mix of small sustainable communities and protected land to Tisey, just at a higher altitude and of a larger area.

Andrew, Lydia, Jeremy and myself get the bus at 6:00am (although Jeremy and Lydia only narrowly avoid missing the bus by heading to the wrong station). We stop several times on the way out of Esterli, and the bus rapidly becomes crammed with people standing in the aisle. It's another one of these ex-American yellow school buses and it is ridiculously overcrowded. There must be 50-60 people on-board and a glance out the window reveals several sets of feet dangling from the roof. We can't help but laugh with each other at the craziness of the whole situation. It reminds me of Africa where they cram so many people into their Volkswagen mini-vans that they uses as taxis there.

The road up to Miraflor gets very steep and is not paved, so as to be expected with a bus this full and this old, it slows to a snails pace and the engine makes some very funny noises! It's a good two hour trip and we are all quite relieved to get off. Most of these people must be heading to the town on the other side of Miraflor called Yali, as hardly any of them have got off.
Only the four of us depart from the bus at a stop called La Rampla. It's a very picturesque forested spot. We have a crude map which we are following that will take us back down in elevation towards Esterli and hopefully we can pick up the return bus somewhere along the way. It's a beautiful clear morning and though sunny the air is quite a bit cooler up at this altitude (Jeremy's funky watch makes it around 1330m). Straight away we are treated to the sight of several species of raptor circling high on the thermals. In addition to the ubiquitous vultures, there is a Short-tailed Hawk and the unmistakeable Swallow-tailed Kite. The path wends its way upwards to begin with a passes through a patch of forest where we are treated to the sight of a beautiful male Violet Saberwing hummingbird. Unusually, he sits on the same perch for a while letting get a good view of his rich dark purple plumage. Unfortunately, the foliage is a little dense for a good picture. The trees here seem very old. They are covered in mosses and other small plants such as bromeliads and epiphytes. It reminds me of Fangorn Forest in Lord of the Rings. Soon enough though we enter into a small village which has a baseball game going on in one field. Baseball is the Nicaraguan national sport and there are plenty of guys with bright red jerseys bashing the ball around with a fair crowd of spectators too. I even get to throw the ball back to them when it get's hit our way. The fields around the village are a haven for all sorts of small seed-eating birds and we rapidly racking up the species, most of which are new to all of us. We take our time walking and the road passes through more patches of forest where there are some seriously tall trees and more farmland. Hunger starts to kick in and we stop at a little restaurant/lodge with a delightful garden full of flowers. We get a nice breakfast complete with plenty of good coffee and refills of our water bottles, all for the princely sum of $3. Best of all though – they have a hummingbird feeder which is regularly attracting at least three different hummingbirds, one of which is another Violet Saberwing and the others both turn out to be Azure-crowned Hummingbirds, though their plumage is much more subtle than their name would suggest. We have a walk around the garden for a bit as well, climbing their rickety wooden observation platform for some nice views and a look at a beautiful yellow Wilson's Warbler in the tree canopy. We also see another type of striking hummingbird and I have a moment when I head to the toilet where I pass by a wall of flowers only to have an Azure-crowned Hummer hover right in front of my face seemingly oblivious to my presence. It's a moment. This place looks lovely and I can't remember it's name off the top of my head, but I very much would love to stay here for a few days and explore Miraflor from here. We will only see a small part of the area as a whole and whilst I'm glad we visited, it's a shame we don't have more time.


Loathe to leave though we are, we must press on and we continue trekking. We have decided to change our route and rather than looping back up to where we originally got dropped off, we are going to continue along the road downwards for as long as possible and hopefully catch the bus on its way back down later on. There are views on every corner as the road drops downwards and we pass several small farms and more patches of woodland. At one section the trees are all draped in Spanish Moss which gives them a really eerie look that I'm quite taken with. I've never really seen it before. It quickly turns out that the map we have is not to scale and we have bitten off a little more than we can chew. We end up walking for what must be 6 hours or so and it gets really hot and everyone's feet are getting a little sore from walking down steep rocky tracks. Luckily, we do end up managing to hitch a ride back to town. It is quite the accepted thing to do out here. It's pretty bumpy but quite fun and our driver is not shy about giving it some welly down these steep rocky roads. Slightly frustratingly as we reach the lower elevations, we get fleeting glimpses of the National Bird of Nicaragua, the Turquoise-browed Motmot. It's a stunner with a random assortment of greens, pinks and blues and seems to be really common here as we see six between the lot of us. Unfortunately, there is no chance of being able to get a photo as we are clinging on for dear life!

It's been a tiring but fantastic day in Miraflor, and I have made a mental note to return and explore more fully should I ever be up this way again.




DAYs 79 - 83

29th March - 2nd March

I have condensed this week into one entry as it was pretty much the same routine each day. Get up, go to school, finish early afternoon and then chill out for the afternoon. I really enjoyed Spanish classes and I have definitely progressed, though I feel I have some way to go before I can actually have a conversation with a native speaker. I must endeavor to keep at it when I get back to Tort.

They take Easter pretty seriously here and this week is known as Semana Santa or Holy Week. From Thursday onwards pretty much everything closes like a Bank Holiday. It's very odd to walk around town with hardly any traffic or people about – quite a dramatic change. There is a procession on the Thursday evening which we go and watch, involving people carrying these floats down the street with effigies of Jesus and Mary on them and a couple of kids dressed as Romans. They lead a large procession of people from one church to the main cathedral in town presumably for a service, but we only follow it for a little while.

I have really enjoyed my time here in Nicaragua. There have been some negatives, namely the way they treat their animals especially keeping parrots and monkeys and other wild animals in horrible cages. There is also a terrible amount of litter all over the place – they clearly don't have a proper waste disposal system like we do, but to just drop it in the street and have it build up so much is quite the eyesore. The young men also have the annoying habit of leering at the female members of the group, all part of the 'macho' culture I guess – and to be fair, you get that sort of thing at home too. But I don't want to be too negative because in general, the Nicos of Esterli have been friendly and hospitable and the surrounding countryside is beautiful. My experience has definitely been 90% positive. Our homestay has been good. Hilda and her son have been very hospitable. And of course, have I mentioned how incredibly cheap it is?? Nicaragua is definitely a country that warrants a more comprehensive exploration at some point in the future. The Atlantic region in particular is very sparsely populated and has the largest tracts of primary rainforest in Central America.


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