Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Pics from Managua

As promised here are a couple of pictures from Managua. First a little bit about the house that we stayed in there. The house is owned by Luz Marina. When I was in Nicaragua for the first time in 95 or so I stayed there with her and her kids. She is know married to an American and they live in the States sometimes and are building a house on the Island of Ometepe. The second time that I came to visit. Luz was living in the States but I stayed in her house with some other folks. The people who lived with me at that time were Felipe who is my age and was dating Tati who is also my age. Then there were three 15 year olds; Ernesto who is Felipe´s brother, Alfonsos and Scarlet who is Luz´s niece. This time when I got to Nicaragua I again lived in that house this time with Felipe and his new wife Yessira (I think that is her name), and their son Hamilton. Luz was also there and her husband Rock came for a few nights from Ometepe.
Did you get all that?

Here is the 6 of us just before Mark left. A solar water heater that I helped make 5 years
ago. Which is still working well. Apparently I
did something right in my time there.
This is Ernesto who came to visit one morning.
This is me holding Hamilton.
He was fascinated with my camera
so I have quite few of these pictures.







Mark teaching Hamilton how to play the guitar.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Uniles, Nicaragua


After spending a night in Somoto we got up, ate some corn flakes and took a slightly beat up taxi into the countryside. It was an interesting feeling to enter the dusty hills again after being away for over a year and a half now. No sooner had we stepped out of the car and walked a few steps up the path did I see the first familar face in Unile. '"Hoy, Webb!" called out Chungo, the captain of the Unile soccer team, as he rode towards us on his bike. After a brief conversation he headed on and we kept going along the path. We arrived at our first stop, the home of the previous promoter of the solar cooker project I had been working for. She wasn't there but some of her family was so we stopped and chatted some more.

Then, we started our journey up the mountain towards the home where I lived for six months in 2005. I spent some much time making that journey that climbing the hill again felt eerily familar. We made a few stops along the way, greeting a few of the women who were a part of the solar oven group. At the house of Dona Christiana, the house where I would pick up and drop off my bicycle every morning and evening during my time volunteering, we learned that my host father, Juan was working on a construction project just down the road.

We headed along and sure enough, just around the bend I could see Juan's distinct figure, his small, muscular body, and heavily hunched back from years of working in the fields. He saw me coming and gave a shout, "Markitos!". "Juancito!", I replied and we ran towards each other and hugged happily. We learned he would be working for a few more hours so we decided to go ahead with the final stretch of the journey, to visit my host mom, Bernarda, at the top of the hill.
When we arrived at the top of the hill, out of breath from the rather steep final incline, no one was home. I knew one of Bernarda's sisters would probably be at the main family house just across the way so we headed over and sure enough there they were, cousins, sisters, and grampa Marcos too! It was a big reunion, and just as things started to settle down, Bernarda came in from doing laundry at the pump, and there were more hugs to be given.

Jacob stayed with Juan and Bernarda for a couple of nights before heading to Managua. I stayed with for a whole week, had lots of fun playing soccer and visiting with familar faces. It felt good to be back.


Entering Nicaragua and Savana Grande

This post time line wise should come before Mangagua. We arrived in Northern Nicaragua from El Salvador via Honduras. We thought that we were going to have to stay on the Honduran side of the border because our guide book told us that the border closed at 5 PM and our buses had taken a little longer than expected. But after talking to some locals that were also headed for the border who said that it would be open we decided to go for it. The border was in fact open and we took a luxury bus the 25 kilometers from the border to Somoto. Check out the link to the right for a map of Nicaragua. Somoto is a small town outside the even small community of Uniles where Mark stayed for 6 months about a year and a half ago. You can read about our adventures there in his post. Since there is not a lot of things to do in Unile other than look at the beautiful scenery, I headed to Savana Grande a small community on the road from Somoto to Ocotal. Grupo Fenix the organization that we both volunteered with in Nicaragua is building a Solar Center(Again see right for more info). We were able to get down and dirty and throw some roof tiles and dirt around. In the foreground of the picture to the left is Rod a volunteer from Canada is smoking out some hornets that had made their nest in the place that we needed to work. The center is made out of adobe bricks which will then be covered with a plaster like substance. We were taking off the roof tiles which were temporarily put up there to protect the adobe so that the real roof could be put on. Hopefully it will happen before the rainy season. After a few days working it was on to Managua.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Managua

I wish that I had the Lonely Planet Guide book that we have been using so that I could quote the description of Managua that it has. Basically it says it is hot, confusing with no down town and no street names and nothing interesting to see. And for the most part it is right as far as the normal tourist goes. But there are many interesting people here and friends and if you never try the soy milk from Dona Sonya at Casa Nutrem you are missing out.
So we both made it to Managua now. I headed down from the North a couple days before Mark and have been staying with Filipe one of the people that I stayed with when I was here 5 years ago. Yes for those of you who knew me than it was 5 years ago. Man how time flies. There is not a lot to say about Managua yet. I did get to drink some Flor de Cana rum with some of the other volunteers that are hear working with Grupo Fenix. Yesterday I attended an Aikido class
with Susan the director of Groupo Fenix and the head of Aikido Nicaragua. It was fun to get thrown around a bit but I am feeling a little sore from it. Do not have any pictures yet but I will have some later of Filipe´s super cute two and a half year old. Hope all you folks in the states are having fun with all the cold weather.

Monday, February 12, 2007

PICTURES and Links

Hey we put some pictures up on the last couple of posts. Also blogspot tip if you click on the picture it will take you to a much bigger version. Also I added some links on the side maybe more to come.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

El Salvador

We made it to San Salvador with little problems and once we got there had some idea of where we were going. We were planning on staying with Patrick a friend from CISV Cincinnati. He is doing a program in San Salvador. If you want to read more about what he is doing check it out here http://patrickinelsalvador.blogspot.com/
We had looked up his program online and knew that he lived only 1.5 kilometers from the University and we knew how to get to the University and we had two phone numbers and were pretty sure he was living at one of them. And it all worked well. We took the bus to the University called Patrick and he met us there. His house mates were very welcoming and fed us and let us play games and guitars in their yard. We also got to got Spanish class with him which was fun.
The next day we met my friend from CISV El Salvador Andy and he took us to a place where we went horse back riding up to a look out point on top of a big hill. Again we have some pictures but the computer is not letting me upload them for some reason so hopefully later. We also went and played soccer under the lights it was nice because it is pretty hot in San Salvador so playing later in the day made it a lot cooler.
That night I stayed at Andy´s while Mark stayed at Patrick´s. It was the first time that we had slept more than 5 fee away from each other in almost 4 weeks. A little bit sad but we got over it quickly. The next day I went to the beach with Andy while mark stayed in San Salvador and went to Patrick´s praxis site where he teaches English. After almost 24 hours without seeing each other we were reunited in a quest to watch the US play Mexico. To no avail the game wasn´t broadcast in Central America oh well we got to watch the highlights on ESPN sportscenter of the USA beating Mexico 2-0.
We went to a Museum of martyrs at the site where the 6 Jesuit priests and 2 women were killed during the civil war. Our student guide was very helpful in explaining what happened and showing us around. We saw some really gruesome pictures of the bodies the day that they were found. That night Andy got us box seats to go to the National Stadium. We watched Nicaragua get beat by Guatemala and El Salvador beat Belize. It was pretty exciting and the beers and burgers were good to. Although drinking the night before riding a bus all day that doesn´t have a bathroom is not really the best idea. Oh well a little dehydration is not that bad.


On to Nicaragua.

Good Times- Guatemala

We spent 4 nights in Guatemala- one night in Quetzaltanengo (Xela) and 3 in and around Guatemala a City.

We arrived in Xela in the evening and wandered around the city center for quite a while before stumbling upon the Hostel San Andres. Little did we know that we had arrived to one of the more festive hostels in town. No sooner had we returned from an early dinner were we invited for some drinks and conversation with the hostel owners and their friends. One thing led to another and before we knew it we were all drunk singing "welcome to the Hotel San Andres," I with my trusty guitar and Jacob piping along with his Harmonica. Jacob passed out a little early that evening and I spent the night jamming with an El Salvadoran guy who also played guitar.

By the afternoon, we had sluffed off our hang overs enough to catch a bus to Guatemala City. There we met Fernando, a friend I met at CISV camp last summer in Finland. Fer works in the office of his family´s funeral home company. He kindly offered us some of the best whitebread/American cheese sandwiches we had ever tasted. That evening we went to Antigua Guatemala, a small town about 30 minutes from the capital. Antigua is a beautiful town full of buildings preserved from the colonial Spanish era. It is so beautiful that it is now overrun by tourists, travellers, and language school dropouts. Mas gringos que gente, se dice. We stayed the night at a place called "Jungle Party" and then headed to Fers house on the big lake outside of Guatemala the next day. We ate more in those 2 days then we had in the last month. They just kept feeding and feeding us- spaghetti, tamales, chichuron, frijoles, tortilla. We were stuffed. The last night in Guatemala we stayed at hotel near the bus station in order to make an early exit to El Salvador. At five in the morning we were awakened by the sound of a massive traffic jam outside of our room. Our hotel was in the middle of the biggest market in Guatemala City and things get started early there!
Although things got started early we didn`t we did not manage to get on a bus until 12. However while we were waiting in the bus station we saw another Pooh. Here I am pretending to look at a poster of Guatemala while Jacob sneaks a picture of me next to the Pooh bag.

Oaxaca and San Cristobal

Oaxaca
The other half of our trip to Oaxaca was much calmer than our adventures with the thorns. The first night that we arrived we stayed in hostel for the first time. It was nice to meet some other travelers. We met an Australian guy who had been living in Toronto only a few blocks from where Mark had been living. Small world. However, sleeping in a room with 6 other people was not really our style and we found a place cheaper for the next nights. This picture is what we could see off of the roof deck of our new hotel. Not the most interesting but we spent some time up there playing music and reading.
The Plaza in Oaxaca is one of the best that we had seen. No traffic was allowed and there were a lot of restaurants around the edges to sit and have a beer or coffee. And since neither of us drink coffee we had a beer and some peanuts.
We hardly saw any signs of the general strike that had happened the summer. At least not in the places that we were going. There seemed to be some extra guards on the plaza and some movable barricades. See the post Mark, Jacob and Jorge vs los espinos for more about our adventures in Oaxaca

San Cristobal de las Casas-Home of the Matrimonial Bed.
When we were looking for hotels, we found lots of signs here that advertised the Matrimonial bed for cheaper than the other rooms. We weren’t really sure what that meant but we found a cheap hotel with out one so we never found out.
It was a pretty nice town. There were a lot of craft markets and people trying to sell blankets and bracelets on the street. We went to a museum of Mayan traditional medicine that was really interesting. It had the poster on the right that we liked a lot. We went to the museum of some Dutch explorers who had studied the indigenous peoples of the area that was a little strange because only in half the rooms was anything labeled but in the half that was labeled there were really intricate descriptions.

This was our last stop in Mexico next stop Guatemala.

Friday, February 9, 2007

Problems Posting

Dear esteemed blog readers. I apologize for not updating the blog recently. I have actually tried twice to post about our other adventures in Oaxaca and Chiapas but once the computer I was using restarted and I lost it and another time I was using someones personal computer when the interet stopped working. However we have crossed many borders and have many stories to tell and will hopefully have them up shortly.