Yay! Its my favorite holiday of the year - my birthday! I´m back in Granada after spending yet another week in San Juan del Sur, and still contemplating going back again before I have to be in Honduras. So after my near death experience, I just indulged in my self prescribed hammock and cerveza therapy, which was just as well because the weather on Ometepe was awful - it just poured down rain, and since there is nothing to do there if you are not playing outside, I took off. Its just one more of many reasons why I am going [View Full Entry]

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In Monte Grande we worked side by side with the people. It was really cool because El Porvinir ensures that the community is really in charge of the community project. So we were able to follow their lead and do whatever they needed for their community. You just create such an amazing bond working side by side with someone even thought there is a language barrier. We would be working for a while and then they would invite us into their homes and introduce their family. They just made us feel really at home. I even got to ride a horse [View Full Entry]

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Excerpted from 'The Country under my Skin' - 'The problem was not that we were asked to be democratic, but that we were being asked to do so while the United States spent millions of dollars - $79 million between 1982 and 1983 - in training, arming, and advising a military force made up not only of remnants of Samoza's National Guard, but every group of discontented citizens willing to oppose the revolutionary government. After many years of a one-man, authoritarian rule in our country, we were supposed to build a perfectly functioning democracy - at gun point. But we had [View Full Entry]

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We spent a total of five nights in the little town of Terrabona. It was a really amazing experience because I felt like we really started to become a part of the community. We stayed at a new, family run Hospedaje in Terrabona and then traveled a ways to work each day in the community of Monte Grande. Even our first night in Terrabona once we got back from dinner there were a ton of kids waiting outside to play a game of futbol with us. We didn´t even know them but they were so welcoming that it only took a [View Full Entry]

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Another excerpt from Belli's book - 'I know that the obsession to redeem humanity can be just as dangerous as the fanaticism I see in the faces of those who dedicate themselves to perfect bodies, pure, unadulterated food, and the quest for immortality. I try to think that each and every one of us is responsible for finding meaning and purpose in life, and that it's arrogant to think that my solution is better than the rest. On the other hand, I don't think anybody can convince me that the kind of pleasure that begins and ends in oneself can even [View Full Entry]

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Bordering on Embarrassment - by George Until Nicaragua it had all been going so well. Whilst in Phnom Penh airport I had an idea. Since the front cover of my travel diary was transparent, why not get it stamped at every border crossing? Thanks to the rather amused immigration official at Phnom Penh I got off to a good start. After refusals at Singapore and Hong Kong I´d decided there was a definite correlation between a country´s wealth and the likelihood of a stamp. Thus on arrival at Nicaragua I had already stamped my diary mentally... Sadly my "Quiero un sello [View Full Entry]

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OK...so one of those was imagined... my last few days in San Juan del Sur should have been lovely, but then I caught a touch of "Sandino's Revenge," at least that's what I think you would call it in Nicaragua since Montexuma wasn't really present down here. Suddenly glad that when I left Hotel Estrella I got a private room, with a bathroom, I went through about fifteen hours of being convinced I was on the verge of death. Its times like these that it is a bad thing that Lonely Planet contains a health section complete with all the symptoms [View Full Entry]

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Up bright and early to catch the 5.45 bus to Liberia, the first leg on our journey to San Juan Del Sur in Nicaragua. Joining us at the bus stop were Nigaraguan construction workers on their way home and Kate, a lovely young girl from Vancouver who we first met in La Fortuna. We bumped into her again at the beach in Tamarindo, she intended travelling to meet friends in Nica, so we agreed to leave at the same time. About 2 hours on a packed chicken bus to Liberia then change to another heading to Penas Blancas on the Costa [View Full Entry]

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I went to Isla de Ometepe last weekend. Ometepe is an island formed by two volcanoes in the middle of a large fresh water lake, Lake Nicaragua. The island is very beautiful, it is inexpensive (there are no taxes), and the streets are calmer than the busy streets of other Nicaraguan towns and cities. I stayed at Hospedaje Central a hostel in the town Moyogalpa, where one of the ferries are located. The hostel was about $3.50 U.S. dollars and had a restaurant, bar, plenty of hammocks to rest in, and a friendly pet deer that loves to lick people. The [View Full Entry]

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Apres mon long chemin pour arriver jusqu'a la frontiere du Nicaragua, il me fallait encore traverser la riviere pour rejoindre la ville de San Carlos afin d'entrer legalement dans le pays... ne sachant pas a quelle heure partaient les bateaux, j'y suis allee pour 9h, pour apprendre que le premier partait a 12h30... Pas grave, je commence a avoir l'habitude de passer des heures a attendre les bateaux! Quand nous sommes enfin partis, je dois avouer que je n'ai pas vraiment profite des paysages... J'ai ferme les yeux, et d'un seul coup il etait 2h et on etait a San Carlos, [View Full Entry]

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