A weekend with friends
Trip Start
Jan 23, 2007
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66
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Trip End
Dec 24, 2007
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Managua,
Nicaragua
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Had another enjoyable weekend, despite not venturing far from Granada - caught a baseball game, and spent a fair amount of time with an Aussie couple we have become good friends with.
After a party with all the volunteers on Thursday night, many of us decided to meet up again for a Friday night baseball game at the local stadium. Baseball is huge here - even more popular than soccer/football. Amazingly, despite being far more logistically difficult to play on an
informal level than football, local games are regularly played between villages and kids often are throwing and catching things in the street (seed pods or other makeshift balls if they can't afford the real McCoy). So we were expecting something similar to the crazed exhibitions of support we saw in Guatemala.
The fanatical fans may have been a little more rowdy had the opposition, Matagalpa, not hit 6 home runs in the 4th innings, which effectively won them the game (like, for example, the All Blacks scoring 30 points in the 5 minutes before the break), so the crowd was pretty subdued after that. Once the situation looked completely hopeless, at the end of the 7th of 9 innings, they started leaving in droves. So no fireworks or mass chanting of profanities at the opposition then - maybe its just too hot to get worked up about such things here!!
For our part, it was really cool seeing a game we would never see being played to such a high standard (or professionally) at home or anywhere except perhaps the States or Japan - the difference here being that we got covered seats right behind home plate for $1.50NZ - in the States we were told by an American friend you'd have to be a millionaire to get seats like that on a regular basis, with tickets running into many of hundreds of dollars.
Will the game was interesting, the highlight of the evening was a jovial drink seller, who danced his way between buyers and engaged in banter with people who didn't - he must have made a small fortune from the volunteers that night!
Decied not to go on to a bar with all the other volunteers, and had a nice sleep-in on Saturday morning, before heading off in the early afternoon with Nic and Becca, our Aussie friends, to catch a movie and soak up some air-conditioned over-priced materialistic western comforts at a mall on the outskirts of Managua.
After trying a few testers of expensive perfumes at the department store, and Frances and Becca stopping at a make-over store for prepubescent girls (hmmm) we headed to the food court, and had a KFC type meal, chased down by a litre of strawberry icecream.
01. Off to the lago
Afterwards we watched a terribly predictable movie, 'Shooter', about a sniper set-up to look like he was trying to assasinate the president - groan!! Still, the company was good (we all sniggered our way through the frequent corny parts - lines like 'are you going to do your duty Son?' were a dime-a-dozen) and the air conditioning was so cold we couldn't feel our toes at the end of the movie, so it was money and time well spent.The next day, we decided as this was Becca and Nic's last weekend in Granada, we'd head up the Laguna for a picnic and a swim. Francie was a bit nervous about returning, as the last time they had been there the Aussies had seen a big Boa constrictor - although seeing a snake was so unremarkable to them that they hadn't even thought to mention it, and we only heard about it through someone else! They we more excited by a skunk they saw at the same time!
Should mention that while a Boa constrictor probably wouldn't kill you, a girl in our house saw one on a nearby nature walk that probably would - apparently Coral Snakes, although quite petite, are in the 'you'd better get to a hospital right now' category, which would be quite hard when you are 2 hours walk from the nearest road....scary.
Anyhoo, thankfully for Francie and disappointingly for Sam, who had envisioned grappling with a Boa, a-la Steve Irwin (theeess could be reeeeally dangereeees!!) or furtively whispering to the others on the finer points of Boa mating rituals like David Attenborough, we did not see a Boa - although we did see a big troop of Monkeys on the way home.
Our time at the lake was very pleasant indeed. Thankfully the sun decided not to beat down upon us as it had last time, and we enjoyed swimming for a couple of hours, before unsuccessfully trying to light a fire with toilet paper and sticks to cook our marshmallows on.
We had a long walk home through the village of La Prussia - stopping only for choco bananas before getting a taxi the rest of the way home.
Comments
Steve Irwin lives on
More chortling. Your words certainly conjure up a thousand pictures reversing the old adage. Stick to boas of the feathered kind Frances.