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Published: January 17th 2011
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“A cada chanelo le llega su sabado” Everyone eventually gets what (s)he deserves – every pig gets his/er Saturday? We awake to a knock on the door announcing our departure in minutes for Juan Venado (John Deer) Reserve. Shaun found this last minute one hour earlier change in plans “absolutely unacceptable” and choose to go back to sleep – while we took a boat into the heart of the mangroves – Red, White & Black (depending if the roots grow down or up). Birds abounded and jumping fish like skipping stones – we stopped at a beautiful beach. At Las Pinitas we scoured for conch shells, coral, sand dollars, crabs & ate oysters pried off the rocks. Then we went and turned our back to the beautiful beaches of Las Pinatas and our group in exchange for Leon’s city streets and toured the ciudad, known as the hotbed of radical politics and was the nations capital from the colonial period until 1857. The Cathedral, the largest in Central America took 100 years to construct starting in 1747, and has underground tunnels that connect it with the 7 other churches. Much like the Vatican in Rome, it was
used as an escape route during tumultuous times. We also climbed to the roof to see its views of volcanoes. We took a tour in Spanish putting my Spanish classes to the test. We then explored the Ortiz Guzmen art gallery which has one of the most extensive private collections of contemporary art in the Americas. Our final stop was El Museo de Mytos y Leyendas. Sasha was by this time burnt out and sat in the courtyard reading while mom got a private tour in Spanish. It used to be a jail during Somoza’s time and graffiti-like drawings decked the walls with assorted atrocities while equally macabre muneca’s (dolls) illustrated various myths and legends of Nicaraguan history - when the guide invited us to walk around the parapet Sasha mounted the wooden ladder with every other step missing and watched mom climb up, freak out, and promptly climb right back down again leaving the guide and me up top, practicing walking the balance beam around the museum. Whether that was her plan all along we may never find out…
We returned to the hotel to find Shaun coifed with a new haircut and a big grin– he had
taken the initiative and gotten a makeover Nicaraguan style. He had a wonderful day exploring the city and negotiating everything with valor and independence.
While every single person we’d be traveling with for the next week and a half met downstairs for dinner that night, mom and I put on a show…of some sorts. It started out with an “uh oh!” and frantic explaining to the porter in Spanish that our toilet wasn’t working and then there was a makeshift waterfall coming from our toilet and cascading down into the middle of the hotel atrium covering the beautiful attempt of peaceful ambiance with the toilet’s shitty mess. Our group ran away as if they had found themselves in a real life horror film and my mom and I were the two stooges trying to get everything out of our closet of a room and drop it off in another room across the hall, hopping to avoid our flooded floor.
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