Nicaragua

 

Because all of us here at Whitworth South are actually on tourist visas and not student visas, it was necessary for us to leave the country within 90 days of our arrive. What a good reason to go to Nicaragua! The original plan (and what all the other students did) was to leave San Jose on Saturday March 5th, take a very long bus ride to Managua, do many very educational and informative things (including an overnight trip to Matagalpa) and then return by bus on the follow Saturday, the 12th. I have included a map for those of you like me who are in love with atlases, maps, globes, and every other such thing.

 

If you have read my previous post, you know that I took a slight detour across the entirety of the United States before ending up back in Managua. Good times. But back to Nicaragua. This is a view of the city of Managua, including the giant lake.

Our group had two very full days on Sunday and Monday, visiting churches, playing with kids, going to the dump city, and listening to lectures. I can't tell you about these thought, since I wasn't there. I got in late Monday night, and our wonderful coordinator Raquel and her husband picked me up at the airport.

This is Raquel

The next morning we all went to El Volcan Masaya. Since this volcano is still active, we were inundated with fantastic sulfuric smoke. Nothing like sulfur to clear burn the nose. Despite the smell, it was actually really interesting to see.

All the girls in our group (the vast majority) got together to take a picture in this lovely, romantic setting.

This is the crater. Ugly, right? Fun fact: Actually it is not fun or funny in any way, sorry. Raquel told us that during the dictatorship of the Samoza family, political protesters were thrown into this crater from helicopters. 

 

After the volcano, we went to a nice touristy little market, lunch, and then to the US embassy. It was really interesting to hear both how the US is trying to help the Nicaraguan people, and how much it hates the Nicaraguan government. "Communism" was a very popular word that afternoon.

The next morning was our trip to Matagalpa. The main event for the day was a visit to some farms way out in the mountains. First we went to a coffee farm were we met a co-op of growers who explained the process of growing and selling their coffee.

These are the farmers, and the one in the gray polo with a leaf in his hand is an agronomist explaining the disease on the leaves and how to solve it. 

This is a raw coffee bean, squeezed out of its red berry. It looks just like your everyday black bean, but is a little fatter, iridescent, and kind of slimy. The call it the "oro" or gold.

This is the son of one of the farmers. He is demonstrating how they harvest taro, first pulling the large root out of the dirt, hacking of the tall leaves, and then cleaning all the little roots and dirt off the main root. This boy had very impressive machete skills. Taro plants beware!

This is Jenny, Alexandria, and Taro. Jenny on the left, Alexandria on the right, and taro in the yellow bowl. It was very starchy, slightly salty, and quite delicious.

This is at the hostel where we spent the night. The beds were comfortable (or I was super tired, or both), our breakfast was great, and there were two motorbikes and a rabbit on the breakfast patio.

 While we were still in Matagalpa, we toured a taro processing plant. There actually wasn't any taro being processed that day, and we learned that their production of taro has declined dramatically since Mexico taken over the US market. It is much more expensive for Nicaragua to export taro to the states. Obviously, it has to travel further, so they have to process the taro more, they can't just send it straight from the field after washing it in the river, like they can in Mexico. Our guide was quick to tell us that the Nicaraguan taro, however, is far superior in quality.

When we returned to Managua on Thursday night, we all got to go to a concert. The man in the green shirt and accordion started the band that includes his sons and now grandsons. In between the wonderful Nicaraguan music, he would tell jokes and stories. We always laughed, sometimes because we understood the punchline and sometimes just because  he was using such crazy voices and facial expressions to tell the story. Good times!

This coming November Nicaragua will have an election, so we were very aware of the political propaganda around. One figure that all Nicaraguans identify with and call their hero is Augusto Cesar Sandino, a revolutionary who fought against the US military occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920's and 30's. He was killed in 1934, but the revolutionaries who fought Samoza in the 70's took up his name and are to this day the "Sandinistas". Although the support of the Sandanista party is far from unanimous, Sandino himself is a sort of Robin Hood figure for Nicaraguans, and his silhouette is visible throughout the country.

A mural on a wall in Managua, Sandino's silhouette on the right

A giant silhouette on a hilltop in Managua. Just below this is Samoza's bunker where he had his last stand before he fell to the Sandinistas, which has been turned into a Sandino museum. Ironic, no?

We did several other things during our time in Nicaragua, mostly various lectures and we also saw an interesting park, called "The Park of Peace" where all the weapons from both sides of the revolution were buried in cement. Our last night in Nicaragua, we went to a pupusa restaurant, which was so delicious! Pupusas are from El Salvador, basically consist of a fatty corn tortilla with stuff hiding inside. And by "stuff" I mean cheese, beans, pork-paste (tastes much better than it sounds) or a combination of the three. In the words of Tony the Tiger, They're Grrrrrreat!

Well, after a lovely almost-week in Nicaragua, we got up super early and took the bus back to good ol' Costa Rica. Back to my lovely host family, a regular school-like schedule, and what strangely strangely enough felt almost like coming home. Even the one-eyed dog at the street corner was still there waiting to welcome me back.