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Published: June 25th 2010
Leon
from the top of the Museum of the RevolutionI took the Tica bus, being the most convenient way of crossing to Nicaragua, from San Salvador to Leon. I arrived early in the morning after travelling all night and was very tired. My first impressions where a little negative probably due to the lack of sleep: there were lots of tourists everywhere and it was yet another colonial city like all the others in Central America. However, some rest and I could think more clearly. Leon is in fact one of the nicest colonial cities - the architecture is great, it's a young spirited student city, and it is the artistic and cultural centre of the country. The hostel, Lazy Bones, was pretty luxurious - swimming pool, pool table, bar, nice green bit.... I appreciated the chance to kick back for a few days, resting and exchanging stories. I did a bit of sightseeing, went to the art gallery, the museum of the revolution, and went out for some drinks on the Friday night.
One morning I took a volcano boarding tour to the nearby volcano, Cerro Negro. It is a very young and still erupting volcano so it consists mainly of black gravel and rock. We hiked for
about an hour to reach the summit, checked out the crater, posed for some pictures in the smoke emitted, and then boarded down. Sand boarding is kind of like snowboarding but you can't use your heel edge as you can risk faceplanting in the razor sharp gravel. The gradient was incredibly steep - something like 50 or 60 degrees - but it's slower than travelling on snow so wasn't as hardcore as it looked. It took maybe 15-30mins to go down, but I was taking it pretty steady - could be kind of dangerous to fall.
Saturday morning I took the local bus to Esteli, a city in the Northern Highlands, spent that day and the Sunday looking around and chilling out, and then caught an early Monday morning bus to Lagartillo to do a week of Spanish school. Lagartillo is a pretty remote campesino (subsistence farming) community about 3 hours from Esteli. It used to be a co-operative and a supporter of the Sandanista movement, and still retains a socialist ideology. I learnt about the revolution and subsequent US backed Contra wars from a socialist perspective and about campesino life - one of the main reasons for enrolling
in this particular Spanish school. The other main reason was that hardly any English is spoken in the community and therefore I had no choice but to speak Spanish for the entire week. I had two conversations in English with Steve, a German guy who had arrived several weeks before and was suffering from brain meltdown and wanted to rest from speaking Spanish. He left the day after I arrived so after that it was Spanish only for the rest of the week. And by the end of the week I too was suffering from brain meltdown but had made significant progress in my speaking ability, and had learnt all of the tenses of the subjuntive.
Toward the end of the week I visited the house and land of one of the villagers, about 30 minute walk from the community, where he has been practising permaculture. Largatillo has been the subject of many NGO projects, some more successful than others. His own house is one of the successful ones - they provided half the funding, the materials, and technical help for him to build his own house. But with the condition that he also attend a course of permaculture
and practice it on his land. It's built of bricks, with a tiled roof, and concrete floors: much more comfortable than the traditional stick and mud affair. He knows a lot more about sustainable farming, grows a greater variety of crops, doesn't burn the land like most of the farmers, and respects the environment - mainly thanks to the permaculture course. However, on the way to his property we passed several failed projects. A wind turbine powered well sited barely over the tree line in an area with no wind. And a muddy, dirty, mosquito ridden pool - the remnants of an ill conceived dam project.
I returned to Esteli Saturday afternoon after a week free from email contact and was pleased to find that I had received a response from a couch surfer, Ariana, to meet that evening for a drink. I met Ariana and two of her friends and we went to a couple of bars and then on to one of the nightclubs - Semaforos. Ariana and I got on very well and we danced a lot to Salsa, Cumbia, Merengue, Reggaeton, Electronica. We drank a lot of rum that night. I hung out with Ariana
for the next few days and she took me to a beautiful look out point on a cliff with amazing views all the way to Lake Nicaragua and its volcanoes.
Then Ariana joined me on a trip to Matagalpa and we stayed one night at Selva Negra, a private cloud forest reserve just outside the city. It's owned by German immigrants who were pioneers in the region's coffee production, and not only have they called it the Black Forest but it also is a very kitsch German themed place - it looks very strange in the middle of the tropics! The Germanic buildings are sited next to an artificial lake with lots of water birds in the midst of dense, well preserved cloud forest. We took a walk around some of the trails, which was lovely; although we didn't see that much wildlife. You can also take tours to the adjoining coffee plantation. The place was beautiful but kind of expensive so we didn't do much except walk and relax.
The following morning we had a look around Matagalpa, which just appears to be a normal city, and visited the coffee museum. Unfortunately, that day also marked the
onset of my third bout of stomach infections... although much less severe than the previous ones with no puking thank God. This time I went to a chemists and got antibiotics and antispasmodics and it cleared up within a few days. I caught it from the grandfather of the house I was staying at in Lagartillo. He was complaining of stomach problems when I arrived. I was very careful with my hygiene during my stay, but still caught it. Hygiene there isn't great and they have an outside toilet which is left uncovered and is swarming with flies. There are also flies in the house. It doesn't take a genious to figure out the potential for spreading diseases....
Later that day Ariana returned to Esteli and I stayed the night in Matagalpa before taking the bus down to San Juan Del Sur....
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wakatakata
Raisa Rejano
wow
is it cheap there?