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.

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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 ...