Off to Nicaragua!

  Leon, Nicaragua
Sunday, November 12, 2006

I realize it's been quite a while since I last wrote, sorry about that, things here have been getting increasingly intense and time is a rare commodity. Since I last wrote I spent four days travelling around Nicaragua with eight friends. We left Nov. 1st at the crack of dawn on a chartered mini-bus and drove to Leon, located north of Lake Nicaragua, close to the border with Honduras. I was travelling with someone who had lived and worked in Leon for eight months, and it was nice to have someone who knew the region to show us around. We arrived on Wednesday and the elections took place the next Sunday, and it was interesting to see the anticipation and political activity everywhere we travelled. Leon is a busy city, with nice restaurants and artisans selling crafts in the street. All of Nicaragua is very different from Costa Rica, it is a lot poorer, and there is less North American/European influence in their culture.

Graffitti

We spent two nights in Leon, and most of that time was spent walking around, seeing the millions of churches (Leon has the biggest cathedral in Latin America), eating at wonderful restaurants and dancing at night. As you might know, the elections were quite controversial, the Sandistas appeared to be in the lead, many of the young Nicaraguans are fighting for a change, while the older generation is resigning themselves to the corrupt leaders presently in place because they fear the intervention of the United States that is almost guaranteed if the socialist party wins. In Leon I got a chance to talk to lots of people about the elections, everyone was planning to vote and everyone had a point of view about which candidate would harm their country less.

At the bar

Sunset

After two nights in Leon we moved south to the town of Masaya, which has an incredible market and where we shopped for hours on end for holiday gifts and then to Granada, a Spanish colonial town which is gorgeous, but mainly a tourist destination. That night was the birthday of one of my travel buddies, and we went out to a fabulous Mediterranean restaurant and then out dancing where we were treated to a break dancing show by a mute Nicaraguan who ended up hanging around with us all night long. It was so interesting to see how people can communicate when they have the willingness to do so, with or without the use of a common, or any, language. We closed the club and went to bed extremely late Friday night, then woke up at the crack of dawn having to face an unpleasant surprise, that the border was going to be closed Sunday, the day we had planned to return, because of the elections. Most of Saturday was spent getting to and crossing the border, which was quite an ordeal, and Saturday night was spent in a sketchy little beach town on the Guanacaste peninsula (in Costa Rica near the border with Nicaragua) called Playa del Coco. That night was spent wandering around the twon with my friends and an interesting Rasta born in the town, who was able to give me lots of insights on the attitudes locals hold towards Nicaraguans who cross the border to find work in Costa Rica. Sunday morning we had planned to go to the beach, and since swimming in Playa del Coco did not seem to be an option, our driver brought us to two neighbouring ocean-side town which were gorgeous, Ocotal and Playa Panama. Two places VERY worth seeing.

playa panama

We spent the day at the beach, swimming in the ocean and then came home last Sunday (Nov. 5th). It was an amazing trip, with great people and was a refresing break before coming back to reality in Ciudad Colon and starting back at class. School is going well, the new class, Educational Systems and Change, is material-dense, but interesting, and I hope it will give important resources that I can use for my thesis which I'll write about next time, promise. A bit over a month left before winter break, I'm coming home for three weeks on Dec. 14th, hope to see you all then.