panama!

i just realized that it has almost been a whole month since i've written here - i can't believe it! i apologize to all of you who have been checking this page three times a day since mid-august (yeah, right). but, now that i am finally in panama, actually have my computer and succeeded in deleting enough pictures from my overloaded iphoto to downloaded new ones, i will try to write more often.

i am sitting in my basement studio apartment in panama, half-watching some dramatic movie on TV ... which is actually what i've been doing all week long. why would i be watching movies all week instead of the many, many other exciting things that i could be doing?? because i have MONO. after a little trip to the hospital last week with a headache and fever, i found out that i caught mono somewhere between nicaragua and panama, so now i have to rest, rest, rest, rest, take vitamins, rest and rest. BORING!!!!! needless to say, i'm a little frustrated. but at least i can do things like delete pictures from my iphoto to make more room.

so, to pick up where i left off, the last week and a half we spent in nicaragua was with molly, which was great. i think we were inspired to make more plans and get out of the little hut in totoco. this is a picture of the volcanic swimming hole we went to called ojo de agua, after an epic bumpy-rocky-dusty-hilly bike ride on the worst bikes ever with half-broken brakes. it was really beautiful, and touristy, so there was a restaurant and everything - although they tried to tell us that they were out of chicken tacos after we had paid, until i asked for my money back and then they made some more chicken tacos. hmm ... well, we were really hungry. of course, after that we accidently lost track of time swimming in the EXTREMELY AMAZING AND HEALTH-RESTORING WATERS (according to the person that greeted us at the gate) and had to ride back in the pitch black ... that was exciting. my palms were bruised the next day from gripping the brakes so hard!



these are some pictures of the day we went swimming in lake nicaragua/cocibolca with izuara, who worked in the kitchen at totoco, and her family. it was so lovely, and the water was bath-water warm with a sandy bottom. we had dinner at her house that night and made tortillas (or, well, i tried to make tortillas, and she made tortillas) and then met her 106-year-old great-great-grandmother the next day. she was really ... old. like, really old.
another day we went to finca magdalena, a big coffee harvesting/farming/hostel/gardens/restaurant cooperative that was taken over by the local people during the revolution in the 1970s. it clearly used to be a hacienda, given the huge porch and absurdly large house, and it is really beautiful today. there are the petroglyphs nearby, i would explain more about them but i actually don't know any more about them than you do. there was no tour guide or sign and i didnt remember to ask ... oops. however, here is a nice picture!
after our (very) brief walk to the rocks, we had some coffee and chocolate cake on the huge porch at finca magdalena ...
and here is one of the delights of the jungle we saw on the walk to the shower where we were staying ... probably one of the only things shown on the planet earth series that i've actually seen with my own eyes. also, its hilarious.


we left nicaragua on august 21st, on the ticabus ... and i magically got really sick in the middle of the night (i seem particularily prone to this, i dont know why) and spent some time in the bus bathroom with the sign that says "only for piss" on the front door, where it was at least 90 degrees and very shaky and bumpy, obviously, because the bus was driving around huge mountains. not the best night, but otherwise, the bus trip was fine. but we got to panama safe and sound on the 22nd, and before i got sick last week, we were working a lot and getting to know the city. we got really lucky and were able to rent a studio apartment in the basement of a friend's parent's house the second day we got here - its cute, affordable and in a nice neighborhood. it certainly is much better than the "room" the foundation tried to give me in an abandoned high school that looked like it had been the school infirmary and had no bathroom but the multiple-stall and multiple-shower school bathroom. can you say horror movie!? yes, it actually was as weird as it sounds ... i dont know WHAT they were thinking. apart from that strange proposition, however, i am loving my job and am very excited to get over this mono situation and get back to the foundation soon. here is a picture of about half of the apartment, the kitchen and bathroom and bed"room" are on the other side:

The landlords are exceedingly nice ... for example, here is a photo of the day they decided that our appliance situation wasn't good enough, and we came home to a new refrigerator, toaster oven, and microwave. the place was so truly "furnished" when we got here that there was SOAP in the shower - they are probably the best landlords ever.
my camera is having some problems, so i will save the details about my job until i can include some pictures. and, until i start feeling a little better and actually go to work. speaking of, i am going to end this very long entry and go to sleep. good night!

I thought I would post some more pictures of our trip to Granada!
This picture features my new pretty birthday-present necklace, yay ...
THESE are the amazing milkshakes (coconut and pitaya is the pink one) we drank multiple times a day ...
I think this picture is hilarious. Traveling!
Coconut milk!

new outhouse roommate

we have finally arrived back at totoco after our "2 day"/week-long trip to get molly from managua, and we have a new volunteer with staying with us! not actually with us ... in a tent that is about a 1 minute walk from our little hut, but we will be working together in the gardens. he is from australia, but apparently he has been working for the last three months at another farm in nicaragua learning about permaculture, and he seems to have lots of ideas for the garden. unfortunately he also has gastritis at the moment - which we have been hearing about in great detail, and holy cow, i sincerely hope that i never experience gastritis in my life, ever - so the work has been put off at least until he gets better. we have been urging him to go to the hospital (again) and it seems like he will probably go tomorrow ... we have been feeling pretty bad for him. however, i am mentioning all of this because i learned another natural remedy from him today:

for ulcers (especially) and other stomach problems ---- aloe vera smoothies! not creamy smoothies (no milk, obviously), but just aloe vera pulp, honey, water and maybe something unoffensive like watermelon. apparently they help a lot, and they seem to have been giving him a lot of relief. i tried some today and they dont taste bad at all.

anyway - i forgot my camera again but soon i will post more pictures. we have finally bought our bus ticket so we will officially be here for 2 more weeks. our bus leaves nicaragua on the 21st, and we arrive in panama on the 22nd. our apartment seems like it will be "ready" by then (it will be a surprise when we get there! who knows!), and i will start my job at the foundation right away.

enfermedades

i have been collecting some natural remedies/healthy-body advice while we´ve been traveling and i have decided to post them here ... it has been very helpful for me to know these various things, especially in areas where things like ice or antibiotics or drugstore-medicines are not readily available everywhere:

burns --- toothpaste! im sure i have told this to many people who will read this, since ive been raving about it since the first time i went to honduras, but it is just amazing. if you happen to burn yourself, maybe with hot oil all over your hand like i did, put toothpaste all over the burn. i keep reapplying it (without washing it) as much as i can, probably sleep with it on and perhaps use some the next day. every time ive done this the burn has healed completely, with no swelling and no pain and no scarring!

urinary tract infection --- aloe vera and very hot baths. having one of these infections in the jungle is no fun, but i discovered that direct application of aloe vera is very soothing, and sitting in hot water (in a pot of hot water, for example) is extremely helpful if you arent going to be able to get to antibiotics for a few hours/days. also, avoiding taking a cold shower right after sitting on something hot or sweating a lot in hot weather is a good preventative measure.

upset stomach/stomach pains --- sodium bicarbonate with orange juice and lime. very helpful! but i would not recommend this or any other lime-heavy drink before or after drinking milk. bleccch.

walking in the hot, hot sun for many hours --- gatorade or powerade! this might be obvious to some people, but i always thought that gatorade was like any other soda ... its not! it works wonders, the label is completely true. clearly drinking water is a very good idea, but if youre really feeling faint or extremely tired, gatorade will fix you up.

weird fungus-like skin problems from humidity or wearing the same clothes too many times --- lavender oil. nancy actually told me this before i left, it works really well!

i also saw someone put gasoline on a cut to avoid infections ... but i would not recommend that. that was more upsetting in terms of the lack of medical facilities, not in terms of how to deal with a cut. also, i will post more pictures soon!

out of the jungle

Here is Elvin and Molly and I at the festival in Managua - check out Elvins Oberlin shirt! Yes!
This is Molly and I in front of one of the beautifully-colored houses in Granada.

********
I have to admit that it has been nice to get out of the isolated jungle for a little while - it is absolutely beautiful there, without a doubt, but I like being around lots of people and lots of different places to walk and visit ... and less spiders is a plus for me, too. We went to Managua to meet up with Molly on Friday, and we found each other at Hostal Dulce Sueño that afternoon. It was a lovely reunion, and I was so happy when Molly and Elvin finally met each other! We had planned to just stay in Managua for the night and go back to the island early the next morning, but when we were having lunch before getting the bus to Ometepe our waitress mentioned that it was a holiday in Nicaragua and there was going to be a huge celebration in Managua - Fiesta Patronal de Santo Domingo. It is a huge celebration for the patron saint of the sick, intended for people who have prayed to Santo Domingo throughout the year during illnesses to celebrate the miracle of being healed. A lot of people had shirts on that said ´Viva Santo Domingo de Guzman,´who we learned that from a taxi driver was a campesino (peasant) to whom Santo Domingo appeared while he was chopping leña (firewood). This was not particularily obvious to us from the celebration - there was a huge street fair with sporadic parades and huge dancing puppets and lots of marching-band style drumming. Lots of helotes (grilled corn on the cob) and dulces (candy) and algodon (cotton candy), and of course, Toña (one of the national Nicaraguan beers). We missed the parade that involves carrying the statue of the saint from one church to another, unfortunately, but we did go to the parade of tons and tons of people riding horses (which we never really figured out the significance of). It was quite sight - the road was full of horses and riders trotting down the street, or making their horses do all sorts of tricks, and there were no barricades or anything, so we spent a lot of time manuevering around to make sure that we were never directly behind a horse (!!). It was so much fun, loud music and dancing and TONS of people on the streets. Ive attached a video of Elvin and Molly dancing while some of the huge national beer company-sponsored parade floats were going by (which followed the horses, this event was full of surprises) .


We´re in Granada now, we sort of randomly decided to stop here on our way to the island, which I think was a great plan. We found a really cheap hostel and we´ve just been walking around and enjoying this beautiful city. Elvin bought my belated birthday present yesterday (a very pretty necklace) from some French hippies selling jewlery on the street, and after chatting about music and my problems with my wrist, they ended up giving me a copper bracelet - that the guy made in about two seconds - because apparently copper is good for joint problems. We´ll see...! Tonight we are going to go see these particular hippies play gypsy music at some cafe around here, it should be interesting. And tomorrow were finally heading back to Ometepe ...

angry snake in the outhouse!

I unfortunately forgot my camera when I walked up here today, which is too bad because this is the first day of internet access after a long hiatus of non-responsive servers. However, we are finally going to Managua to see our friend Molly tomorrow, who is coming to live in this area for the next year ... so we will have fast internet and we can upload lots of píctures.

So as the title of this entry implies, I saw my first snake so far in Nicaragua, in the most unfortunate of situations. I had gone to the outhouse at night, which is absolutely not my favorite things to do but sometimes, you know, its necessary. So after shining the flashlight all over the place (I thought) I felt comfortable enough to sit down, and a few seconds later I happened to point the flashlight into the corner nearest to me and there is a snake coiled around a post, with its head sticking up and darting out back and forth in my direction!!! Most people reading this probably know that I am quite terrified of snakes - I was so startled that I jumped up, obviously, and after deliberating for a few seconds about grabbing the toilet paper the snake started moving towards me and lashing its head out back and forth SO unfortunately for my dignity, I ran out of the outhouse with my pants still around my knees ... luckily only Elvin was around, but as you can imagine the whole event was pretty hilarious. Hopefully that will be the only snake I encounter.

Otherwise things have been good here, I have been realizing that I am a fairly pathetic manual-labor worker, which I have been (hopefully) making up for with less arduous/domestic tasks like sweeping and cleaning and cooking. I am constantly humbled by the amount of work the employees here do, especially those who work with the reforestation project and walk up and down this uphill trail 15 to 20 times a day in the hot sun. Elvin was helping one of the workers for a while today, and came back absolutely drenched with sweat - he was amazed that he was carrying one avocado sapling and just barely making it up the hill each time, and the guy he was working with was carrying six! Neither one of us is used to this kind of work, thats for sure.

Today was a good day in terms of food - it was raining for a lot of the morning so we didnt work as much as usual. We made beans, rice, pasta, tomato-basil sauce, lemongrass tea and popcorn with carmel sauce, which was amazing! We have both been craving sweet things, because we havent really been eating any dessert-type things at all other than fruits and sugar in our coffee, so of course weve been trying to invent things but this was the first one that worked! It was amazing.

The picture-uploading abilities of this computer seem to be working today, so Ill take advantage of the internet connection and post some more pictures ...
This is me working hard, washing the disgustingly dirty dishrags in the rain after I washed practically all of my clothes ...
This is Volcan Concepcion this afternoon, which you can see from our shower and sleeping area. This is the view from the road a little bit up from where we are staying. Every day the clouds are completely different, but always surrounding it in crazy patterns!
this is the view from our little hut -these are the gardens weve been tending to. in the front there is a papaya tree, basil, oregano, lots of peppers, spinach, that plant between the two poles on the right side of the picture is a big vine whose flowers are used to make loofah sponges (is this a commonly known fact? because i did NOT know that!) and some banana palms in the background. and thats the table where we have been spending inordinate amounts of time.
THIS cat is the Gus-imposter: his name is Donald and he is the biggest whiner Ive ever met. He really does remind me of my cat in Minneapolis though, its incredible. He has gotten so used to us yelling at his to stop eating the food that he has no shame - he climbs on the stove, tries to get into my bowl while Im eating, and so on ... but he also is brave enough to scare away stray dogs that try to come into the kitchen. I mean, literally, he ran off a dog last night that was trying to look for food. Hes our guard cat!
This is a picture of a HUGE snake that I took a picture of from a high vantage point! Just kidding, it was a baby sabanera snake about the size of a worm, but it still scared the pants off of me and I had to stand on the other side of the kitchen while Elvin took the picture. Luis, one of Totocos employees who works in the fields, brought this snake in his BAG to show us on his way home. I almost fainted when he said he was walking around with a little snake in his bag. Apparently I really have a snake phobia, but at least we got this picture!

pictures!

Here is where weve been spending tons of time - the table, the swinging chair, the hammock in the background and about half of the kitchen area is shown here. Our little room is directly above this space ... Ill try to get a better picture of that soon.
Better pictures of the monkeys! Elvin has taken it upon himself to take the best pictures ever of the monkeys and all of the birds. I think this one is pretty good.




Today, after I got over my two-day fight with various travelers ailments, I chopped palm fronds and cardboard (to mix with some water and make mulch) with a machete for two hours. exciting! I am still finding it hilarious that this is what I decided to do with my zillion dollar Oberlin education, but I guess its only temporary. I was feeling pretty awesome and campo-savvy until Elvin came over and chopped way more, way faster and in way smaller pieces, but we decided that I am still pretty great. Although my right arm is now very sore, but it was worth it. It looks like I FINALLY got some pictures up here, one of these is of me trying to chop down a small tree in the jungle (for a post to help some little trees grow straight) - which was a lot harder than palm fronds and I didnt do a lot more than just posing for this picture! The other is from our pizza night a few nights ago, where Im enjoying the pizza made by my fellow Oberlin friend. The picture of Elvin is him holding the daily batch of passion fruit (maracuya, or kalala in this country apparently, thoug Elvin keeps aciddently calling it kelele, which has transformed into kilili and kululu and kololo) that we picked up from the little orchard. Delicious - we used it to make pinneapple and passion fruit jam the other day.

And I finally got one of the pictures of the spiders! I personally didnt take this picture, since I didnt want to get that friendly with its terrible eyeballs, but we noticed this guy hiding in a corner the other day and decided to take a picture. Elvin also saw a snake yesterday (the first one so far), but luckily for me and my potential panic attack I wasnt with him at the time. However, I have been noticing that Im getting used to the cockroaches.

We had another pizza night last night (thats four pizza nights this week!). This time the occassion was Patricias parents visit from Spain (Patricia is the owners girlfriend, who is running the NGO that Totoco is starting). Her parents were hilarious, full of great Spanish accents and dirty jokes and pizza-making skills. Her father couldnt remember either one of our names, and kept calling Elvin either Pepe or Jose, and called me Mari, which turned into Maria Cecelia when he saw me this afternoon. I told him that my middle name actually is Marie, but I think he had just decided on my name and wasnt interested in any other options. Anyway, it was pretty funny.

howler monkeys

i finally took some pictures of the monkeys today! there is a family of howler monkeys that live right behind us, and they make tons of noise all day and night but i hadnt been able to get a picture of them until this afternoon. i hope this picture is clear enough - theyre a little bit far away for good pictures. but we have been able to watch them in the trees above our heads a bunch of different times, which is very exciting for me. i even watched one pee today. fabulous.

the other night we had another pizza night, but this time with all seven of the clients that were staying in the cabanas or dorms that day. we spent a lot of time cleaning and cooking and preparing pizza toppings and balls of dough, and met all of these interesting people that happened to be staying at the hotel that day, including a girl who graduated from oberlin in 2004! that was exciting - she lived in tank, the co-op that i lived right behind all of last year, so we had lots to talk and reminisce about. there was a mother and daughter traveling together, a couple from france, and a few other younger people who all had stories of having a fulbright to teach english in some place or working on a WWOOF farm in another place ... the usual. it was like being in oberlin for a little while. haha. this is a picture of two of the girls making their pizza, and then one of me enjoying it a few minutes (the oven is so hot that the pizzas cook in about 45 seconds) later!

i also have to post a picture of the cat that has been sharing our space with us - and sleeping on elvins suitcase every night - because he is without a doubt the long-lost jungle brother of my cat in minneapolis, gus. look at the resemblence! although unlike gus, this cat is actually a real cat who hunts bugs and rats and pounces and purrs and such (anyone who has met gus knows that he is more of a dog than a cat, or at least the most domesticated cat that has ever lived). this cats name is donald and hes has a very big personality, although he has a very dramatic way of begging for food at every possible moment, which gets a little frustrating. there are also two dogs that live with us - dooki and luna (yes, dooki) - who get a nice meal of rice, garlic, carrots, eggs, milk and dog food twice a day. which sounds a lot like MY daily meal, minus the dog food. very lucky dogs.

tomorrow will officially mark our first full week here, which is exciting - i think that i have started to get used to the bugs (although i took a picture of one of the monster spiders that i will post later, which i will NOT get used to) and understand how this place works. hopefully elvin and i will get started on some longer term projects tomorrow, maybe planting some new things in the vegetable garden. we have been making some serious progress in our weeding adventures, but we will have to do more than weed every day for this next month.

oh no! the pictures are not uploading and i think im hogging the computer. they will come soon, i promise!

rain!

c





it poured rain every few hours today, which was lovely for the slight drop in temperature, but my clothes are still damp. hopefully we'll still be able to have some breeze tonight, because it can get ridiculously hot up in our little loft/crawl space. anyway - uploaded some pictures! i wasn't able to get as many as i wanted, but tomorrow or the next day i'll try to put up some more. featured here are elvin and i on the boat to isla ometepe (check out my i'm-feeling-nauseous-no-more-pictures smile), the view of volcan concepcion from a little spit that goes out into the lake, which we discovered is a popular swimming beach on sundays. the other picture is some typical nicaraguan food - fried plantains with fried cheese. i also have a picture of elvin's lunch that day, which was a big taco, fried. fried, fried, fried. it's been a funny experience to go from that food to what we've been eating here, which has (true to the eco-hotel/sustainable-everything commitment) vegetarian, fresh, full of garbanzo beans and eggplant (oberlin!) and rice pilafs and so on. elvin is very excited that he's been a vegetarian for four days now.

we were given the full tour of the totoco 'farm' area today (in the pouring rain), and it was quite impressive. so many efficient systems for filtration/irrigation/re-forestation/composting and many other things that i am beginning to understand ... it was very exciting. they have a large vegetable garden and we had tomatoes with fresh basil from the garden today with our dinner, nice! we've also arranged a deal with luis, who works at the farm, to bring us tortillas every afternoon for the next day. he offered to take us to a beach near here - i'm not sure if its on the lake or if its more of a swimming hole - on saturday, so we will definitely take him up on that offer.

thank goodness there is a lot to keep us occupied here - it is a pretty silly series of events to get around this island. one of the women who works at the farm left for costa rica this morning, and was trying to figure out how to get the early bus - early ferry - other bus on the mainland - other bus to costa rica !?!?! and we were discussing when we tried to take a bus just from moyogalpa to balgue (both cities on this island), which only goes once a day, and we asked a variety of people on the street to try to get a good idea of what time it came. we were told 2:30, 3:00, 3:35, 3:45, 4:00 and 4:15pm! and various different street corners. it was pretty hilarious ... and led to us taking that $35 taxi. oh well.

more pictures of where we are now to come soon, but good night for now!!

BIG SPIDERS

I haven't been able to get to an internet connection for a while now, so I have a lot to tell ... as the title of this little note says, big huge hairy spiders have entered my life, and I am making a big stink about it because I am seriously afraid of spiders and snakes. But now there are on every window, on the ceiling, next to me on the table, on the wall, above the sink, on the floor ... and they are LARGE. Elvin has decided that I'm very brave for coming here even though pretty much every slithery skittery buggy thing gives me the creeps, but I think I would never be able to live it down if I left just because of the bugs.

This place is a big change from the town where we were before - we somehow managed to come during the biggest party weekend of the year, apparently celebrating the patron saint of the town. We took a long walk to one of the lakeside beaches a few days ago, and accidently participated in three different parades going down the main street, just by trying to get by! Since we were on foot (and totally not in a hurry) it was fun for us, but probably not so much for the huge line of trucks and buses and motorcyles honking their horns behind every parade ... it was a funny sight. There have been rodeos every night (that was a new one for me) and EXTREMELY loud music coming from all over the place until the middle of the night. And then for some reason the marching band starting playing again at 5:15 AM on Sunday morning. WHY!?

But now all we're hearing is crickets and howling monkeys ... as I probably made clear before, we've arrived to the jungle now - we're at Totoco Eco-Lodge halfway up Volcano Maderas on Isla Ometepe. We're working as 'volunteers' to earn our keep, just paying $4 a day for food, which is a great (necessary) situation for us financially. They're given us a little loft space above the kitchen with a mosquito net for our room, which dumped dead termites on us last night (I was NOT HAPPY) but is otherwise comfortable and has an incredible view. So far we've been cleaning the communal kitchen, learning about all of the vegetable/herb gardens, cleaning the outdoor shower ... the owners of this place are very nice and have been hanging out with us a lot. They're from Holland and Spain, and started this project by building a 2 km rock/cement road, by hand, halfway up this volcano in dense jungle. Impressive! They have rooms ranging from $8/night 'luxury' hostel dorms to $90/night cabanas ... its absolutely worth the $35 (!!!!) taxi/bus ride up here from Moyogalpa to stay if you're ever in this area.

Tonight is apparently pizza night, and Martijn and Patricia are down at the kitchen making pizza in the brick/cement oven. Elvin and I walked all the way up to the lodge to get this internet connection (huffing and puffing), but I should probably get off so that the people who work here can keep doing their spreadsheets!! More soon - xoxoxo

hello everyone! this is our second day here in the small city of moyogalpa, on the island of ometepe in nicaragua. we spent a few nights in managua, where the diesel smell is overwhelming and my sense of direction is completely ineffective. we visited the famous sandino statue at parque tiscapa (very nice panoramic view of the city) and the lakeside restaurants at parque salvador allende (apparently thats the name of the park, though it doesnt say that anywhere), but at least five different cab drivers and our hostel owner told us that you need someone from managua to take you around the city if you´re going to go out at night. we decided not to go to any bars or clubs, even though managua is the dance-club capital of central america ... maybe next time we´ll be a little braver. as a result of this, of all the places in managua we became most familiar with the mall movie theater´s nightly features. oh well.

moyogalpa is a much smaller city, and i was told after we got here that i could walk down the street in my bra and underwear in the middle of the night and be totally safe. i´m not sure if thats true, but this is definitely a relaxed place and certainly caters to tourist-backpackers. we stayed at hospidaje central last night and tonight we´re staying at an american friend´s apartment (for free!). the two volcanoes on this island are huge, looming in the background of every view. we are planning to rent bikes today to ride around to some of the other little towns nearby, so i should probably get out of this internet cafe! i´ll post pictures when i can figure out how to do that on these big old computers (???)