After departing from Granada, Nicaragua (where we spent over a month), we decided to hop around a few small towns in the northern highlands of Nicaragua before heading to El Salvador. The highlands are known for their fresh air, limited tourism, and wonderful coffee!
First stop - Matagalpa. A beautiful town dwarfed by the surrounding lush green hill sides, Matagalpa is the coffee power house of Nicaragua. So what better place to lounge around, drink coffee all day and visit coffee museums. From here we set off into the hillsides, about 2 hours east of Matagalpa, to experience life on the farm. In a little community call La Reina, we spent a night with a family in their house, eating fresh food from their farm, and chatting about day to day life. The family consisted of a mother, five daughters, and one son. The father would stumble around every once in awhile (drunk) looking for a quick meal. Luckily he came as we left. Great little family, and very fun experience!
Second Stop - Esteli. From delicious coffee to world class cigars. Esteli receives few visitors, but those that do make the trek get a great opportunity to smoke world class stogies, and that's not me saying that, that's fact. (http://robbreport.com/Paid-Issue/Best-of-the-Best-2012-Cigars-Jaime-Garcia-Reserva-Especial-Limited-Edition-2011). Again, to fully appreciate the beauty of the cigar culture, we toured a factory, and smoked one of the worlds finest. I was in the clouds for our late afternoon bus!
Third Stop - Ocotal. Yasmin visited Nicaragua in 2007. During her visit she spent time in Ocotal (a stones throw from the Honduran border) shadowing a nurse (Dochita) in a small public hospital. We spent a couple of nights with her and a full day field trip out to the campo (countryside) at a government medical outreach. The outreach was held at a small public school where doctors, nurses and dentists all came out to give free "check-ups". I got to see some lady's rotten molar get ripped out!
Forth Stop - Somoto. Just spent one afternoon and a night in this little border town. But, Somoto gave us access to an amazing river, canyon hike. Some of the best I have experienced. We hired a guide to show us the back entrance to the canyon, and with lifejackets we swam, floated, and cliff jumped our way through the canyon.
From Somoto we made a 12 hour travel day to the San Salvador, El Salvador and as soon as we arrived we b-linded it to the beach to the lazy surf town of El Tunco. El Tunco is the home of El Sunzal, a easy rolling point break where we have be learning to hand ten.
So far El Salvador has been a pleasant surprise. A black cloud made up of gangs and drug cartels hovers over the country and gives it a bad rep, but so far El Salvadorenos have been some of the kindest people we have come across in our journey.
Well to back track a bit, here are some stories of our journey from Costa Rica into Nicaragua, the land of volcanoes, lakes and more gallo pinto...
What we've been up to...
After crossing the border from Costa Rica to Nicaragua we hopped on a long, cramped three hour bus ride (which should have only taken 1 hour) in a beat up, barley running school bus. Of course we were standing up the whole way, carefully contorting our bodies to barely squeeze in, all the while looking for something or someone to hold on to when the spastic driver decided to suddenly speed up and slam on the breaks. After traveling by public transport in Central America for 6 months, you learn to embrace the uncomfortable and chaotic atmosphere. We notice that the locals have no shame to practically sit on top of you if their is the slightest bit of space, hand you their kid(s) to sit on your lap, or sweat and perspire constantly all over you. These things made it almost unbearable to travel via public transport at first, but now we just go with it.. not even thinking twice about exchanging sweat beads with a stranger.
We ended up in Granada, which is a beautiful spanish colonial city right on the sweet lake, Lago Cocilbolca (19th largest lake in the world). The town itself is filled with ancient churches, colorful homes, and Granadinos who spend the majority of the day escaping the heat by relaxing in their rocking chairs in any shade possible. You almost wouldn't think that you are in the western hemispheres second poorest country hanging out in just Granada. If you spend enough time there, you start to see evidence of the poverty as in infiltrates into the central park and the tourist district. We began to see the street children addicted to shoe glue roaming the streets and the skin and bone horses lugging around anything from a stack of beaten up moldy mattresses at once to loads of construction materials to take back to the campo. The outskirts of the city is worse off, struggling with extreme poverty, malnutrition and unfortunately drug and alcohol abuse.
We made it off the bus in one hot and sweaty piece (with our bags thankfully, which is always a gamble when some random person grabs it from you and throws it on top of the bus... you can only pray it shows up when you get off).
We randomly came across a living arrangement at a hostel/family home where the sisters (the "dueñas"), some of their children, a boyfriend, a grandpa, and some other random people all lived. It turned out to be a very entertaining situation, a bit reminiscent of our hometown Burqueños. We came home one day to find an audience (including a three year old girl) at the dining room table. We walked over to see what the action was, and saw the boyfriend was giving the sister a tattoo of a chuck tailor allstar with roses around it on her calf. Classy. Another afternoon, Dom got a frantic call from the "responsible" sister advising him not to give any rent money to the other sister (the one with the new tattoo), because she was on a drinking binge and would spend it all on Toña beers. Just a little dysfunctional, but we got a kick out of it. Don't worry... we didn't pick up any tattoo souvenirs while staying there.
When we weren't hanging out at our ghetto fabulous hostel, which we eventually found a appreciation for in its own special way, we spent the majority of our time in and around the impoverished areas of Granada. Along our journey we have found that the most beneficial work has been with children and the elderly. Thats not to say we didn't make friends or spend time with anyone else, but we found that doing humanitarian work with children and elderly seemed more rewarding because often times, they are the most vulnerable in a broken poor society . We played with the kids and taught classes, focusing mainly on basic hygiene and nutritional health (check out the latest video Dom made.. "The last two weeks").
We also spent every morning going to the Hogar de los Ancianos (Old Folks' Home) and hanging out with the elderly. The majority of the patients there are abandoned and suffer from depression among other illnesses. They all have interesting and tragic stories, given that they have lived through a brutal civil war as well as several natural disasters. We met one man maybe in his mid fifties, who unfortunately is crippled with only one leg due to diabetes and suffers from severe arthritis and depression. Because the Hogar de Ancianos operates on donations, there is a dire need for resources, including pain medication. Dom got to chatting with him and found out that he actually has a prosthetic leg, but hasn't used it for over a year due to his increasing arthritic pain and lack of personnel to help support him while ambulating. Dom and Humberto spent the next week walking for one to two hours every morning. Humberto made great progress just in one week, and the help and inspiration that Dom gave him brightened his spirits and gave him hope to keep practicing.
With some generous donations from friends we were able to donate 500 tablets of Ibuprofen, 500 tablets of Tylenol, 500 tablets of Aspirin, a ton of wound care supplies, antibacterial ointment, anti-inflammatory ointment, etc.. for the ancianos. We also found out that although the elderly nicaragüenses are frail, they do have latino blood and LOVE to dance.. walker or wheelchair bound.. not a problem! So, what better way to lift the spirits of the elderly than to provide them some emotional and physical therapy through dance and music? We hired a musical group from Masaya that plays the traditional marimba instrument and hired a local friend and her family to cook up some arroz a la valenciana (chicken, sausage, veggies and rice) with maduros, tortillas and fresh tropical fruit refresco. The band played for two hours while the elderly ate the delicious food (something other that the monotonous gallo pinto) and then danced joyfully.
With the left over money from the DandY fund, we helped the tiny school in the campo, Salomon de la Selva, convert an old hacienda building in two to create a small library and study area for the kids. We donated ply wood, paint, wood planks and even got some book donations from the local library! We were able to share the finishing touches with the teachers and kids. Everyone was enthusiastic and excited about their new "Mini Biblioteca". Yasmin made another "public health in a box", with medications and wound care supplies and taught/discussed with the three teachers of the school about first aid, wound care and what to do in case of so and so illness.
Once again, thanks for all the generous donations and support from everyone back home. Without your help, we would not have been able to do all these wonderful things!
All in all, Granada turned out to be a great experience for us both. We survived the heat, but look forward to discovering the cool coffee highlands of North Central Nicaragua..
