Adventures!

The last 3 weeks have seen some interesting adventures.  It all started with an impromptu trip down south - almost to the border with Costa Rica- to the beach La Flor where una arribada - or an arrival - of sea turtles was happening.  This was considered a small event, but there were still up to 10,000 turtles arriving on a given day!  These turtles were about 45-50kg, so relatively small by giant turtle standards but very impressive.

They also do releases!

Even if there were no turtles the beach was beautiful and the sunset was incredible!

So many turtles.  They look like rocks from afar.  Apparently during the big arrivals the beach is absolutely covered.

So that was one unexpected trip - but definitely worth the 7 hours in bus one way...
The next weekend I had plans to hang out in El Sauce but that changed with ease.  Turns out that one of the Peace Corps volunteers has a family friend that owns a house down on the Laguna de Apoyo close to Managua.  He was in the country and she was going to go visit him and invited myself and the other Peace Corps volunteer and I readily agreed.  Good choice!

La Laguna.  Breathtaking.  And that white speck on the other side - that's Granada.  Tourist hotspot for all of Nicaragua.

The group.  Turns out the friend is an OB/GYN in Wisconsin who came to Nica 30 years ago on a 4th year elective and has been coming back ever since.  Very cool guy with a ton of interesting stories.

Living up the beautiful Nica morning with some great swimming.  THis is how life SHOULD be down here!

Then this past Thursday was Día de Acción de Gracias.  I had seen and heard some turkeys roaming the streets and figured thought it would be fun to try and do something.  I had grand plans for a feast that didnt quite come to pass, but we did get to enjoy a turkey - all the way from the slaughter to the eating!

That's right, I bought my turkey alive!  And it looks pretty big...

...turns out it's pretty much all fluff.  Here's the process in a nutshell.  Cut off head -> allow to bleed out> dip in boiling water in order to make de-pluming easier>clean>stuff>cook>enjoy.  This was the woman from whom I bought the turkey and who then showed/taught me how to prepare the bird.

Stuff that little bird!  It didn't want to sit in the traditional manner so we made do with a lot of string to keep things closed.

All trussed up.

Ovens are almost non-existent here so we made do - cook over coals with plantain leaves to help keep the heat in.  Cooking an American style turkey Nica style.  What a mix!

The "oven"

After about 4 hours we decided "That's enough!" and went for it.  Turns out it was a good choice.

It wasn't a feast, but the turkey was good, the stuffing tremendous and the apple crisp cooked in a solar oven quite tasty.  Turkey Day Nica style = a Success!

Honduras: Parte 2

Ok, so where was I?  As far as I remember I had put photos up from Copan Ruinas.  From there I started to make my way south.  First to Santa Rosa de Copan --> Gracias -->La Esperanza.  (in case you want to see it on a map)  In Lonely Plant guidebook parlance it's known as the Lenca trail because it traverses the lands where the native Lenca people lived.  It's a mountainous region where coffee, tabacco and incredible sights are super numerous.

Flor de Copan cigar factory.  I don't smoke but it was pretty darn cool and now I also have 3 cigars to eventually share with someone.  They do everything from fermenting and drying the leaves to rolling and then even build the boxes on site.  And they make cigars for dozens of different brands - all in the same place.  Made me wonder a bit about what distinguishes one brand from another...

In Gracias - want something pickled?

Also in Gracias, but I am not really sure from whom they would need protection or who would be crazy enough to bring an army through the region.  Legend has it that the name Gracias came from one of the conquistadors who was travelling through the country and reached the relatively flat area around Gracias and said "Gracias a Dios that we have reached flat land" - in old school Spanish of course - and the name stuck.  And Gracias isnt really the flat either...

I liked this quote alot.  And he must have done something right as he served as both President of El Salvador and later as PRes of Honduras.

These bus/vans can tackle any sort of terrain!

The road from Gracias to La Esperanza is beautiful!  Get ready for a bunch of vistas...

Still the main highway between Gracias and Esperanza - the quality is a little lower though...

La Esperanza - the city at highest altitude in Honduras and as such it was downright chilly - definitely could have used some more clothing although I brought all the warm stuff I had - which is really that much given the crazy heat in El Sauce.

In La Esperanza I met up with the San Jose Partners brigade from Rochester.  Check out their site for loads of information and even a blog from a med student who spent a year working down there.  In brief, it is a project through the Department of Family Medicine at Rochester and a group of docs and residents go down for 2 weeks every 6 months to this small village in the mountains of Honduras.  IT is a beautiful but very poor region and the goal of the project is to help lift the people out of poverty by improving aspects of their health.  To this end they run a clinic(a small part of the project in reality) and have projects of water filters, improved cook stoves, better latrines and are starting projects in fish farming and experimenting with different vegetables.  There is also a scholarship program for students and a small business loan project as well.  After 8 years, the project is quite well established and the people truly trust and believe in the project.  So much so that people in the surrounding communities are clamoring to be involved.  So hopefully, things will keep going in the right direction!  I only spent a week with the project but hopefully I can return next year as an official member of the brigade (1-2 medical students also travel with the brigade each time)

This is where we eat.

THe school and guy's dorm.  If you can't tell it is steeeeeeep around here.

THe new government built health clinic, with some students, residents and translators.  The clinic was provided by the government and it's nice,  but doesn't actually have anything but rooms inside.

We attracted a group of kids everywhere we went.  My favorite part of this pic is the little guy without clothes, but with shoes.  All the others have clothes but no shoes!

The sunsets were incredible!

More brigade members.

Not a bad place to work.  I was amazed daily by the scope of roadwork going on in a place where the roads truly are straight up and down.  I am super surprised no truck of other heavy machinery hasn't slipped off the road and off into the jungle below!

As in Nica, smiling in pictures is not allowed but after a lot of coaxing this was the best result I could get.

The improved cookstove - it gets smoke out of the house and with a smaller opening than normal retains more heat - thus using less firewood.  And it looks really nice.

Giving a quick lesson on cookstoves and latrines.

The group that went to visit the outlying community that would like to participate in the groups projects.  It's only 4.25 miles but the hike lasts over 3.5 hours...I'll let you imagine the mountains that make that happen!

After leaving the brigade I headed to Lago de Yojoa for some scenery and good microbrews ( yay stouts!) and then headed on back into Nica.  After 2.5 weeks I received a lot of "you've reappeared!".  But it's good to be back and now to do a bit of work and travel a bit through Nicaragua.  After 2 weeks in Honduras I have seen more of the country than I have in 2.5 months here in Nica!  It's time to change that...

Honduras: Parte 1

So, it's been a little while since I gave an update here to the world, but as the above pic shows I was busy exploring a little bit of Honduras (oddly enough the pic was taken as I was leaving Honduras, but the idea still stands).  So I will attempt to give a photo and word synopsis of what transpired over the last 3 weeks.

The trip out of Nicaragua turned out to be quite the adventure.  I'm not sure if it made the news in the States but in the 10 days or so before I left El Sauce all of Central America was being innundated with nearly incessant rain.  In fact, here in El Sauce we had a week straight of rain -alternating between heavy downpours and a steady drizzle.  Many of the bridges in the area were inpassable due to high river levels and I was actually lucky to get out of El Sauce - a bunch of us who wanted to get to Leon got into an interlocale not knowing whether or not we would be able to pass - fortunately we were.  But this wasn't the end of the adventure.  The next day I boarded a Tica bus that was going to take me direct to San Pedro Sula in the north of Honduras.  However, after an hour or so we stopped with the explanation that we were going to wait a bit to see if the water level would drop a little so we could pass a bridge further ahead - although when I saw what was ahead I think the bus drivers just wanted some breakfast!

This was the highway for about 2 miles! I think my favorite thing was the mass of people busy fishing and hanging out in the running water! It was incredible and the first time I have actually been scared while on a bus as seen below:

Sights like this don't help calm the butterflies either...

That's alot of water.

We eventually made it to San Pedro - but rather than arriving  around 5pm we arrived at 9pm...not the best time to arrive into a city that has a rather rough reputation.  Spent a morning walking around San Pedro and the craziest thing about big Honduran cities is the incredible amount of American fast food and pizza places - I saw some super-legit Pizza Hut restaraunts.  Not sure what purpose the Coke sign serves, but it made for a nice hike.

I then went to Copan Ruinas which is near the border with Guatemala and the sight of a large Mayan ruins.  They are not as grand as those in Guatemala but are renowned for being the artesenal center of the Mayan empire.

Every new king would try and erase the memories of the previous kings but here in Copan, rather than raze the buildings, they simply built over them.  This temple was found beneath the outer structure and is actually this red color.  Apparently when the Mayans lived here  all the buildings were this red color and all the open spaces were stuccoed and white - to help with nighttime navigation.  Unfortunately tourists can't go in a see the temple...booo

Bit of a shame to cover up such nice natural colors.

Proof that I was actually there!

The great thing about travelling in the off-season is that the place was basically empty.  The tarp covers a large staircase where every stone is carved into a giant hieroglyphic.  Unfortunately, when the site was discovered the rocks were scattered and now the experts are not sure in what order they should be.  The tarp is for protective measures.

There were a lot of these columnas - and they are all intricately carved.

The staircase.

This even has a bit of the original red color...

Well the place was nearly empty - except for Los Tucanes de Tijuana - a ranchero group from Mexico that is apparently quite popular- who were recording a video for a new song (unfortunately couldn't find that one for the link).  I had no idea who they were but everyone was jumping in for a photo so I decided to follow along.

Some cooky art - preserved in the museum next door.

Honduras is a pretty place - more landscapes to come.

So that was the first couple days - part 2 to come shortly.