Culture Awe: Masaya and San Juan del Sur

After our trip to paradise in the Pearl Keys, it was time to return back to the Pacific side for the second half of Danny's trip. We spent most of my birthday in an epic Amazing Race-style journey in which the tasks were to beat the Swedes and make it home: Paul and Danny rose before sunrise to buy tickets on the earliest panga (boat) back to Bluefields, once in Bluefields we spent the morning looking nervously at the clock hoping we could make it off of standby on to the earlier flight back to Managua, and then took a taxi and a bus and a neighborhood shuttle to get back to our house. We eventually did make it home in time to unpack our sandy clothes, greet the dogs and dog watchers extraordinaire Nicole and Caitlin, and have the the fanciest birthday dinner that Masaya has to offer--Papa John's Pizza--before going out on the town to celebrate:

The next morning, we went to San Juan del Sur so that we would have seen both the Atlantic and the Pacific in the span of a day. Danny got the quintessential Central American bus ride, complete with a rooster in a sack in his feet and a bus driver that spent a fair amount of the trip sending text messages:

Surprisingly, we made it safe and sound to San Juan and spent the afternoon having lunch in a pretentious but lovely bookstore/cafe, walking along the beach, and exploring the new shops that had popped up since our last visit in April.

After our semi-rough accommodations in Pearl Lagoon, Paul and I mentioned to Danny that there were, in fact, nice hotels in Nicaragua. Easily the nicest place in the country is Pelican Eyes in San Juan del Sur, and Danny insisted that we go. Pelican Eyes is a beautiful resort built on a hillside overlooking all of San Juan del Sur and the harbor; its three infinity pools make for some pretty amazing views. Here is the uppermost infinity pool and the middle infinity pool:

Me overlooking San Juan:

In addition to really nice pools, the little villas are awfully nice as well, complete with their own private patio outside:

Paul mentioned earlier our criterion about places we visit having animals around that we can play with. Pelican Eyes has a non-profit veterinary clinic that rescues and cares for many animals in the area, and has its fair share of dogs and cats that call the various villas their homes. Our villa, we found out, is the home of Azerbaijan:

Azerbaijan was constantly scheming to get into our room, either by running in open doors or climbing in though windows. Unfortunately, he was not a friendly cat, and would bite any time we tried to pet him, pick him up, or disturb him in any way. Azerbaijan claimed the entire room as his own; when Paul climbed into bed for the night, Azerbaijan made it quite clear that the bed was his domain when he attacked Paul's feet from under the covers where he was hiding.

After our one night in Pelican Eyes' Pacific paradise, it was time to go back to Masaya. Danny had wanted to test out his intestines of steel by consuming Nicaraguan street food, but due to the negative effects parasites can have on vacations, only on the last day were Paul and I willing to let him take the risk. He started with a drink from a plastic bag, chicha:

Then moved on to some enchiladas and salad in the market:

And then graduated up to this unidentified meat (later identified as undesirable pork parts) made in this part of the bus depot:

And finally the night ended when we shared coconut milk out of a freshly macheted coconut:

We have come to regret tempting the intestinal parasite gods with much less, but much to our surprise, Danny never ended up getting sick. Aside from that glaring flaw, I think Danny got the quintessential Central American vacation he was looking for.

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Danny's Guest Blogging: Part One: Roughing It

Hola!

Almost one month ago I flew into Managua, Nicaragua to visit Holly and Paul. Our adventure started at the Eastern coast of the country where we celebrated New Year's Eve, got a little roughed up, and discovered that paradise and purgatory is separated by a one hour boat ride.

The adventure then took us to the Western coast of the nation where we explored a burgeoning beach town named San Juan del Sur and stayed in one of the nicest resorts anywhere. We experienced poverty and affluence in a country roughly the size of New York state. I returned home with a left ankle twice the size of the right, arms that are seriously scraped up, and a bandage circling my hand covering a quarter sized chunk of skin missing. I got the quintessential Central American experience.

On the first night we did a little exploring of Masaya, but we mostly just planned for what would end up being the best trip of my life.

Early the next morning we boarded our flight to Bluefields--a town on the Eastern coast of Nicaragua.

After a few hours of exploring Bluefields, we took a boat to Pearl Lagoon where we had reservations at a hostel.

Here's the walk to the hostel, the entrance, and our room.

While this might not look like much to you, it was exactly what I wanted when I visited Nicaragua--a glimpse into a real Central America that is vastly different than where I currently live.

That night we celebrated New Year's Eve at a place where I didn't quit fit in...

...but we all still had a great time.

On the next day we made an excursion to what the hostel workers called "Paradise." I was skeptical at first, but as our boat traveled further from Pearl Lagoon, the water became clearer and bluer, and finally this island appeared in the distance.

We had all day to explore our own chain of three private islands (we could have swum to the third). Paul and I tried and failed and eventually succeeded at climbing the coolest tree ever.

That left me with some cuts and scrapes, but if I could do it all again I wouldn't hesitate to say yes.

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Culture Shock & Awe: The Atlantic Coast

Our friend Danny told us that on his visit he wanted the quintessential Central American experience, so we tried to deliver and visit a variety of places during his week here.  We went to pick him up at the airport around 9:00 pm on Tuesday (December 30th... we've been busy lazy), and after a brief visit to our house in Masaya, we were back at the airport less than 12 hours later to go to the Atlantic Coast, an autonomous region that makes up about half of the geographic area of Nicaragua. From Wikipedia:

About 9% of Nicaragua's population is black, or Afro-Nicaragüense, and mainly reside on the country's sparsely populated Caribbean or Atlantic coast. The black population is mostly composed of black English-speaking Creoles who are the descendants of escaped or shipwrecked slaves; many carry the name of Scottish settlers who brought slaves with them, such as Campbell, Gordon, Downs and Hodgeson.

For Volunteers, the Atlantic Coast is a magical land of mystery because of its distinct "English-speaking" (more on that later) culture and because travel there is highly restricted (and for good reason) by Peace Corps and the Embassy. It's possible to travel via land on a long, uncomfortable journey, but Volunteers are only permitted to travel by air after applying for and receiving special permission.

We got approval and trekked back to the airport to buy our tickets (reservations on the two small airlines that go to the Atlantic Coast seem informal at best) on one of the 12-seater planes for the one hour flight, but the pilot's inattention left us a little unsure.

Once we touched down in Bluefields we weren't quite sure what all of the hype was about--it looked pretty much like every other city in Nicaragua but some people had darker skin and spoke an English creole; we had imagined that the costeños would speak standard English with a charming Caribbean accent, but this was not the case. There were some words we understood but also with Spanish and Miskito words thrown in to a grammar that was completely unintelligible. Holly's inner linguist was happy to experience the the Miskito Coast creole (it is not "poor English"; it has a grammar all its own), but the linguistic beauty didn't make it any easier to find out what time boats left or to order a Coke.  I'm sure after a couple of weeks we could have communicated, but instead we just spoke Spanish to everyone and people just assumed we were French, stupid, or both.

Bluefields was just a layover on our way to Pearl Lagoon, which was an hour away in the wildest boat ride we've ever been on, but everyone else seemed unimpressed.

We had read about Pearl Lagoon as being really nice, less populated, and more relaxed than Bluefields. While it was all of these things, we also expected a beach, but there wasn't one; instead, it was a small town with one newly paved road and brackish water at a dock. At dinner that night some Swedes came up to us and invited us on a boat excursion to "paradise" the next morning (New Year's Day). Holly and I had heard about the trip and wanted to do it, so we said yes. After that we went out to a pretty ruckus New Year's Eve celebration and I'm pretty sure that's when Holly's phone got picked out of my pocket (the phone got replaced when Danny got Holly a new phone for her birthday). We started back to the hotel a few hours after midnight, but those Swedes were still celebrating.

The next morning, our trip started to take on a charmed quality after a worrying start. At 7:00 when we were supposed to meet for the boat trip, we went to the front gate of the hotel and no one was there. No Swedes, no Miss Dell (the owner of the hotel), and we thought we had missed the literal boat. Instead, it turned out, the Swedes had gotten back only an hour or two earlier and were comatose and unable to go on the trip. When Miss Dell got back she told us that only seven people fit on this boat anyway so the three of us wouldn't have been able to go with the five Swedes, but she would be willing to forget about the Swedes (who were actually Swiss, but that's an unimportant detail) and take us instead. There was a cool British couple that was interested, so we all decided to go to island paradise.

Here's Miss Dell dealing with the tight security at the ocean outlet:

From the checkpoint it was another 45 minutes or so through the ocean to the keys, but this boat ride was relaxing in comparison. The water around Pearl Lagoon was all murky and brown, but the farther away we got, the bluer and prettier the water got. By the time the islands were in sight, we were patting ourselves on our backs for stabbing the Swedes in theirs.

There were several Pearl Keys scattered around, but we were heading to one of the most idyllic, and one with a tree hanging out over the ocean begging to be climbed.

The main thing I look for in quality Nicaraguan accommodations is the presence of least a few nice dogs, and this place fit the bill: it had several really sweet dogs (Daisy and her pups) that loved to walk around the island with us and swim in the ocean:

While convincing us that we should go on this boat trip without the Swedes, Miss Dell really emphasized the value of the trip because it included our drinks and sandwiches (sandwiches!).  I was sort of worried about our lunch prospects when one of the kids that was hanging out on the island that day was trying to catch fish, but the only one he came up with was this poisonous fellow:

Miss Dell actually cooked a delicious chicken lunch, so maybe she had just been trying to lower our expectations... we never did get any sandwiches.

We spent the whole day on two little deserted islands and we ended up climbing that tree:

 But Danny also ended up falling off. Twice. And skinning himself up quite severely in the process:

The day trip made the Atlantic Coast really worth it for us, and the boat rides, puppies, white sandy beaches, and beautiful sunsets were the perfect way to ring in 2009 before we went back home to Masaya for Holly's birthday celebration with friends.

 

  

 

Stay tuned for Part II: San Juan del Sur and Pelican Eyes as well as Danny's guest blog about the trip.

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Danny's Visit

Our friend Danny came for a visit and we're working on editing pictures and getting posts written about that, so stay tuned for updates. For now, here's the view from the hotel we stayed at in San Juan del Sur.

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The Handyman

Whenever we have a problem with our house, we call up our landlady and she calls her favorite handyman and he comes over. The following Sunday. He works construction Monday-Saturday, and his only day off is Sunday, so if we have a problem on Tuesday we're out of luck until Sunday.

This guy is really nice and shows up on time (or early!), but unfortunately he's not all that handy. He really only stays long enough to make the problem worse. We've been trying to get the light in one of our bathrooms fixed for over 3 months and even after coming most Sundays he still can't fix it. He just complains about the wiring and tells us all he needs is a part that he'll bring next week. Before it worked once every ten times we hit the switch. Now it just doesn't work.

Yesterday he was scheduled to "fix" the light but we had an emergency in the kitchen that was more urgent, so I asked that he bring his plumbing tools. There's a pipe sticking out of the ground that doesn't serve a purpose, but if too much water collects in the sink, water gushes out of the pipe and floods the kitchen.

He came to look at it and decided that the best way to attack the situation was to take the pipe out of the ground and investigate. It didn't help. It really only facilitated faster flooding. He couldn't fix it and told us he'd be back... next Sunday. Before he came we our kitchen would flood once every ten times we used it. Now it just floods.

In our old house we didn't have a kitchen sink, just the lavandero (like a washboard), but we've obviously become spoiled and don't want to wash dishes in our "washing machine" any longer.

We called the landlady and reportedly he's coming on Tuesday. We've decided that once he's here we'll lock the door and not let him out of our sight until the problem is fixed.

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