Hotel Contempo Managua

... past and trying to pick out the bull being herded by cowboys on horseback until the angry beast hoved into view, at which point we turned tail and fled. The rush of adrenaline was incredible, and its been a long time since I've run that fast - its amazing what the sight of a charging animal will do to fleeten your foot!

All told, I believe eight bulls were released, but it was done in such typically chaotic Latin fashion that you couldn't be sure. The first ...

... later we arrive at our destination... grumpy and tired... 1am trying to find a hotel room on an island the size of the Aran Islands... not fun... meet Italian couple who are spending honeymoon at this hotel and we decide the only option is get a ride with them and see can we get a room..... cheaper hostel next door... but no answer... have to splash out and stay in fancy hotel...

We move to cheaper hostel... really nice place right on the beach with ...

... were arts coordinators at a theater program. It was really interesting to talk to them and they ended up inviting up to a sort of ¨University gathering¨ in the middle of a park at the entrance to the town. Nindiri is only a few kilometers from Masaya, so we decided to stay for awhile even though it was already close to midnight and we had been walking since the rally ended at about 6pm. When we got there, there were the university students and then some more local people that ...

... supremely luscious building where children stood awaiting our arrival and any handout we could give. As we ate a gracious meal of chicken, rice, empanadas and watermelon all of us students questioned what the next week and a half would bring.

The next two days were spent moving from small city to small city experiencing the culture of the people who surrounded us. Each person we met had a story a wish a hope for how they wanted their lives to be enhanced. One such ...

... family´s son, Roberto, to a concert in
Managua for a band called Mago de Oz. They´re really good guys and
tickets (like most things here) are cheap, so it should be a great
experience.

This weekend and next weekend are the last required workshops from FSD,
and I´ll kind of be glad when they´re over because they involve using
so much English and I´m at a stage now where it ...

... for poorer countries. Seeing all these people with a sparkle in their eyes when they saw some "nice" trousers or whatever, really catched us. In the end we saw us hanging over the cothes too. Anja actually ended up finding some shirt. :) Returning back to the Finka through the darkness, with just the moon as our guide, we let the evening die away with some of our dorm mates. After our first night in those, former stalls, of the farm, we got up early to ...

... and found the town of El Castillo. It is a great place to see the Lava flows at night from Arenal. Unfortunatley we had a lot of clouds, so we couldn't see much. The next day we hiked around Arenal National Park and we had lots of good views of the lava flows. We took a two kilometer hike to an old lava flow that happened in the late 1990's and we sat on the lava rock and watched the rock and ash fall down the side of the volcanoe. Arenal ...

... light and fluffy pancakes. Safe to say it caters to foreigners J not necessarily a bad thing. The night before we didn´t make arrangements to climb the volcano 8-10 hr hike and thus we were left with the possibility of kayaking or a bike ride. The coin toss told us to choose bikes and what was supposed to be a 3-hour long bike ride turned out to be 6 hours of gruelling hauling my ass on a ****** bike up and down a ****** dirt ...

... crater wall. The market in Masaya was pretty touristy, but that's me, so I enjoyed it. For some strange reason there were lots of taxidermied frogs doing obscene things with each other. I'm not sure if this reflects the tastes of Nicaraguans or of the tourists who shop there. New Year's Eve was a bit of a bust, as the Nicas and Nicos failed to tell the Gringos where the party was. We tried numerous places, but a few errant fireworks were all the excitement I found that night. Too bad.

... The fish looked scary looking up at me, but it tasted great. We always get soda in a sealed bottle when we are out so there is less risk of drinking contaminated water or ice. I bought two shell necklaces from some local women and found some pretty shells at the water's edge. Brother J dared my daughter to eat the eye of the snapper for 10 Cordoba. They both ate one! Gross!
When we were in the truck, the wind felt great ...