Hi Folks,
I'm back in Oakland, I arrived late last night. I'm tired.
I posted photos on my Picasa photo page. Come take a look:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rfadam/QueLindaEsNicaragua#
Last time I posted, I was about to leave for the Las Penitas beach not far from Leon. The short trip turned into more of an adventure than I had imagined. I took a bus from the centro near my hostel to a small mercado in the Subtiava barrio, where I boarded the bus to Las Penitas. There was a really annoying drunk on the bus--at 10 AM in the morning, he and his two buddies were already out of the minds from cheap aguardiente. He kept asking me over and over whether I was going to surf at the beach, so eventually I started ignoring him. The road to Las Penitas, like most roads in Nicaragua, is undergoing repairs and improvements, and on one of the spots under construction, our bus broke an axel. We all got off and waited for the next bus, which came, already full, in about ten minutes. Everyone from the broke-down bus somehow managed to squeeze into the other bus for the 20 minutes (felt much longer) that remained left on the trip. I eventually made it to Las Penitas, wandered the beach and contemplated a swim, then headed to the Barca de Oro, a hotel and restaurant whose owner is a friend of Lagartillo and employs a few guys from Lagartillo. I ran into the guys drinking beer at a table, we chatted for a while, then I stashed everything but my towel and glasses case and headed for the beach (this turned out to be a very good move). I met some friendly Nicaraguan folks and chatted with them for a while while we bobbed in the warm waters of the Pacific. Every once in a while, a large wave came rolling in, and one was large enough to soak all of our stuff. I was lucky that my towel, shirt and glasses didn't wash away, they just became saturated with salt water and sand. After a while, I headed back to the Barca de Oro, drank beer and ate fish (my first seafood meal in Nicaragua-it was delicious) and contemplated the beauty of the tropical lagoon. In the late afternoon I got on the bus headed back to Leon. I ran into two older Nica women and their nephews that were on the bus in the morning, and we ended up spending the hour long trip in the packed and sweaty school bus chatting and joking about what had happened that morning. I find that the Nica sense of humor is very similar to my own and it's very easy to engage with others by joking around. Often, this amounts to making preposterous statements in a serious tone, which is basically my sense of humor. On the cab ride back to the center of Leon, we exchanged numbers and hopefully will stay in touch. I was a little sad since I didn't have time to hang out with my new friends before leaving Nicaragua, but it's one more reason to come back, and now, I'll have a place to stay in Leon besides the hostal (which has been nice). The rest of time in Leon that everning and the next day involved eating Nica tacos, which are not as good as Mexican ones, drinking refrescoes, searching for a decent cup of coffee, hanging out with Marcos and Norma and buying rum, t-shirts, bowls made from jicara shells, cheese, sweets and stone carvings.
I had my last meal from the same comedor at the mercado central where I had eaten a month ago when I first arrived. It was as delicious as ever. Even though Nica food lacks the spice and sophistication of other cuisines such as Mexican, Thai or Indian food, I've grown quite fond of many Nica dishes. I especially love the staples of the diet in Lagartillo--beans, tortillas and cuajada cheese--all of which are so delicious partly because they are all produced so locally. There are so many different ways to prepare beans that I can never really get tired of eating them: bean soup, fried beans, beans over rice, beans fried with rice...Even though I enjoy the myriad of eating opportunities in the Bay Area, I don't think I would really mind eating the staple foods of Lagartillo for an extended period of time if I had too. Other Lagartillo favorites include anything that involves plantains or guineo (a type of banana), ayote squash and eggs scrambled with tomatoes, beans or rice. What I didn't always love were the cuts of fatty beef that wound up in the soup, and I never really acquired a real fondness for the starchy roots--malanga, quequisque and yucca--that are an important part of the diet as well. The meals in Lagartillo sometimes lacked vegetables, but the presence of bananas, papayas, oranges, and sometimes melons and granadillas made up for that. We often consumed our fruit in refrescoes, drinks made by adding water and copious amounts of sugar to the fruit.
Nica cuisine in the cities is a bit different, and I can't say I'm as familiar with it. Foods from the comedores, like the one I frequented at the Leon market, included gallo pinto (beans and rice fried together, fried plantain and cheese for breakfast, and beans and rice (cooked separately) with some kind of stew for lunch. Both meals also come with tortillas and a cabbage salad. I like this kind of food, as well as the quesillo, which I've described in previous posts, but can't say I'm as fond of the fried foods prevalent at many eateries in the cities. The Nica fondness for deep frying various items isn't something I'm quite as wild about.
Anyhow, enough about food. I headed back to the hostel to pack, and as I was leaving, I ran into Yomar, my friend from Lagartillo who had come to study in Leon. He was supposed to come Sunday but didn't make it because he had too much fun at the fiesta in Achuapa on Saturday night. I was glad I got to see him, because he's one of my closest friends from my stay in Lagartillo. We spent many early mornings together harvesting beans and corn, took trips to the waterfalls and spent evenings talking about girls (what else do two guys talk about). I said a sad farewell and headed for the terminal, where I caught a minibus to Managua.
Managua. Managua is a place I have only passed through, and my experience of Nicaragua's capital via it's roads has not enticed me to visit the city. Nicaragua is a poor country, it is said, the Western Hemisphere's second poorest, after Haiti. The desperate situation of many Nicas becomes readily apparent on a trip through Managua. Apparently, Managua was once a nice city, but much of it was destroyed during an earthquake in the 1970's and never really rebuilt (Somoza, in power at the time, siphoned the relief money into his personal coffers, an action which helped to aid the Sandinista cause and bring about the fall of the dictatorship in 1979). Supermarkets stand in fields overgrown with vegetation and monuments preside over chaotic intersections. There seems to be no order to the city: the strange cathedral, what looks like a cross between a beehive and a mosque, stands amidst vacant lots, and government complexes abut shantytowns. Families squeeze into tiny houses, trash and filth clog drainage ditches, and hawkers selling water, belts and other items stream into the roadways when traffic halts. Nearly all Nicaraguans I spoke with who live outside of Managua don't speak favorably of the capital: poverty, scams and gang violence are frequent themes in discussions about that city. I was glad when my taxi finally made it the airport, even though I was sad about leaving Nicaragua. The airport was pretty quiet, and I had a few cordobas to spare on a quesillo, which turned out to be pretty good. Our plane left for San Salvador as the sun set over the land of lakes and volcanoes.
A major cause of concern for me when planning this trip to Nicaragua was how I was going to handle the re-entry to my life in the states. The reason for this is, and this is probably apparent to those of you who knew me back in 2003, that I had a hard time re-adjusting to life in the states after returning from Turkey. It's too soon to say how I will cope with this challenge here, but there are already some differences. One thing is that I am still in Latin America, for the most part. I can speak Spanish with my Guatemalan neighbors, and I had my first breakfast at a Mexican restaurant in Fruitvale (I really enjoyed the chile and salsa especially). I am still on the same continent as Nicaragua; the sun sets over the same ocean, and as night set over Central America, I could see the lights of houses on streets build according to the same grid pattern that many communities in the US share. I realized today that I should have bought an Adventura CD in Nicaragua. Adventura is a Dominican-American bachata group from the Bronx that is widely popular in the Americas. However, I can always pick up a CD from the sidewalk in Fruitvale or the Mission, or at the weekend pulga at Laney College. I am also looking forward to speaking Spanish with parents, kids and co-workers tomorrow when I return to Park.
The weather is sunny and unseasonably warm and dry here in Oakland, which makes it easy to re-adjust but is also cause for concern since we are in year three of a drought and I don't want to have to irrigate the Park garden in January yet again. But for now, I appreciate the fact that I don't have to heat my room, and can walk outside in a t-shirt to pick oranges in my back yard (and yes, they are sweeter and juicier than the oranges in Nicaragua). A large pile of laundry and a trip to the grocery store await...
It is impossible to come up with some kind of concluding remarks about this past month I've spent in Nicaragua. I had a wonderful experience in that country, and I must admit that I have already comtemplated plans for a possible return.
I'm back in Oakland, I arrived late last night. I'm tired.
I posted photos on my Picasa photo page. Come take a look:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rfadam/QueLindaEsNicaragua#
Last time I posted, I was about to leave for the Las Penitas beach not far from Leon. The short trip turned into more of an adventure than I had imagined. I took a bus from the centro near my hostel to a small mercado in the Subtiava barrio, where I boarded the bus to Las Penitas. There was a really annoying drunk on the bus--at 10 AM in the morning, he and his two buddies were already out of the minds from cheap aguardiente. He kept asking me over and over whether I was going to surf at the beach, so eventually I started ignoring him. The road to Las Penitas, like most roads in Nicaragua, is undergoing repairs and improvements, and on one of the spots under construction, our bus broke an axel. We all got off and waited for the next bus, which came, already full, in about ten minutes. Everyone from the broke-down bus somehow managed to squeeze into the other bus for the 20 minutes (felt much longer) that remained left on the trip. I eventually made it to Las Penitas, wandered the beach and contemplated a swim, then headed to the Barca de Oro, a hotel and restaurant whose owner is a friend of Lagartillo and employs a few guys from Lagartillo. I ran into the guys drinking beer at a table, we chatted for a while, then I stashed everything but my towel and glasses case and headed for the beach (this turned out to be a very good move). I met some friendly Nicaraguan folks and chatted with them for a while while we bobbed in the warm waters of the Pacific. Every once in a while, a large wave came rolling in, and one was large enough to soak all of our stuff. I was lucky that my towel, shirt and glasses didn't wash away, they just became saturated with salt water and sand. After a while, I headed back to the Barca de Oro, drank beer and ate fish (my first seafood meal in Nicaragua-it was delicious) and contemplated the beauty of the tropical lagoon. In the late afternoon I got on the bus headed back to Leon. I ran into two older Nica women and their nephews that were on the bus in the morning, and we ended up spending the hour long trip in the packed and sweaty school bus chatting and joking about what had happened that morning. I find that the Nica sense of humor is very similar to my own and it's very easy to engage with others by joking around. Often, this amounts to making preposterous statements in a serious tone, which is basically my sense of humor. On the cab ride back to the center of Leon, we exchanged numbers and hopefully will stay in touch. I was a little sad since I didn't have time to hang out with my new friends before leaving Nicaragua, but it's one more reason to come back, and now, I'll have a place to stay in Leon besides the hostal (which has been nice). The rest of time in Leon that everning and the next day involved eating Nica tacos, which are not as good as Mexican ones, drinking refrescoes, searching for a decent cup of coffee, hanging out with Marcos and Norma and buying rum, t-shirts, bowls made from jicara shells, cheese, sweets and stone carvings.
I had my last meal from the same comedor at the mercado central where I had eaten a month ago when I first arrived. It was as delicious as ever. Even though Nica food lacks the spice and sophistication of other cuisines such as Mexican, Thai or Indian food, I've grown quite fond of many Nica dishes. I especially love the staples of the diet in Lagartillo--beans, tortillas and cuajada cheese--all of which are so delicious partly because they are all produced so locally. There are so many different ways to prepare beans that I can never really get tired of eating them: bean soup, fried beans, beans over rice, beans fried with rice...Even though I enjoy the myriad of eating opportunities in the Bay Area, I don't think I would really mind eating the staple foods of Lagartillo for an extended period of time if I had too. Other Lagartillo favorites include anything that involves plantains or guineo (a type of banana), ayote squash and eggs scrambled with tomatoes, beans or rice. What I didn't always love were the cuts of fatty beef that wound up in the soup, and I never really acquired a real fondness for the starchy roots--malanga, quequisque and yucca--that are an important part of the diet as well. The meals in Lagartillo sometimes lacked vegetables, but the presence of bananas, papayas, oranges, and sometimes melons and granadillas made up for that. We often consumed our fruit in refrescoes, drinks made by adding water and copious amounts of sugar to the fruit.
Nica cuisine in the cities is a bit different, and I can't say I'm as familiar with it. Foods from the comedores, like the one I frequented at the Leon market, included gallo pinto (beans and rice fried together, fried plantain and cheese for breakfast, and beans and rice (cooked separately) with some kind of stew for lunch. Both meals also come with tortillas and a cabbage salad. I like this kind of food, as well as the quesillo, which I've described in previous posts, but can't say I'm as fond of the fried foods prevalent at many eateries in the cities. The Nica fondness for deep frying various items isn't something I'm quite as wild about.
Anyhow, enough about food. I headed back to the hostel to pack, and as I was leaving, I ran into Yomar, my friend from Lagartillo who had come to study in Leon. He was supposed to come Sunday but didn't make it because he had too much fun at the fiesta in Achuapa on Saturday night. I was glad I got to see him, because he's one of my closest friends from my stay in Lagartillo. We spent many early mornings together harvesting beans and corn, took trips to the waterfalls and spent evenings talking about girls (what else do two guys talk about). I said a sad farewell and headed for the terminal, where I caught a minibus to Managua.
Managua. Managua is a place I have only passed through, and my experience of Nicaragua's capital via it's roads has not enticed me to visit the city. Nicaragua is a poor country, it is said, the Western Hemisphere's second poorest, after Haiti. The desperate situation of many Nicas becomes readily apparent on a trip through Managua. Apparently, Managua was once a nice city, but much of it was destroyed during an earthquake in the 1970's and never really rebuilt (Somoza, in power at the time, siphoned the relief money into his personal coffers, an action which helped to aid the Sandinista cause and bring about the fall of the dictatorship in 1979). Supermarkets stand in fields overgrown with vegetation and monuments preside over chaotic intersections. There seems to be no order to the city: the strange cathedral, what looks like a cross between a beehive and a mosque, stands amidst vacant lots, and government complexes abut shantytowns. Families squeeze into tiny houses, trash and filth clog drainage ditches, and hawkers selling water, belts and other items stream into the roadways when traffic halts. Nearly all Nicaraguans I spoke with who live outside of Managua don't speak favorably of the capital: poverty, scams and gang violence are frequent themes in discussions about that city. I was glad when my taxi finally made it the airport, even though I was sad about leaving Nicaragua. The airport was pretty quiet, and I had a few cordobas to spare on a quesillo, which turned out to be pretty good. Our plane left for San Salvador as the sun set over the land of lakes and volcanoes.
A major cause of concern for me when planning this trip to Nicaragua was how I was going to handle the re-entry to my life in the states. The reason for this is, and this is probably apparent to those of you who knew me back in 2003, that I had a hard time re-adjusting to life in the states after returning from Turkey. It's too soon to say how I will cope with this challenge here, but there are already some differences. One thing is that I am still in Latin America, for the most part. I can speak Spanish with my Guatemalan neighbors, and I had my first breakfast at a Mexican restaurant in Fruitvale (I really enjoyed the chile and salsa especially). I am still on the same continent as Nicaragua; the sun sets over the same ocean, and as night set over Central America, I could see the lights of houses on streets build according to the same grid pattern that many communities in the US share. I realized today that I should have bought an Adventura CD in Nicaragua. Adventura is a Dominican-American bachata group from the Bronx that is widely popular in the Americas. However, I can always pick up a CD from the sidewalk in Fruitvale or the Mission, or at the weekend pulga at Laney College. I am also looking forward to speaking Spanish with parents, kids and co-workers tomorrow when I return to Park.
The weather is sunny and unseasonably warm and dry here in Oakland, which makes it easy to re-adjust but is also cause for concern since we are in year three of a drought and I don't want to have to irrigate the Park garden in January yet again. But for now, I appreciate the fact that I don't have to heat my room, and can walk outside in a t-shirt to pick oranges in my back yard (and yes, they are sweeter and juicier than the oranges in Nicaragua). A large pile of laundry and a trip to the grocery store await...
It is impossible to come up with some kind of concluding remarks about this past month I've spent in Nicaragua. I had a wonderful experience in that country, and I must admit that I have already comtemplated plans for a possible return.
Comments
Ron
SF