10pm Corinto, Nicaragua
8/8/07 Okay, here’s the rough outline of my itinerary for Nicaragua (of which I still have one more day)—arrive on Tuesday, get to a beach house, stay there Tuesday night & Wednesday night, leave Thursday at 6:30am to be back to the ship for duty by 8:30am, be on duty on Thursday day til Friday morning, and then go to possibly an orphanage on Friday morning, and have dinner at David’s mom’s house on Friday evening. (David is a Nicaraguan who we—myself, Tom & Rebecca, met about 4 hours ago, he’s 24, looks 18, and is very sweet—he showed us around town).
Many people say that Nicaragua is like Costa Rica was about 30 years ago—friendly people, beautiful country-side with a plethora of natural resources (minus the whole Iran-Contra CIA debacle). I think that statement, from the little I saw of Nicaragua, is probably true. This includes only the merest beginnings of a tourist infrastructure, and some of our students were at a loss as to what to do the first day—I’ll get to that in a moment. A group of us had decided to rent a beach house up the coast a bit, and Mario found a great place online that slept 12 and had a communal kitchen, with a pool, and right on the beach. It was about 2 hours away, and on our first day, we all disembarked in search of a van that would fit us. We procured one, and were just waiting for it to arrive for about 30 minutes, when we saw a van-load of students return to the ship, which was unusual, because we had only really been cleared for about an hour, so we checked in with them. They had found a beach recommendation in Corinto in the Nicaragua Lonely Planet guide, jumped into a van, and went there, only to discover, in their words: “the beach was dirt and they said there were buildings but there were only shacks”. So they came back to re-group. As I write this today, 3 days into the trip, I know that of the 400 or so folks here on the voyage, there are about 126 on board tonight, which is encouraging as it does mean that people have found their way out and about. Every country we’ve visited so far has had fairly advanced tourism industries, and it is good & interesting to see a country that is not keyed to the United Statesian consumer, and it’s also good to see our students learn to find their way about. Corinto is very different from everywhere else we’ve been—not the absolute industrialized poverty of Calloa Peru, with block after block of dusty homes, but not developed either. Walking around Corinto tonight it was hard to tell right away which buildings were homes and which ones were businesses—lazy hot dogs lolling about, people sitting in plastic chairs in the doorways, and somebody grilling meat outside.
Here are some free-form thoughts:
It’s super-hot here during the day, with amazing lightning shows at night lasting about an hour. From 7am-2pm there is no electricity anywhere, since Nicaragua has been having some power issues.
Driving around you can see all of the political party slogans painted everywhere—for the ALN party, for the FLN party, for Daniel Ortega (the original Sandinista and now a newly elected president again) “la gente pobre del mundo unido.”
Men with machetes in the fields, by the side of the road, and only men.
Kids with buckets of sand filling potholes for tips.
Finding a crab claw on our bed in the beach house…not sure where the rest of that guy went, but leaving at 6am & grabbing my backpack & finding another crab underneath about the size of a soap bar—crab: “oh, errr, hey”, me “hi little crab—hey, you got the bottom of my backpack all wet”, crab: “errr, yeah…gotta go” scuttle scuttle scuttle, me “ahhhh, let me get my feet out of the way”.
8/8/07 Okay, here’s the rough outline of my itinerary for Nicaragua (of which I still have one more day)—arrive on Tuesday, get to a beach house, stay there Tuesday night & Wednesday night, leave Thursday at 6:30am to be back to the ship for duty by 8:30am, be on duty on Thursday day til Friday morning, and then go to possibly an orphanage on Friday morning, and have dinner at David’s mom’s house on Friday evening. (David is a Nicaraguan who we—myself, Tom & Rebecca, met about 4 hours ago, he’s 24, looks 18, and is very sweet—he showed us around town).
Many people say that Nicaragua is like Costa Rica was about 30 years ago—friendly people, beautiful country-side with a plethora of natural resources (minus the whole Iran-Contra CIA debacle). I think that statement, from the little I saw of Nicaragua, is probably true. This includes only the merest beginnings of a tourist infrastructure, and some of our students were at a loss as to what to do the first day—I’ll get to that in a moment. A group of us had decided to rent a beach house up the coast a bit, and Mario found a great place online that slept 12 and had a communal kitchen, with a pool, and right on the beach. It was about 2 hours away, and on our first day, we all disembarked in search of a van that would fit us. We procured one, and were just waiting for it to arrive for about 30 minutes, when we saw a van-load of students return to the ship, which was unusual, because we had only really been cleared for about an hour, so we checked in with them. They had found a beach recommendation in Corinto in the Nicaragua Lonely Planet guide, jumped into a van, and went there, only to discover, in their words: “the beach was dirt and they said there were buildings but there were only shacks”. So they came back to re-group. As I write this today, 3 days into the trip, I know that of the 400 or so folks here on the voyage, there are about 126 on board tonight, which is encouraging as it does mean that people have found their way out and about. Every country we’ve visited so far has had fairly advanced tourism industries, and it is good & interesting to see a country that is not keyed to the United Statesian consumer, and it’s also good to see our students learn to find their way about. Corinto is very different from everywhere else we’ve been—not the absolute industrialized poverty of Calloa Peru, with block after block of dusty homes, but not developed either. Walking around Corinto tonight it was hard to tell right away which buildings were homes and which ones were businesses—lazy hot dogs lolling about, people sitting in plastic chairs in the doorways, and somebody grilling meat outside.
Here are some free-form thoughts:
It’s super-hot here during the day, with amazing lightning shows at night lasting about an hour. From 7am-2pm there is no electricity anywhere, since Nicaragua has been having some power issues.
Driving around you can see all of the political party slogans painted everywhere—for the ALN party, for the FLN party, for Daniel Ortega (the original Sandinista and now a newly elected president again) “la gente pobre del mundo unido.”
Men with machetes in the fields, by the side of the road, and only men.
Kids with buckets of sand filling potholes for tips.
Finding a crab claw on our bed in the beach house…not sure where the rest of that guy went, but leaving at 6am & grabbing my backpack & finding another crab underneath about the size of a soap bar—crab: “oh, errr, hey”, me “hi little crab—hey, you got the bottom of my backpack all wet”, crab: “errr, yeah…gotta go” scuttle scuttle scuttle, me “ahhhh, let me get my feet out of the way”.
Annnnd--more to follow. Dinner at David's house was wonderful, and we were all sad that we had just met at the end of our quick trip there. Nicaragua ended with us leaving port at 10pm & me flashing my flashlight at the front of the ship in a pre-arranged signal, which was responded to by David & his family on shore flashing their bicycle lights--amazingly touching.
1 comment:
Lisa, I have really been enjoying your writing about your adventures! Both your words and your pictures are amazingly beautiful. You've even inspired me to finally get my act together and apply--just submitted today!
Miss you lots!
Post a Comment