I have been dreading having to write this post. This is the horrible "I made it home safely but procrastinated for over a month and now have to do the tedious trip summary" entry. I apologize.
After Granada we went to a little homestay spanish school by the name of Hijos Del Maiz or Children of the Corn. Unfortunate name choice. Needless to say I was a bit nervous. The bus ride there was kind of amazing. The Bus was tricked out with colorful streamers and the bus driver was ripped and blasted clubbing music the entire time. The road was essentially an empty riverbed filled with giant rocks. At one point the bus stopped for 10 minutes next to an exeptionally large pile of rocks while a man jumped out and began loading rocks into the bus...just incase the hundreds of pounds of grain, firewood and pregnant women we were already hauling wasn't enough. Everyone was covered in dust from the open windows. A man asked Justin to see if the communal water bottle was under our seat and upon looking Justin pulled out a container of engine coolant. The man looked at us as if we were insane to try to drink engine coolant...He apparently had not taken the bus to Matagalpa where we witnessed the passangers drinking water out of a container that held this exact brand of coolant.
The school was quite the experience. The teachers were not as equipt as our school in San Juan Del Sur, but the home stay made it worth our while. We stayed in a brick campesino house with an adobe oven. Our host mother grew/roasted/grounded and made our coffee herself. She made her own cheese, grew her own vegetables raised her own children/grandchildren and the majority of the communties children. She and her Husband lived in the town when it was attacked by the contras. The entire town is proud of their history and makes sure everyone knows their turbulent past. The town, Legartillo was run off of a few hours of solar electricity a day. All their water was supplied by a treasured pump that each family took turns guarding on rotation every night. Legartillo has an amazing, supportive community and provided me with the most eye opening part of our trip. The month after we left the town the government put in land lines for electricity. I wonder how the town has changed since then..
After Hijos Del Maiz, we spent our time traveling back and forth from Leon, Esteli, Jiquilillo and then back to Granada.
Leon is a metropolitan city known for its heat. We ate at some amazingly fancy restaurants for as little as 25 dollars for two meals and bottle service, got swarmed by locusts on top of a cathedral, went to some great museums such as the myths and legends museum and one that specialized in the contemporary art of Latin America. We also both ate something bad here that forced us to go running full speed back to the beach.
Jiquilillo is a small beach town on a peninsula of northern Nicaragua. We stayed at a hostel in a bamboo hut about 30 feet from the beach. We found giant shells, watched fishermen bring in sharks after a day of fishing, read tons of books, swam, rescued a sea turtle from becoming soup and met a lot of really great travelers. We left the day before the horrible earthquake in Japan which forced everyone away from the beach in fear of a tsunami. Jiquilillo was wiped out by a tsunami not very long ago and many of the people who live there lost family members.
Esteli is most known for its coffee plantations and cigar factories. We went on a cigar factory tour, drank some amazing organic coffee, saw a sloth in the rain forest, slept in a treehouse, and stayed on a legit Finca.
Then we went home. I left a bazillion things out of this summary...but that's what happens when you procrastinate. It took us over 24 hours to get home thanks to hurricane like winds in Florida and an 8 hour layover. Justin and I both jumped back into the American lifestyle quickly enjoying our reliable electricity, toilets that can accomadate toilet paper flushing, foods we missed, and a bed guaranteed to be bed bug free. Prices were hard to get used to again. Everytime we bought something we converted it to Cordobas and realized for one tank of gas you could get all of your daily meals.
We hibernated for a month and tomorrow we set off on our next grand adventure. The Pacific Crest Trail. We are hiking over 1,000 miles from the border of Mexico to Truckee, CA. This will officially cover all the places that Justin had to skip last summer and provide another two and a half months of living rent free. We have officially gone 365 days of not paying rent or having a permanent address.
What a crazy year!
I am almost 24!
