Estelí and Reserva Natural Miraflor

Continuing our trip now that my Mum and Dad have gone back home, we're heading up back through Nicaragua towards Honduras and Belize. Last time we were here, we missed out on seeing the Northern highlands because we didn't have time. So this time we've spent a few days in Estelí and the Reserva Natural Miraflor nearby.



Along with León, Estelí has been the centre of support for the left-wing FSLN party since the revolution. This is the heartland of the socialist movement that championed the rights of the campesinos who work the agricultural land around this department. We arrived on Sunday, and just happened to see a small rally of support for the FSLN party.



We're back on the local buses now! It takes a full hour and a half to travel the 28km to Miraflor. It's incredibly dusty and very hot.



We stayed at Finca Neblina del Bosque, a small farm run by a German-Nicaraguan couple. It's totally isolated and very tranquil, as well as being genuinely eco-friendly. They draw their own well water, they have solar power, all the food is vegetarian and the only pig on the farm is a pet. Rachel fed her some mango skins, which she seemed to enjoy!



Tomorrow we head for the border, once again.

Rob

From Guate to Costa Rica

As soon as we'd dusted off the lava rock from Pacaya, we began an enormously long journey down to Costa Rica. Day 1 involved a relatively simple 6 hours to San Salvador, El Salvador, but it was the second leg that was the real killer. We started at 3am and, with just one short stop and three borders to cross, we arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica at 9pm, 18 hours later. Altogether a full 24 hours on a bus! Mind you, we can't really complain too much; the bus was really comfortable with big reclining seats, movies to watch (mostly pretty poor ones in Spanish but it passes the time!) and meals brought round at regular intervals. Better than most flights, we think! Here's Rob at the Nicaragua - Costa Rica border.

So, the reason for our speedy transit through 5 countries? We're excitedly expecting the arrival of Rob's parents tomorrow! They're flying in for a couple of weeks to explore Costa Rica. It's come at a great time. Although we've made some great friends along the way, we're definitely missing everyone from home, too. Let's hope they enjoy their time in Central America as much as we have!

Rachel x

Nicaragua to El Salvador

Our last night in León was La Gritería festival, a Christian celebration of the Immaculate Conception. It´s celebrated all over Nicaragua, but particularly in León. At 6pm on the 7th December the fiesta is kicked off by the bishop in the cathedral, who shouts out "¿Quién causa tanta alegría?" - "Who causes so much happiness?", to which the crowds reply; "¡La concepción de María!" - The conception of Mary! Then everyone rushes out into the streets as the bells ring and fireworks explode. Throughout the town people set up small altars inside their home, which people visit and repeat the cry. As a reward, they are given sweets, biscuits and other small gifts. At one house, we were given a box of matches and a sachet of coffee! As you can imagine, the whole thing is pretty crazy and I was amazed by how much booty some people managed to get during the night; some children had huge sacks full of goodies!



Although this picture isn´t great (it was hard to capture the event in the dark), it does show the slightly manic atmosphere pretty well! You can see the women inside (always shielded by some sort of gate) calling back to the crowd and, if you look carefully through the clouds of incense, you may just about make out the Vigin Mary altar in the background.



On our way towards the Honduran border, we stopped off for a night in the city of Chinandega. The town itself is remarkable only for its proximity to the legendary Flor de Caña rum factory (and for being the hottest city in Nicaragua)! We both really enjoyed the fantastic national rum during our time in Nica and had heard rumours that a tour of the factory could possibly be arranged. "Worth a try", we thought!

Unfortunately, this front wall in the village of Chichigalpa is as far as we got. The guard informed us that visiting the factory was prohibido and we would need to speak to the big men in Managua before they would let us through the gates. He might have said it was "more than his job´s worth", but we didn´t catch it all.



Still, Chichigalpa is a pretty village with a pretty name and it wasn´t a totally wasted journey.



From Chinandega, with our bags strapped tightly to a mini-bus (see below!), we headed towards Honduras... and straight onto another bus through to El Salvador. It was a pretty mammoth journey, in 6 cramped, hot buses in total, until we arrived in the city of San Miguel, El Salvador.



El Salvador is now a peaceful, stable country, but, as recently as 1992, a bitter civil war raged. The country has a very sad history and, for a lot of people, it is still very much living memory. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the village of Perquín, Northeastern El Salvador. During the civil war it was a guerrilla stronghold and, tragically, also the site of some of the worst atrocities on innocent civilians. After the peace treaty was signed, ex-guerrillas set up a museum to document the area´s history. We spent a day there, visiting the museum, meeting the wonderful people and admiring the beautiful countryside.



On display are various relics, such as this helicopter wreckage, which was shot down near Perquín. There are also many photographs, testimonies from some of the massacre survivors and lots and lots of guns. They also have equipment from Radio Venceremos, the station that broadcast secretly from caves during the war.



Despite the horrors that people endured so recently, Salvadorans have emerged to be amongst the most friendly people we have met in Central America so far. They have an incredible optimism.



From San Miguel we also took a day trip to the beach at El Cuco, on the Pacific Coast. The waves were huge and the beach stretched for miles into the distance, but sadly it just wasn´t a great place to spend much time. The seafront was crowded with shops and there were lots of dead fish laid out to dry in the sun. I think we may have been a bit spoilt by the beaches in Costa Rica and Panama, so we didn´t stay long.



Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

Rachel x

Volcán Momotombo

Nicaragua is indeed the land of lakes and volcanoes. On Wednesday I took on the local ´big one´: Volcán Momotombo. It rises 1280m from the shore of Lake Managua and is fairly active. The last proper eruption was in 1905, and in 2000 it caused a few tremors, raising fears of an eruption. On the lakeside at the foot of the volcano, a geothermal power station provides one third - or 10%, depending on who you speak to - of Nicaragua´s electricity demand.



I climbed with David (on the left in the above photo) and Seth, a couple of New Yorkers whom we met on Ometepe and caught up with in León, and our guide, Anry.



The route up above the vegetation line is pretty tough going. The surface is covered in an ever-changing assortment of volcanic rock, varying between sand and small rocks to fairly big chunks. It´s hard work when each step you take slides back down half the length of your stride! Hopefully you can see from the photos the weird but beautiful moon-like landscape. There are also incredible views of the lake and around.



It took us about 5-6 hours to get to the top. Here, the ground looks like rock but is actually hot mud, with steam coming out of holes everywhere. You have to be careful - David lingered too long with a foot in the mud without realising it and later discovered that the sole was coming off his boot!








The loose surface that had hindered our ascent was, our guide assured us, going to help on the way down. Having already smashed his 4-hour estimate for the climb up, we became less confident of his 2.5-hour estimate for the descent. It turns out that a 45º incline of mixed sand and rubble covered in loose (and very sharp) volcanic rocks is not at all easy to get down. We were advised to "go with it"; not too hard on the sandy bits, where you can be fairly sure you´ll stop, but trickier on the patches of firmer ground where you could keep sliding for some distance without stopping.



Of course, one option is to adopt the ´crab´ technique, as demonstrated here by David. It looks effective, but in the end we all went for ´sliding down occasionally falling with much swearing´ technique, which proved the most expedient.



Volcano 0, us 1. Go team!

Rob

León; City of religion and revolution

It´s boiling in León. Boiling hot and incredibly sunny, with a clear blue sky. There are Christmas decorations for sale all over town but it´s impossible to believe this is December!



This cathedral dominates the parque central and is the largest in Central America. Yesterday we witnessed an incredibly crowded mass, where people were having to peer through the doorways to see in. It really shows how important Catholicism is here and it´s also evident in the large numbers of beautiful churches.



We arrived in León after a brief return to Granada and, though the colonial architecture has the same feel, this is a very different city. You can really feel the recent suffering experienced during the civil war and the years of struggle after the revolution, because there are images of heroes and martyrs on every corner.

The most famous symbol of the revolution is this man, Sandino, or rather, his hat. He actually pre-dated the 1970s insurrection by about 40 years, but his fighting spirit even inspired the main revolutionaries to call themselves Sandinistas.



There are still many murals around town depicting events in Nicaragua´s painful history and Sandino´s shadow can often be seen cast across them. We thought this looked pretty cool so decided to make shadows a bit of a theme in some of our photos, too!





As we were looking around, this lovely lady, Maria, offered to explain the symbolism of the murals. She´s lived in León all her life so is very knowledgeable and, thankfully, spoke very clear Spanish!




The martyr culture is very strong in León and spots like this, where four protesting students were murdered by the dictator´s soldiers, are tragically common throughout the city.



Maria managed to sneak us into a crumbling old building that was the scene of a very significant event in Nicaraguan history and, I´m pretty sure very few other tourists ever see. It was where the poet and revolutionary (that´s a very common combination here) Rigoberto Lopéz Peréz assassinated the first dictator from the Samoza dynasty and was then killed himself, becoming yet another martyr. Now it is a Sandinista office and almost entirely empty, but the bullet holes are still in the walls. Pretty atmospheric.



Rachel x

Ometepe; paradise on Earth

This photo tells you most of what you need to know about Isla de Ometepe. We have never been to a place better suited to doing nothing.



Sitting in the middle of the enormous Lake Nicaragua, two volcanoes form a figure-of-eight shaped island which is revered as a special place by Nicaraguans. Its existence is actually the reason that the early indigenous peoples inhabited what is now Nicaragua, on the strength of a prophecy that they would settle in a place where they found a lake around two volcanoes. A small isthmus joins Volcán La Concepción to the smaller Volcán Maderas, and we stayed on the western edge of the latter where the slope meets the lake. The whole island is pretty much stunning wherever you look. From our hostel, one volcano loomed behind while the other looked magnificent whether bathed in dusk sunlight or shrouded in fluffy white cloud.

That´s not to say that we were completely lazy. One of the best things to do is to kayak around the lake.



You can see what I mean about the volcano. There really isn´t anywhere to look that´s not beautiful. Heading inland up the river gets tricky though, where some rather thawny trees make it hard to get around. Your scratched arms are rewarded though, with a view of one volcano on each side.



We also took a (rather long and strenuous) walk up to a waterfall. The reward for that was a dip in the icy water and some water from a man who had a handy water-purifying pump.



Rach ´enjoyed´ the water standing under the cascade. I just paddled in the pool.

There are hundreds of beautiful butterflies on the island. We don´t know the names of any except the incredible Menelaus Blue Morpho. This may be a type of Morpho, but it isn´t as dramatic as the Menelaus, which we often see flying by while walking.



The people of the island are very friendly, partly a result of the fact that the civil war never reached Ometepe. The children especially are very inquisitive (read cheeky!).



It´s not just butterflies on Ometepe. Late one night as we were relaxing with a few beers Rach spotted this female Elephant Beetle trying to get into our room. I should point out that the hands of Lee, the American guy who was brave enough to pick her up and was able to identify her, are pretty huge. The beetle herself was about 5 inches long! I didn´t have a 50 pence piece to hand to show the scale, unfortunately.



Ultimately, the best thing to do on the island is watch the sunset. We were treated to spectacular displays each night, perfect for a swim in the lake followed by a few pre-dinner beers. Bliss...




This guy puts it pretty well. It doesn´t look like much has changed since 1867:

"Out of the midst of the beautiful Lake Nicaragua spring two magnificent pyramids, clad in the softest and richest green, all flecked with shadow and sunshine, whose summits pierce the billowy clouds. They look so isolated from the world and its turmoil - so tranquil, so dreamy, so steeped in slumber and eternal repose."
Mark Twain

Rob

Adventures of the spade #5

Relaxing in the shady parque central is a must on a hot Granada afternoon, so we decided to take the spade along to soak up the atmosphere. Got a funny look from a Nicaraguan boy, though.

Rachel x

Granada

So we've made it to Nicaragua. We were sad to leave Panama after having so much fun in Boquete, but were ready to move on. So, we hit the road last Thursday, breaking the journey in David (enough time to catch the new Bond film) and arriving back in San Jose for the third time on Friday. We rested there on Saturday and were luckily able to catch an early 6.00am bus on Sunday for Granada, Nicaragua (the Chinese president visited Costa Rica on Sunday, and some roads were blocked off for a procession). 8 hours later we were in Granada.



In contrast with everywhere we've been so far, Granada has retained its beautiful colonial architecture. In actual fact, almost all of it has been rebuilt after the city was burned down by William Walker in the nineteenth century, but they kept true to the original style.




The best way to enjoy Granada is simply to wander around the city, soaking in the architecture and the friendly atmosphere. Until now, we haven't really been able to enjoy a city like this, so it's a welcome change. All too often, we have to be very careful when in big cities (see post "Police & Thieves"); it's much safer and friendlier here.

Talking of which, here's a boy from whom we bought a rather charming ceramic chicken (it's prettier than I just made it sound - you can see from his display of wares in the photo). We think his name is Ale (short for Alejandro?), but can't be sure. His conversation was pitched exactly at our level of Spanish competence, so we had quite a long chat. He warned us of a man with a big nose - "like yours" - who speaks English; apparently he's a ladrón (theif). Now no-one in Granada with a larger than average nose and some English can hope to speak to us without us running away!




We took a day trip to Masaya, a nearby town that hosts the biggest and best artesanía markets in Nicaragua. We thought about buying some ceramic pots and sending them back, but the DHL lady said it would cost US$80 per pot! Perhaps not. On the way back we stopped off in Catarina, a pueblo blanco (white village) which mysteriously lacked any sign of white buildings whatsoever. It does, however, have a breathtaking viewpoint at the top of the village overlooking the Laguna de Apoyo, a lake formed in the collapsed crater of a volcano. I couldn't get it into the photo, but you can see all the way across the plain to Granada, with a huge volcano looming over.




From the top of the belltower of one of the churches, there is a fantastic view of Granada and its cathedral. In the distance, you can see Lake Nicaragua, a vast inland sea home to a unique ecosystem that includes freshwater sharks.



There is a thriving local arts & crafts scene. We visited an arts centre (where you can see some artists in the photo below making linocuts) and picked up a silk-screen print (now in the post - fingers crossed!).






It's great!

Rob