1. The buses. I take the public bus to and from school every day and therefore get to experience its brand of madness daily. FIrst you get on the bus while its still moving, because it never actually slows to a stop, at the overly-busy bus station in the middle of the already packed and hectic food and everything else market. Inside is well over 100 degrees, and while you sit next to a local nica, a fellow volunteer or stand and get jostled around, people will come on and off the bus selling everything you could imagine, from plastic-bagged fruit juice to cutting edge cure-all pills that mysteriously cost only 5 cents. There are at least three people working each bus, a driver, a money collector and a guy that hangs off the back and throws over sized luggage or bicycles on top of the bus while, you guessed it, it keeps moving steadily. You can also create your own bus stop wherever you please which is one very nice feature. Also, the police here take the bus. Not entirely encouraging about their rescue and response capabilities but what can you do? Also, on long bus rides, us gringos routinely get charged more, only about 20-30 percent more than advertised and what the locals pay, but still more. Lastly, there are stickers everywhere on the bus. From Jesus, to winnie the pooh, to playboy bunnies to the last supper to more Jesus, the stickers cover all the sides and most curiously, a large chunk of the driver´s rear view mirror.

2. Stardust: The volunteers have sort of adopted a street dog named Stardust. He sleeps in various volunteer houses from time to time and follows us around whenever we go out at night. I don´t know where he eats, where his name came from or what type of mix he is. He is an enigma, an adorable enigma.

3. Glue: Lots of things to say about glue. In school, for some reason nodoby tapes anything to the walls. If you want to hang some art up, glue it. Want to post a chart of the food pyramid, glue stick´s over there, stick it on the wall. Also, and this is far more sad, the street children of Granada who walk around and beg all night, especially in the touristy area, are all constantly sniffing glue. They hide it in one hand that is stuck up their shirt and then pull their collar over their nose and inhale all the time.

4. Walking: Many of you reading this post have probably had the opportunity to walk next to me on some adventure or another and you may have noted that I walk pretty slow. I like to take my time, waddle my breaststroke feet around and arrive at places when I arrive at places. Well, let me tell you, I could be the speed walking champion of Nicaragua. Everybody walks at a snails pace here. So chill, so Central American.

5. Change: Nodoby likes making change for you here. A lot of times, us volunteers will have the bigger bills, like 200 cordobas or roughly ten bucks, that we get out of the atm instead of convenient smaller bills. So when we go to pay for lunch and whip out a 200, its customary that the person collecting your money will look at you like you just kicked a puppy. Occasionally tears are shed and then eventually you get your change.

6. Adios: People say adios here to say hello. That is all.

More to come for sure about the cultural idiosyncracies of Nicaragua.

written by  mls12 on May 12, 2010 from Granada, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Volunteering with La Esperanza Granada in Granada, Nicaragua
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Now three weeks ago, a woman came to our weekly tuesday night meeting with a proposal to participate in an AIDS awareness initiative happening all over the world. The organization´s goal is summit the highest mountain in every country to raise publicity for the AIDS epidemic. At the top of each mountain, they snap a photo with a banner showing the number of residents infected with AIDS in each country. The idea is that because we can´t go any higher in each country, then, symbolically at least, neither should the number of AIDS infected individuals.

We had that week to think it over and about 10 of the volunteers, myself included, decided to venture to the north of Nicaragua and summit Mount Mogoton over last Monday and Tuesday. So the adventure begins...

We left from Parque Central in Granada with around 20 people: 10 of us, a couple organizing the event and some others who operate a hotel in the center of Granada. We traveled about 5 hours by microbus straight north and first stopped in a canyon, whose name is escaping me at the moment. The canyon is in a national park of Nicaragua and certainly one of the most beautiful places I´ve been while here. First, we walked about a half an hour descending into the canyon and then were met by some locals who were waiting for us to paddle-boat us across a small river/stream thing to where we could walk again. From there we embarked on a 2 hour or so, swim/walk right through the center of the canyon. Stone walls shot up at least 100 feet on either side as we swam through the narrow passage. After quite some time we reached our destination, although none of us knew it to be that- we thought we were just swimming around- when our guide said ¨OK, here´s the cliff jumping spot.¨

OK was right. We spent the next half an hour or so doing just that, jumping off cliffs. The main spot where people were jumping was pretty manageable, maybe 15 feet up. Then one of the guides pointed up, way up, to a perch that had gone unnoticed by me. Needless to say, I, along with some other brave (stupid?) volunteers, scampered up this huge cliff and took the plunge. It was exhillirating and pretty painful on my feet. I asked one of the locals later and he informed me that it was 19 meters up, about 60 feet.

The rest of day one was uneventful as we prepared for an early morning start to our hike of the highest mountain in Nicaragua. Tuesday morning, we awoke at 5:30 for breakfast in order to start our trek by 6. The thinking was that we would be all wrapped up around 12 or 1.

This is where the Nicaraguan flavor of the story shines through. We ended up leaving our hostel at 630. (half hour late) Then we drove to the local red cross to pick up our guides, who had their own van. (few more minutes) Then we went, obviously, to the local army base to pick up our 3 ejercitos, or armed infantry, to come with us. (just a few more minutes) By the way, the mountain is the sire of the 1969 war between Honduras and Nicaragua and the countryside is still laiden with active land mines. We brought Nicaragua´s finest to let us know if we were about to step on any.

We arrive at the base of the mountain, or at least where our bus can´t go any farther. Then the Red Cross took half of the group in their van to drive ¨a short way.¨ Well they got back an hour later while we chilled with our bus driver Elvis. (1 hour more late) Then my half made the bumpy trek to the place where cars really couldnt go anymore. There, the other group rejoiced at our arrival and the opportunity to finally get going. But wait, we must wait for our local guide man to arrive. OK, half an hour later, he arrives. He is an older guy, clearly a man of the mountains. He brings with him no water, no food or supplies, save a machete, for his day long hike. We finally set off. We go about 10 minutes only up a really steep part and take a quick break to catch our breath. There we find out encouraging news. Our guide man, who has lived in these mountains his whole life, has never summitted Mogoton, doesn´t really know anything about it, was just going to wing it for the day. Someone decides that is vaguely unacceptable and so sends for another guide. He gets there almost another hour later and brings big news. Since its now almost 11 (started this at 6:30) and we haven´t started hiking, its too late in the day to do Mogoton because if the rain comes we´ll be trapped up top.

Cool. ¨Instead we can hike this other mountain nearby that sorta kinda tall. Sound good?¨ Yes, sounds fabulous. Maybe not so fabulous for the goal and idea behind the initiative but be that as it may, we were hungry and ready to walk. So we ended up summiting the hill about an hour and a half later of some of the hardest hiking I´ve ever done. We got to the top took our picture and went back down, with out any major event.

On the way back, on the part where cars could drive, a friendly group of Nicas offered a ride back in their pickup. Yes to all 22 of us. That´s correct, 22 adults,15 of them gringos, 3 with rifles, and an old man with a machete all fit in the bed of an average sized pick up.

TL; DR (too long, didn´t read): Tried to summit highest mountain in Nicaragua, failed, climbed a hill instead and made some lasting memories.

written by  mls12 on May 26, 2010 from Granada, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Volunteering with La Esperanza Granada in Granada, Nicaragua
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Pauline made a short speech about ¨all we have done¨ over the last 5 years and it was really an incredible list of accomplishments. Over 600 volunteers from all over the world have come to help, 17 new classrooms have been built, 6 schools renovated and hundreds of children tutored among many other things.

The speech reminds me of another conversation I had with Pauline about the growth of the program. When she arrived and took over, she lived and worked in one of our volunteer Houses called Las Casitas with all the other volunteers. Since that time we have expanded to 4 volunteer Houses within the neighborhood, an office stocked with computers and employees (that happens to be connected to my House), and last I checked Pauline is not living with a bunch of 18-25 year olds anymore.

It was an inspiring night to celebrate 5 very productive years.

Note: I updated my list of crazy things about Nicaragua as well.

written by  mls12 on May 26, 2010 from Granada, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Volunteering with La Esperanza Granada in Granada, Nicaragua
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Aside: An interesting phenomenon often occurs when I and other non natives attempt to speak in Spanish to Nicaraguans, especially those who are not accustomed to speaking with us all that often. In this phenomenon, no matter what you say or how good your grammar or accent happens to be, the person you´re speaking with will simply respond with one word answers, for example the price of what you want to buy from them. Its as if they expect you to not speak Spanish well or at all and are catering their responses to that fact. This has an especially frustrating effect on one of my friends from Spain, who happens to speak very little English. Based on his appearance alone, some people can´t ¨accept¨ that he is a native Spanish speaker and then give him a hard time and not answer his questions or engage in conversation with him. But I digress.

This phenomenon was happening to me at the moment as well. At first I thought 10 cords for an avocado was a little steep based on most prices I had heard or seen. I expressed this sentiment to the woman and she looked puzzled and replied ¨diez.¨ Ok fine, I´ll just take that one and I indicated one of the larger avocados. Again she looked bewildered and said ¨diez¨ just to clear everything up. I was now equally confused and reached into my pocket and held out a 10 cordoba bill so that this whole thing would end. She understood that and then leaned toward her pile of avocados and begin to put some in a bag: one avocado, two avocado, 3 and 4 and 5 avocados all in one bag. She handed it to me and finally everything made sense. I was clearly not versed in the ritual of avocado buying and didn´t know they came in groups of 5 only. She couldn´t fathom that anyone would like to buy any less than 5 avocados at once.
All told, I spent 50 cents on 5 avocados, what would cost about 7 dollars in an American Wal-Mart and probably closer to 10 dollars in an ¨all natural¨ farmer´s market. In the end I had an avocado for breakfast and carried the other four with me for the rest of the day to school and back.

This story reminds me of a great T shirt I´ve seen for sale in a few places and it reads. ¨100% Nica. ¡¿Y que?!¨

written by  mls12 on May 28, 2010 from Granada, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Volunteering with La Esperanza Granada in Granada, Nicaragua
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