What Happened? We got lost of course!

So Kash and I are now in Laramie. We got in late Sunday night and classes start on Monday. We still have no internet at home so I cannot put any pictures up, but hopefully soon. I will post the classes that we are taking if anyone is interested. (not that anyone is reading this...)

But enough of that, I am now going to fulfill my duty and continue to write about our travels in Nica. I got through the first week!

On July 13th, we got back from our trip to the beach. Time to get serious and study Spanish, right?

Yeah right. We had class in the afternoon, but in the morning, to reward ourselves for all of our hard work at the beach, we went up o one of the nearby Volcanoes to go on a zipline tour. The volcano is about 1/2 hour from Granada, so we all pile into a van and head up to the volcano. We got there a little early, so Kash and I decided to walk through the butterfly 'museum’ , which is not really a museum but just on really big netted room with tons of butterflies in it.

This should start to appear as a re-occurring theme in this here blog, but this country, and any tropical country has about 50 times more life and more types of life than it does up in North America where we live. So of course there were all kinds of crazy butterflies and moths in the museum, but three especially stuck out. One was this brownish moth with eye-spots that was remarkable for being about as wide as my face with it’s wings spread out. The second is a butterfly called the crystal butterfly that has light blue wings on the edge, but most of the wing is actually see-through like a dragonflies wings. Pretty cool. The final butterfly is not one that we saw in the reserve, but saw often walking in the rainforest, is this large butterfly with totally black outer wings, and a bright sky-blue interior, so when it flies along in the darker jungle it looks like flashes of bright blue against the dark background of the jungle.

OK, enough about bugs. Have you ever gotten close enough to butterflies to look at their insect bodies? Pretty gross basically. So we head up this really steep mountain path to do the ‘canopy tour’. ‘Canopy tour’ means you climb to the top split of a 100 foot tropical tree and then do 20 or so zip-lines from tree to tree through the forest, until you reach the ground.
This, needless to say, is a ton of fun. We did the zip-lines normally, backwards, superman-style, upside-down, upside-down and backwards, Bouncing up and down, trying to de-rail, etc. Good fun, well worth the $30 or so dollars it costs, which is a pretty outrageous cost for Nicaragua.
Next time, the second part of our day.

Brown Sugar, make my coffee so sweet...

Hello all, back with another update here. Currently Kash and I are entering our 4th and final week of Spanish school here in Granada. We are also volunteering with a morning day-care for poor kids, as well as taking classes. Next week we leave to tour Nicaruaga for two weeks.

In my previous posts I had taken us up to July 12th, which was our first weekend in Granada. Since we had been in the city for a week we decided to to go to the beach, so we hopped on the chicken bus with one of our new friends to San Juan Del Sur.

By chicken bus, I mean the local buses that most people take to get around. There are some nicer more expenisve buses, but they dont go to most places. The buses are all 70s and 80s American yellow school buses that have been painted with wild colors. They have no seatbelts, and all the safety instructions are in English. We got to the bus a little late, so we all had to take the second and a half seat. When the bus fills up, one side of the bus is a little bigger than the other, so you either have the choice of getting one cheek on, or standing for two hours. There is no concept of a full bus. As we pulled out of the station, when I thought we couldnt possibly carry any more people, a guy was still hanging out the front hawking the destination, trying to get people to get on. All duing the ride, the bus would slow down to pick people up or drop them off. There arnt many real bus stops, you just flag them down as they pass. Meanwhile, vendors would hop on and push thier way through this totally crowded bus, selling pastries, quesedillas, gum, drinks, whatever. after the two hour or so bus ride (which cost 1.25) we got to town, checked into a hostel and then took a cabride through a muddy, flooded road to an isolated beach. There are a lot of popular beaches in this part of Nica, especially with surfers. From what I understand the waves at some beach can be 15-20 feet high. The beach that we went to was fairly small, and almost totally deserted. It was semi-protected by a foothill on one side, and a large outcropping of rock on the other, so the waves were pretty normal sized, 5-6 feet.

I think I have mentioned it before, but it is the rainy season here, so it rains a lot. We had all been in the water for about 20 minutes, which is a really, really nice temparature, when it started to rain and then started to pour. Normally you would think that we would all go running out of the water, but the rain is pretty warm as well. It was crazy, being in a rainstorm while up to your chest in the ocean, and the temperature of all the water being 75 or so degrees. It was like being inside of a hurricane. Afterwards, I went for little hike to check out the nearby jungle and then the rock formations. One of the things that I love about tropical areas is how the jungle and the beach run into each other. In the states, I am accustomed to a dry or dead zone before you hit the beach, with some scrubby bushes or tough grass, but down here the rainforest runs right into the edge of the water, with giant trees hanging off of the rocks and sliding into the water.

The beach had all of these crazy crabs running all over the place, these medium sized dark red and white spotted crabs, these little tiny midnight blue and black crabs, it was pretty wild. When I hiked up into the jungle, there was this huge bright orange-bodied crab with black legs that seemed to only live on land. It was a little scary, as I first thought it was some kind of rodent in the bushes, and then this crab bigger than my hands runs out. I hiked out of the jungle and then walked about 500 feet out onto the spit of rock, which at the end shot striagn up into the air like a finger about 75 feet high. All the time, it was raining off and on, making the algae covered rocks really really treacherous, which is my kind of fun.
Oh shoot, I gotta go, I will talk to you all later.

My point-by-point analysis of Obamas foriegn policy

OK, back to the story, such as it is, in progress.
After dinner on Firday night we met up with other students to see a musical performance at the the "Casa de Tres Mundos" a small musical hall near the town´s central park. The first couple musicians were classical guitarists from here in Nicaragua and nearby Costa Rica, which was kind of interesting, but not really. It was something that you felt that you should be interested in, but find it difficult to actually pay attention to.
The finale however was this amazing group from Switzerland. It was one adult and then 4 teenagers, all under 18 years old. They took the stage with over 50 instruments and then proceeded to play this amazing show. They had all of these wierd little guitars and huge basses from the middle ages, as well as a crazy number of percussion instruments, like slide whistles, glass bottles, kids toys, knives, salt and pepper shakers, etc. It was a really fun, really humourous little show, which was made more impressive by the fact that there was a 16 kid on stage, playing 4 instuments during one song, one of them being a type of 12 string lute from 17th century Italy.
At one point during the perofrmance a lizard dropped from the ceiling onto the floor next to one of the performers. It stood still for a while and then crawled into the hollow part of one of the nearby guitars. All the while some of the audience, as well as one of the little Swiss teenagers were watching. I cannot imagine what this 15 year old from Switzerland was thinking, have flown all the way from the cool beautiful Swiss Alps, she is now sweating in a music hall in Nicaragua, while lizards rain from the sky and try to eat her priceless instruments.
Eventually, before they had to use it, the lizard crawled out of the guitar and away into the rest of their stuff.
OK, thats all for now.
See you soon, kids.

A cuppa

Ok, so ends Kashs reign of terror. For now. Her rebels are still hiding in the mountains, I fear only waiting for the rains to end to make another strike.

I wanted to post a quick note about Coffee. Coffee is Nicaraguas main export. It grows everywhere, even on the forest floors of the national parks. Nica exported 156,137,895 pounds of coffee last year. Thats 150 pounds of coffee for every man, woman and child. Thier coffees sell all over the world and some of them have been grown from the same seeds for 300 years. Each bean handpicked, on forest floors and volcanic slopes. The beans are spread in the sun and then turned by hand, while they dry for days. Then the beans are packaged in 185 pound bags which are piled on workers shoulders, carried to the trucks, to bump down dirt roads, to be assembled in the ports, piled into containers, put on ships, where they are laboriously unloaded, unpakced roasted and then repacked.
So what do they drink in Nica?
Instant coffee.
With hot water.
At every restuarant, in every home, the only kind of coffee that you can get is powedered instant coffee. The only place in Granada, the richest city in Nica, that we have found that offers real cofee is Euro Cafe, which is owned and frequented only by Gringos.
I have asked three people and they all tell me that instant is cheaper, and besides boiling all that water and making hot coffee is just too much work for people in Nica...

A bloodless coup at the blog

OK, this is Kash writing here... I haven´t actually read what Dan has been writing so I can´t attest to the "truthines" of any of it... reader beware. This may be another "A million Little Pieces" in the making. Hopefully we will also make millions of dollars like James Frey.

So anyway on with the story. It´s Thursday the 10th now and we don´t have much planned for the day. In the morning we head out to the local market to see what it{s all about. There´s about 3 different sections that I know of and quite possibly more. First there{s the outdoor vendors along Calle Concepcion (also know as the street we live on). Here we have people selling just about everything - snacks, babyclothes, shoes, meat, pastries, socks, etc. Inside the first building are stall after stall of food and hardware type items. Nicaragua has about a million different fruits we have never seen or heard of. In fact each day at breakfastm lunch and dinner we seem to be presented with a new type of "refresco" (aka juice). Some are made with fruits, some are made with toasted corn, and the rest, well I{m still not so sure to be honest. All I know is they are vegetarian - thank goodness - imagine pork flavored juice! Amyway, so ther{s the part of the market with all the mysterious fruits and vegetables. Then there{s the part of the market with all the meats. Honestly this was one of the more disgusting moments for me. Considering that it was only 10am and that these vendors sit out here all day I was pretty horrified by by both the smell and the many, many flies being shooed away with fans by the vendors. Hey, at least theyre trying, right? Anyway what also didn{t help with the wide assortment of organs, brains, and who knows what else was being hawked. Then came the fish part of the market. Now I do eat fish but this experience really made me reconsider. The smell kind of gave me an uncontrollable gagging reflex in the back of my throat. Dan, of course, seemed totally unaffected. Honestly, after our adventure through the market we didn´t even buy anything except a small bunch of "mamons," which some of you may know as leechees (sp?).

After classes and dinner, we headed out in the rain back to the school to wacth Motorcycle Diaries and then on to a local gringo hang-out called Cafe Nuit. This is actually a really pretty open air hangout with hanging trees, gardens and a live band playing salsa music which rotated off with a DJ playing both Nicaraguan pop music and some classic US hip-hop and carribean reggae. We went out with the other students from Casa Xalteva and met up with a few others who were already there. We had some drinks and Dan managed to sample three of the local Nicaraguan beers, Toña, Victoria and Premio (or was it Premium? I guess it doesn{t really matter).

The following day, friday the 11th, closed out our first week in Nicaragua. All in all it´s strangely similar to India (but with a lot less people). Complete with three wheeled rickshaws, cows along the side of the roads and small, hungry children. Of course eveyone is speaking Spanish and the colonial buildings here in Granda have a spanish influence rather than english one but rice is still the staple of the diet and some fo the little old ladies on the street could definitely pass for indian if you put them in a sari.

Chillin and grillin (not really)

OK, so now that there is tropical storm the power seems to be working again...So, on Monday, the 8th we started Spanish classes at Casa Xalteva, which is little Spanish school and non-profit that uses the funds they raise from students and other sources to teach and feed poor and neglected kids from the neighborhood. All our classes are four hours in the afternoon one-on-one with Nica teachers, and it is pretty much all in Spanish. Kash took Spanish for something like 9 years in college, but I studied for a month before leaving, so I am having a little bit of a tough time. Whatever, I know enough to buy stuff and curse people out. What else do you need, right?
On Tueday, in the morning we took a litle field trip to a village called San Juan Oriente where the villagers make pottery with (semi) traditional methods. We all got to watch a demonstration of pottery being made and then we got a chance to try and replicate it, which of course failed hilariously, with clay spinning off the wheel and people generally getting pretty dirty. After that we went to the top of this ancient, popped volcano, which has now filled with pure rainwater to become this 600 meter deep lake. I think we are actually going to go swimming there tommorow.
In case you havnt noticed, there are a ton of Volcanos, active or not, here in Nicaragua. In fact the county is one of the most seismically and volcano(ly?) active countires in the world. When you fly over you see cones, and the remains of exploded volcanoes all over the place. Eventually, I will get to the story of how we go to an active volcano, wearing gas masks and such...
That night, after classes, we had an hour free Salsa class in the main hall in our school. It was very funny watching all these white people trying to shake thier nalgas along with the teacher. The teacher was like a little snake, every step had three hip movements to it. You havnt lived until you have seen a group of people stumbling around to salsa music surrounded by laughing children. Good times.
The next day before class we took a boat tour. If you remember, Granada is on the edge of this giant lake. It is also near (surpise) numerous volcanoes, some active, some not. There are about 360 little islands close off the shore, all of which were formed by the top exploding off of the closest volcano. Since there are basically just boulders these islands are not super large. They used to mainly belong to poor people, fisherman, etc. Although in the last 20 years or so (now that Reagan has stopped funding his little secret war), rich, mostly americans have been buying these things up and building these giant houses on them. It is a interesting mix, for instance, we went past an island that was basically one giant house, with people sitting in the pool outside waving to us and the next island was a little family all bathing in the lake water. One of the islands that we went past has been stocked with monkeys by someone, and they lean out of the trees and make faces at you and generally pose for pictures and clown around like monkeys tend to do. They eat fruit from some of the trees there, but I think someone also feeds them. We also went to an old Spanish fort, where the defended the lake by canon from...someone. British? Dutch? I didnt really get the whole story.
Oh also, when we got home that day, Kashs bag finally arrived. I didnt really work that into the story, but for the first 4 days, she was walking around in my shorts and T-shirts looking fairly ridiculous. Even though we were on a direct flight from Miami to Managua, her bag was sent to Caracas, then to Miami and then back to Managua. Also, the baggage service never picks up the pghone, so we wound up have to call AA direct, on Skype. Yay!
OK, peace out peeps.

We arrive, and some stuff happens.

First off, I want to apologise for doing exactly what I didnt want to do, which is start out with a big entry and then never update it. We have been doing all sorts of activities. Also, the power is kinda spotty here in Nica, so everytime I make time to come to the internet cafe, the power goes out.

Ok, so back to the story. We got into Nica on Saturday, the 5th, but one of our bags didnt make it. We sat and watched the one little carousel at the Managua airport for a while, but it never came. We took a cab from Managua to Granada to meet the host family that we are staying with. There are 4 kids, all in ther 20s or 30s, with two sisters and two brothers, along with two parents and a couple of Grandkids. To tell you the truth, I am still unsure who exactly lives in the house, at least one of the brothers and both of the sisters do, but the grandkids and the other brother seem to come and go. The family is pretty rich, especially by Nica standards. The house is like a mini-hacienda. You walk into the house through a huge old door, and enter into the sitting room. There is only one story, but it must be at least 25 feet to the ceiling. After the sitting room there is a living/dining room, and the kitchen. However, only parts of this are covered by the roof, most of this (huge) room is an open air garden with plants, giant mango and coconut trees, and dozens of tropical birds in cages. After you pass through that, then you come to the actual garden, which is an even bigger version of the garden before. It has a covered porch area and then a natural area with two dogs, geese, ducks, parrots, and some strange little flightless jungle-chicken things. Our room is in a seperate little structure out here in the garden. We have our own shower and a little toilet just for us back in the main part of the house. Compared to what we have seen at other peoples homestays, the house we are living in is a palace.

We got in on Sat. and just relaxed and went to bed early since I had blown a few fuses the night before in Miami for the 4th of July. The next day, we got up and walked down to Lago Nicaragua. This lake is something like the 10th biggest freshwater lake in the word. It is incredibly large. When we flew over it in the airplane it looked like a sea. You couldnt see the other side, even from 20,000 feet. it is so large it has its own species of freshwater shark. In the middle of the lake are two giant volcanos. http://viajesnorteamerica.com/wp-content/ometepe_island_on_lake_managua-nicaragua.jpg.
So we cruised down there for a little while and then we jumped on this party bus thing that takes you all around the sights of Granada, while a DJ blasts Reggeaton.
Crap, there goes the power again. I will try a little later...

A little background

I realize that in my first entry I may have passed over some vital information for some of youse. Let me bring you up to speed. Up untill very recently Kash and I have been living in Hollywood, Kash working as a Producer for HGTV and I was working at UCLa. We decided to chuck it all in and go back to school. So n the Spring we decided to move to Laramie wyoming to attend the University of Wyoming, Kash for a MA in International Studies and me for Geography, we are both going to try and conduct our research in Latin America. To answer the question that gets asked everytime I say the previos sentence, We decided on Laramie becuase the programs were very interested and they gave us some good money. So please, proceed with a tired cowboy joke and then we can all move on.

We moved to Laramie from Lala and then left for Nicaruaga for six weeks. We are studying Spanish for 4 weeks and then travelling for two afterwords. our cellphones will both stay the same, but we have no housephone and no plan to get a housephone. I would love for anyone to come visit anytime, just let us know, there are cheap flights into denver from both LA and Phila. Werd.

Wassup my Nicas!

Hello Peeps!

Welcome to the first edition of my blog. I hope to avoid what usually happens to these things, where people start out strong and then quickly tail off. I hope to get some pictures up, but the connection here in Nica is slow. Kash and I's phones and messaging will be off, so email is really the only way to contact us, unless you have a real emergency, please contact our parents.

Let me give y'all a quick update on what Kash and I have been up to.

We left Los Angeles on June 27th, loaded our junk into a car and drove to Wyoming, we had three or four days to unpack and then we had to leave for Nica.

Our house in Wyoming is a 1920's single story house, painted a light yellow, about 950 square feet. The house is large enough for our needs, but is a little bit of a dissapointment, since our landlord, a professor, had told us that the house was 'about' 1500 square feet. Obviously, she is not a math professor. It is possible that she also included the living space of our downstairs neighbor, but she certainly phrased it to suggest we would have 1500 feet. Truthfully, we have plenty of room and more space just means more money for heat. I thought about paying her 'about' our rent, but Kash talked me out of it.

The top floor consists of a bedroom, a study, a living room, a dining room and a kitchen. The house is laid out in a simple fashion, one enters through the front door, where there is a small 'mud' room. From there on can continue on through the study, or turn to enter the living room. The single bathroom and our bedroom follows behind the study, and through the living room one enters the dining room and then the kitchen. There is a back door out the kitchen which leads to a garage as well as to our large back, side and front yard. The neighborhood is very nice, full of trees and children, and about a 15 minute walk from campus (in the summer). Summer in Laramie is gorgeous, everything is in flower, the temperature never gets above 80 and there are amazing views all around.

On July 3rd we drove to Denver to spend the night in a hotel in preparation for our early flight in the morning. We were able to arrange a 24 hour layover in Miami, a city I have never been to, in order to spend some time with a college friend of ours, 'Big' Dave. If you have never been to Miami, it is a trip that you have to make. I feel like I left the United States as soon as we stepped off the plane. The primary language is Spanish, the workers in the airports, the taxi drivers, the toll collectors, everyone assumes that you speak Spanish. The climate is tropical, actually almost exactly the same as it is here in Nica. Everyone strolls around in swimsuits and there are three dance clubs on every block. There are Haitians, Nica's, Caribs, Cubanos, and Latins from every nation. The city, especially the part near the ocean is a series of islands connected by bridges that sprout tall, white, cool-looking apartment buildings. You are driving on a highway and suddenly you cross a bright-blue lagoon fill with pleasure-boats and yachts. Maybe I was in a good mood, but the city was pretty amazing. It was like a caribbean pleasure island in the middle of Florida. I have been to other parts of Florida and I mostly saw strip malls, crackers and retirees. I think I may have underestimated the state a little.

Anyway, we went for seafood dinner on the water, drinks in the park to watch the fireworks and before we left the next morning we ate at a Cuban bakery. We repacked our bags and headed to the airport. Did I mention we have been flying first-class this trip? We wrapped our bags in clear plastic saran wrap, strolled on the plane and sipped some champagne on the two hour flight to Nica.

Next week - Will our intrepid explorers find thier school? Will their luggage be intact? Does anyone except them care?

Tune in to find out....