Where have I BEEN?!

The last month has been busy, as you can probably tell by my lack of blogging. Let me tell you a little bit about what I've been up to.

Christmas week was pretty busy with choir activities. We had a performance with other churches in the plaza, a festival (say that with your best Spanish accent so it becomes a Spanish word and not an English word) with other choirs at our church, and we sang at Christmas Eve mass, as well as Christmas day masses at 8am and 6pm. Phew! It was a busy month of practices and performances/masses that kept me more occupied than I had anticipated!

We were also supposed to sing at the New Years Eve and New Years Day masses, but I got sick on the 31st and was pretty much out of commission for those two days. I was better on New Years, but by that time, we found out we would be bussing over to Managua for our retreat, instead of flying (holiday travel busyness applies to Port, too. Who knew?). So I took advantage of the opportunity to rest and try to fully recuperate before getting on the bus, because these trips are supposed to be quite the adventure.

And quite the adventure it was! The fun started when we got to the bus "terminal" around noon:30 and they told us the tickets we had were for the bus that left at 10:00am. That's the part where your stomach goes into little knots. But after a while, they figured out that this was not the case and that we did indeed belong on the 1:00pm bus.

So if you enjoy long bus rides on school busses, you probably would have had a ton of fun on this trip! However, I am not a huge fan. Things went pretty "smoothly" for the first few hours. I use smoothly in a figurative sense to say that we didn't have the kind of problems we had later in the trip. In a literal sense, the ride is anything but smooth as the driver must navigate crater-filled roads and try to avoid other obstacles that may have surfaced in the recent months.

Our first stretch break came at a river, where we would load the bus onto the lanchón (hmmm...ferryboat type floating device that brings people and vehicles back and forth across the river. If you have a better translation, let me know). The pulley system on which the equipment operates runs on an old semi-truck motor. I'm not smart enough to know the logistics of all that or why that's cool, but that's what one of the drivers pointed out to me.

So when we got across the river, the drivers had ascertained that we had a flat tire. This was the first of six flats on the trip. That's SIX flat tires for those who are only skimming and not reading thoroughly! The good part about the flat tires was that it allowed us time to get out and stretch for a little bit. The bad part is, they obviously make the trip longer.

Stops were also made whenever we got to an accessible form of water. You see, water is free, and engine coolant costs money. So why buy engine coolant when you can stop every hour or hour and a half to fill up a bucket with water? Of course! Problem is, this system has its holes, and a few hours outside of Managua we had some overheating issues. After about an hour and a half of trying to figure out what to do and getting some fruitless advice from passing motorists, it was decided that where the coolant would normally be poured, we were going to pour not only water but also oatmeal. Yes, oatmeal. I was slightly upset that oatmeal was going in an engine and not in my belly, but I got over it when it worked. No, I do not understand the logic behind this, but shortly thereafter, we were on our way again.

Once in the city limits of Managua, we were stopped not once, not twice, but thrice by local police. The first two times, the police officer had an ID out and was apparently trying to locate someone that had participated in recent criminal activity. (Comforting, huh...) The third time, there was some issue with the license plate on the bus. Why not?

Overall, the trip took about 25 hours (probably 19 hours travelling and 6 hours stopped for the aforementioned reasons).

And we went in the dry season when the roads are good. ¡Imagínate!

So the purpose of this trip was to get to the Managua area for our first CapCorps retreat. Unfortunately, we couldn't gather with the Lima crew as well, so it was just us Port volunteers and the Managua volunteers, but we had a grand ol' time. The retreat was a very welcome respite from four straight months in one place. We went about half an hour outside of Managua to Las Palmeras Retreat House in Diriamba. It was a surprisingly large complex that we had all to ourselves, likely due to the fact that we were there from a Monday to a Thursday and that it was the week after New Years. So it was nice to have just us there.

We had four days of reflection on our time thus far and how we want to move forward. We were challenged to let go of thoughts and practices that might distract us from concentrating fully on the retreat. It felt really good to focus on where we were and what we were doing. I'm still working on developing my "being in the present," and this was a good step toward that.

The last night of the retreat, we played Uecker. My first time playing, which I as a Wisconsinite am somewhat ashamed to admit. We had a grand ol' time, despite the fact that the team I was on lost. But it's not about winning and losing, people! Anywho, the retreat was great and the food was fantastic :).

After spending a night in Managua, I was on my way to Costa Rica to renew my VISA. You see, Nicaragua gives you a 90 day tourist VISA when you enter the country which can be renewed once. After those 180 days, you have to leave the country. "But Lee," you say, "You are but 50 miles from the Honduras border. Why don't you go there to renew your VISA?" Well, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have a Convenio de fronteras abiertas (Open Borders Agreement), which allows travelling between the countries without all the normal hassle and paperwork at the border. Great for people looking to travel, bad for people needing to renew a VISA.

So Rich Coast it is! Another bus ride -yay! But this is a coach bus, with soft seats and a TV..well the TV's color is busted, but it's still a TV. And who needs color for Mr. Bean reruns anyway?

The first few hours of the trip I had an open seat next to me, which was nice because I could stretch out a little bit. When we got to Rivas, Nicaragua, we picked up about a half-dozen people, and that's when Fritz (Fred) sat down in the seat next to me. Fred was born in Germany, spent about 8 years in the States and has been living in Nicaragua/Costa Rica for about 15 years. He goes between Costa Rica and Nicaragua every couple of months to tend to the businesses he has in each country. Anywho, it was great to have Fred because of his knowledge of San Jose. Since we didn't roll into San Jose until midnight, I felt much more comfortable having gotten the lowdown from Fred.

But before getting to San Jose, we had to cross the border. Fred figured we would be there for about an hour, but it was getting close to two hours when we were getting back on the bus, and customs still hadn't checked the bags. So what's our plan, money collector guy? Mira, que todos aporten un dólar o veinte córdoba para que no nos revisen el bus o las maletas. Translation? "Alright, everybody chip in a dollar or 20 cordoba so they don't check the bus or the bags." I literally almost burst out laughing when he said this, and I had some thoughts about perpetuating the corruption in Latin America, but hell if I wanted to sit there for another hour while they checked the bags. So we got the money together, the customs people came by and opened the luggage compartments and came on the bus for like 30 seconds to make it look like they were doing their job, and we were on our way. Totally awesome!

So Sunday was my first day in Costa Rica. I got up and wandered around the city a bit. Since we got into the city so late, I ended up just staying at a nearby hostel for a night intending to find a different one for the other nights. So I wandered over to the barrio (neighborhood) where there were supposed to be some good backpackers hostels. Well, eventually I ended up running into a dead end street that actually led to Simón Bolívar Zoo. Sure, why not? Zoos are fun. So I spent some time checking out the toucans, poisonous frogs and capuchin monkeys. Of course I had to get pictures of the Capuchin Monkeys - they're my Brothers!

Afterwards, I grabbed a quick lunch and then went to the Catedral Metropolitana (Metropolitan Cathedral, which you probably figured out) for noon mass. If you know Latin American history, you know that when the Spanish came, they built their City Centers with huge elaborate Catholic churches (most often Cathedrals). Well San Jose is no exception. Metropolitan Cathedral is definitely a huge Catholic church that has all the bells and whistles of the conquista. The service was nice, though, and the people were sociable.

Since I had some money saved up, I decided to be a tourist and look for some kind of Costa Rican adventure. I found a nice combo tour that consisted of a Volcano tour and a visit to La Paz Waterfall Gardens, which I had looked up before going to Costa Rica. So I booked that for my Monday.

But my Sunday wasn't complete. The tourist package place I found was connected to a Holiday Inn. So here comes white privilege: I know my Packers are playing, and hotels always have bars, right? So I wander into the hotel and up to the bar on the second floor and walk in as a couple from the States is walking in. All the TVs have fútbol on, and the husband is like, "Oh it looks like just soccer today." So I say, "Oh were you hoping to watch the playoffs, too?" "Yeah, we wanted to watch some football." Perfect. Now I'm not the only gringo that wants to watch football. So we had the barista (bartender) put the game on. So Jim and Jan are a doctor and a nurse, respectively, and were on a 9-day Costa Rica circuit. We were later joined by their friends Mark and Betty, Mark a former helicopter pilot and Betty also a nurse. They were great company and even better company when they insisted on buying my beer :). Only bad part about the night was that the Packers lost. Guess eveything can't go better than planned.

So Monday was the tour day. The bus picked me up at my hostel at 6am and we went around picked up the others (about a dozen of us in total) and headed out of the city. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there was a third part of the tour that included breakfast. So, our first stop was at Tres Generaciones coffee plantation. There was a really heavy cold front moving through Costa Rica for the three days I was there, so it was a cold and windy and rainy, but it was one of those rains where the sun was out, so this combined with the altitude produced a whole lot of rainbow time. At one point we had two rainbows, and at another point, I saw what was easily the brightest rainbow I have seen. Really cool. The coffee plantation tour was pretty cool. I'm not a big coffee drinker myself, but being that it was cold, I grabbed a cup with breakfast.

After the coffee plantation, we headed over to Volcan Poás. As we drove up to the parking lot, it was quite apparent that the weather was going to impact us here a little more than at the coffee plantation. It was about a twenty minute hike up to the crater in 40 degree, rainy, windy conditions. Thankfully, the tour guide had an extra umbrella to lend me, since I came unprepared for this fantastic cold front. When we got to the crater, it was completely clouded over. We were disappointed but pretty amused by the computer-generated depiction the volcano (oh so THAT's what it looks like!) and the fact that there was a raised picture-taking platform for which there was a 10 minute limit (we weren't even all up at the crater for ten minutes before we were ready to leave). Oh well...

The rains followed us to La Paz Waterfall Gardens, but it was still a cool experience. There was a lot more there than I had understood there to be. There were five waterfalls, I want to say, of which we saw three, hiking from one to the other. One of them is called Magia Blanca (White Magic). Looking at the center of the waterfall for about thirty seconds produces a kinetic effect when you look at the wall to it's right, as though the wall is warping. It's pretty sweet. Someday I'll get a video up on Facebook. It works watching it on the camera, so hopefully it'll work on a computer screen, too.

There was also a butterfly sanctuary, a hummingbird house, a panther, a leopard, all sorts of amphibians and reptiles and a full-scale model of an indigenous family house back in the 1800s. The house seemed kind of out of place, but they had good fresh bread :).

They also fed us lunch at the waterfall gardens, which was delicious. Between lunch and waiting for the mini-bus after the tour was done, I had three more cups of coffee to stay warm. Like I said, it was cold, even for me. I don't drink coffee, by the way, in case you were unaware.

Another benefit of the tour package was that there were yet MORE cool people to meet. I ended up talking with Randi quite a bit, since we were both travelling on our own. Randi grew up in the States but moved to London when she was in her 20s and has been living there for about 20 years.

Annika and Sebastian are from Germany. Annika had been travelling and doing research on rainforests throughout Central America for about nine months and Sebastian had just gotten into Costa Rica a few days earlier to spend a few weeks there before both of them were headed back to Germany. Annika had all the plans laid out but wasn't telling Sebastian anything, something that kind of made Sebastian nervous, as it would do to me. Gotta be in the know! Anyway, it was fun listening to them speak German between each other, and they both spoke really good English. Annika spoke quite a bit of Spanish, too, from spending time in Central America, and I think she knew quite a bit of French. Jealous, party of one :).

Then there were two guys from Italy who have been living in and working in Germany for the last eight years. Libero and Eros. How sweet are those names? "Hi my name is Libero, which means 'liberty' or 'free.'" "Hi, my name is Eros. I'm named after the Greek God of Love." I'm still not over those names. Anyway, real good people.

After talking with Libero for a while, he said he and Eros were renting a car to head down toward Jacó, a beachtown on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. So they invited me and Annika and Sebastian to come with them on Tuesday. So we did that. Spent the day swimming and taking in some sun and trying to get coconuts down from the trees. Thankfully, the cold front wasn't impacting the Pacific side, so it was actually beachy with the sun and the warmth and everything. When I tried to offer Libero money for gas and chipping in on the car rental and the water and snacks they brought, no dice. People are so generous. They finally let me buy them a beer when we got back into San Jose that night. Still quite a deal.

So the Rich Coast experience was great. I had a relatively uneventful trip back to Managua. We even let customs revise our bags and the bus instead of paying them off, since the border was less busy than on our way there.

But we're not done yet! I stayed Wednesday night in Managua before heading over to Masaya to get a guitar. I got into Masaya late afternoon and was having some trouble getting oriented to the city, so as dusk is settling in, I grab a taxi and ask the taxi driver to give me a spin around the city so I can get my bearings. Couldn't have found a better guy than Eddi. So Eddi takes me around for like 45 minutes showing me the markets and the schools and the churches and the good barrios and the bad barrios, and he even has a neighbor that owns a hostel that he can show me that's close to the Artisan Market, which is where I want to be for the Berbenas cultural celebration that takes place every Thursday. Eddi charged me $2.50 for this 45 minute tour around Masaya and gave me his cell phone number so I could get in touch with him when I needed to get somewhere in Masaya. The next day he took me to get my guitar and waited around for more than an hour while I picked out a guitar and had it restrung for my left-handed self. Price again? $2.50. I don't know, maybe that's a lot for him, but it seemed like quite a deal to me.

So I ended up getting back to Port on the 16th of January. We started back into work (sort of) on the 18th. The regular teachers are enrolling kids. Susan, Kathryn and I have kind of been coming and going to the schools as we see fit. I ended up tutoring a few kids most of this past week because their mom brought them to the school to enroll and wanted some tutoring before the schoolyear. Sure, why not?

The kids start back in classes this coming Tuesday, February 2nd. I still don't have a totally set schedule. A lot of it depends on Niño Jesús' schedule, which I haven't seen yet, because the vice-principal takes care of getting the schedule out, but he had to go down to Bluefields and Corn Island to tend to some issue with some land that he inherited and some company is starting to harvest crops on...without asking permission. So I think he just got back yesterday. Maybe there'll be a class schedule by Monday....the day before classes start!

Oy, what a whirlwind. Congratulations if you read all the way through and actually know what's going on. If you don't like reading and this is the first full sentence you're reading of this post, maybe I can work on finding a time to Skype with you :).