The Mommo connection: complete!

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Contrary to my previous messages, this blog is now complete, containing all of the photos I wanted to include for this adventure. Cheers!

This, my friends, although it is the largest of all my previous entries, is but a taste of the many adventures my Mum and I had traveling around Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Choosing the photos was a difficult task, and I omitted about 90% of all that I took, so if you want to see more, track me down once I’m State-side.

Mommo and I, upon the early morning after her delayed arrival to San José, made for Nicaragua for no reason other than to visit another country…and renew my visa so I could remain in Costa Rica for the duration of my studies. Honestly, it’s a little shady how some ex-pats live in this country. I have met quite a few people that live here and every 90 days make for the border to get another tourist visa. So, instead of spending 120+ dollars on a student visa, I took that money with mom and we visited Ometepe and San Juan del Sur. Then we rushed back to Costa Rica and spent what had been at the time the best four days of my travels in Monteverde, the Mountain and Cloud Forest Haven.

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Photos

Cruzando la Frontera
"Crossing the Boarder"...on foot. The boarder between CR and Nicaragua is crazy busy, and in order to "speed up the process," we all got out of the bus and walked to receive the necessary stamps. Pretty wild way to start a trip.

Ometepe
This really is as spectacular as it looks. Two volcanoes rise up from Lake Nicaragua to form the island of Ometepe. The larger of the two, Concepción, is the highest point in Nicaragua, while it's nearby sibling, Maderas, enjoys the less developed end of the island.

Mommo at Sunset
What can I say? My mom's a babe!

Hiker Mommo
we hiked up along some cliffs that dropped into the lake, and she looked every inch the backpacker she is.

a valient attempt
I tried to stop up the volcano. eh.

our front yard
This is the evening view from the lounge chairs on the beach of our semi-cheap lake-side getaway. We would have payed more for the view!

San Juan del Sur
Mom had really hoped that we were going to hit some beaches on this trip, and although I am drawn more to the inland of these beautiful Central American Countries, I succumbed to will of the Mom, and she got her time at the beach. She had a blast! If you ask her, though, I bet she would have stayed there but longer.

alright, alright
so the beach isn't that bad. agreed. This is one of many photos from when mom and I murdered el atardecer with our cameras.

Mom and Son!
After re-crossing the boarder, we waited in an isolated town for a connection bus to Monteverde, and we passed the time by hanging out in the creek, eating peanut butter, and taking pictures with the snazzy timed setting.

Buen Tipo
"Good guy." This Tico was (as is the norm) the heart of kindness to us, and let us sit in his gazebo and fed us the strange fruit of the cashew nut. I did my facilitate the discussion between us, and we found out he has a sister (he is one of 12 children) that actually hosts a USAC student in Puntarenas with me!

Infamous
The road up to Monteverde is well known for it's stunning views and even more stunning poor quality. Some cars have been known to get eaten...by the road. Fortunately, our bus had large windows from which I took many photos.

What's a Map?
Mom and I took the earliest bus out to La Reserva El Bosque Nuboso (the Cloud Forest Reserve) and spent 9 hours tromping around in the forest. Didn't get lost a single time...

JCMLG
Just Cause Mom Looks Good. We took a mountain of photos, and although the background is not super interesting, this made the cut.

Una Fantasma
The Cloud Forest is...CLOUDY, and in some cases it seemed to sweep me away! We had a blast walking through the fog that would come and go as quickly as a thought. There's some very strange weather there, but it always compliments the forest very well.

Just Hanging Out
This is the suspended bridge inside the reserve, and I'll admit Mom was much more sure of herself than I was; I busied myself by taking innumerable photos to distract from the height! We literally walked among the canopy of the forest!

Valley of San Luis
Though it doesn't look much like my home town, the name still made me a bit nostalgic. This was the first photo from the tour we took with Café Monteverde, an organic coffee co-op, which turned out to be the coolest thing I had done in Costa Rica!

Don Francisco
Good Grief this guy was awesome! He gave such an incredible tour to my mom and I (we were the only ones on the tour!), and delighted in showing us every step of the growing of coffee on his farm. Very warm and genuine. Mom and I were instantly slayed.

Tough Times
He showed us the two main diseases he and others fight to keep them from overtaking their coffee crops. The white is called Ojo de Gallo (Rooster's Eye) and the red, whose Spanish name escapes me, is called Red Rust.

Jugo de Caña
Don Francisco's farm was incredibly diverse, and among the many plants growing on his 4.5 hectars he grew sugar cane! We used this to harvest the raw cane juice and drank deeply, thrown to the wind the worry over calories. It was gooood.

Our Guide
Although she had learned English from her American mother, she was kind enough to let me try to translate all that Don Francisco shared with us. As it turns out, these two are uncle and niece!

Our Driver
A very cheery fellow, he helped strip La Caña of its bark, and then chopped it into short sticks for chewing. mmm...