A blog about Nicaragua

Hey guys. This blog is about 3 weeks late, but late is better than never right?

So for the break between 2nd and 3rd quarters here at CRSMT, the whole class got to go to Nicaragua. Not only was this a cool way to take a 4 day break from massage life, but it also got us out of Costa Rica for 72 hours, which is required in order to renew our 90 day tourist visas.
 We stayed in the city of Granada, which is the oldest city in Nicaragua and has lots of old Spanish architecture. The city itself reminded me alot of Guatemala City, Guatemala. Every building had high cement walls around it, barred windows, and armed guards. We stayed at the Hotel Dario, which is apparently one of the nicest hotels in the city. Luckily, the price for the hotel was included in our tuition, so we didn't have to pay more money to stay there. There were 3 people per room, and everyone got their own bed, which was awesome. We had left the school at 8am and didn't get to Granada until about 2:30 or so, so by the time we checked in, we were so hungry we could barely sit still. And of course we wanted to go explore before the sun went down. Rachel A, Erica, and I found a really cute European cafe for lunch and coffee. While we were finishing up our meals, a guy walked over to our table and asked us to go on a tour with him and his friend. As scetchy as this sounds, we heard him out. Granada is situated on the banks of Lake Nicaragua and has a ton of tiny private islands called the Isletas, and for $15, you can get a boat and a captain to take you out and tour you around a little. The boat holds 11 people, and these guys were only 2, and they were looking for more passengers so that the cost of the boat would be lower per person. As luck would have it, Rachel, Erica, and I were already planning on taking that very tour the following day, so we looked at each other and figured "what the heck". We were together, so we were relatively safe, and we were feeling adventurous. So we paid for our food and met up with Antony (from Belgium) and Gunnar (from Germany) and walked down to see if we could find ourselves a boat. On the way, we accumulated Chris (a fellow CRSMT student), 2 local girls, and 2 more guys from Germany. This brought our total number up to 10, which is made the tour less than $2 per person. The timing ended up working out so that we were on the water as the sun was setting, and it was incredible.
  On the second morning in Nicaragua, Larissa and Rachel woke me up at 6:42am because they were so excited about shopping. Larissa and Christina had gone out exploring the previous night while Rachel, Erica, and I were on our tour, and they'd found some amazing shops that they wanted to take us to. After showers and a breakfast of bagels and coffee, we went out. What we found was pretty impressive. There was an entire street lined with shops and vendors that stretched literally as far as the eye could see. Only one street, but it was HUGE. Everything in Nicaragua is super cheap, so we were pretty excited to see what we could find. And boy did we find. There were people selling everything from clothing to foods to stolen cell phones and iPods to furniture. It was crazy. Larissa, Rachel, and I literally spent the entire day on that street. When we finally got tired of lugging our purchases around, we decided to go back to the hotel and dump our stuff. On the way there, we had to pass through a large plaza that's in the middle of the city, and in the plaza are a bunch of vendors selling hot dogs. We decided that it would be an experience, and they were only 10 Cordobas each (the equivalent of 50cents), so we each bought one. We have no idea what the lady put on them, but she just started squirting things from random bottles onto the hot dogs and then handed them over. The three of us found a bench and started eating. They were fantastic!
  But here's where things get interesting. Granada, Nicaragua has a huge problem with children dropping out of school, sniffing glue, and begging. Sometimes the parents will even force their kids into begging because they've learned that the children can make more money in a day begging on the street than the adults can at their jobs. These were things we were told and that we'd read, but that until this point, we had not witnessed. While the 3 of us were enjoying our lunches, a boy of about 8 came over to us and started miming stealing our hot dogs and eating them. He even made 'mock' grabs at our purses and held out his hands asking for some kind of offering from us. At great length we managed to shoo him away, and we watched as he walked about 100 feet away to his mother, and shrugged at her as he showed his empty hands. The mother knelt down and hugged him, then pulled away and slapped the boy in the face. She then angrily looked at a younger boy and pointed at us. By this point, Larissa, Rachel, and I have stopped eating and are sitting there appalled watching everything take place. Then this little 5 year old boy walks over to us and asks for our water or for some money. He was more easily disuaded than his older brother had been, but seemed reluctant to go back to Mom. When he did, she did the same thing as before: hugged him and then slapped him. Then she stooped lower still and pulled a toddler out of a chair, handed him a box of gum, and ushered him over to us. The kid coudln't have been more than 2, and here he was being forced into begging. He was rediculously cute, and we were half-tempted to give him some money so he wouldn't get hit too, but if you pull out your purse for one kid, all the kids in the vacinity come running over. By this point we had finished our meals and were sitting there looking into the smiling face of a tottering boy with huge brown eyes and we were all feeling sick to our stomaches about everything we'd just witnessed. We waved at the toddler and turned him around so he was pointed back toward Mom and then we got up and left. The whole thing was horrifying.
 That night most of the classmates decided to go to a more fancy restaurant for dinner, so we dressed up and walked a couple blocks over. There, I had an absolutely amazing steak kabob with a dijion sauce. Unfortunately the glass of wine I ordered was nasty, but the food was delicious. We were all planning to go out for drinks after dinner, but a couple people wanted to go back to the hotel and change really quickly first, so we walked back. On the way back, I was walking slightly ahead of the group, and we had to go around a corner on the sidewalk. There were men probably about my age sitting against the wall of the building at the corner and also sitting along the curb. So in order to get back to the hotel, I had to walk through the middle of them. I took a deep breath and strode through to the usual cat calls of "guapa" and "leche", and I was expecting them so it was okay. What I wasn't prepared for though, was the guy that grabbed my ankle, the guy that grabbed my arm, and the guy that grabbed my dress. I reacted so fast that no one from my group even knew what had happened, but I ended up kicking the guy on my foot and twisting out of the grasps of the other two, all while spinning around and shooting them a look of death until they backed off. I managed to keep calm until I was out of their sight, but it really freaked me out. I'm jsut glad I wasn't alone or things could have gone very wrong very fast. If they were willing to grab me with my whole group right behind me, there's no telling what they would have done if I was by myself. Needless to say, I was furious and wanted nothing to do with anyone for the rest of the night. Everyone else went out without me, and I spent the evening listening to music and reading in the hotel room, which was perfectly fine with me.
   On our third and final day in Nicaragua, Rachel, Larissa, and I decided that we needed to go ziplining at the base of a volcano. As we were walking out of the hotel, we were greeted by Steve and Elisa, who had just made a new friend Ricardo, who was a tourism manager in Granada. We expressed our ziplining wishes to him and he made up a plan to get us deals on the tour, include transportation in a private van, and also make a stop at the well-known Massiah Market, which is an artisan market that's about 2 blocks big. All for $38. Deal. 20 minutes later the 6 of us (Larissa, Rachel, Elisa, Steve, Ricardo, and I) we were sitting in a van on our way to the Mumbacho Volcano to go Ziplining. It was AWESOME! Hands down the best ziplining tour I've ever done. There were 3 guides, and the zips were super long and went straight through the canopy. There were a few zips where the guides asked if anyone wanted to go upsidedown or 'Superman', and then 3 of us would jump at the chance to do something awesome. The guides actually went with us on the 'stunt' rides, so we didn't have to worry about controlling anything, which was nice. After ziplining, we got back in the van and Ricardo took us to "the most beautiful place in Nicaragua" which ended up being an overlook spot where we could see the Mumbacho Volcano, Lake Mumbacho, and then beyond that, Lake Nicaragua. It was a spectacular view. After hanging out for a few minutes and taking some pictures, we piled back in the van and went to the market. Rachel, Larissa, and I took off and went exploring and found some really amazing stuff. All three of us ended up buying hammock chairs that are amazingly comfortable and were only $12. When we were finished shopping, we returned once more to the van and were brought home. Elisa and Steve went to a spa with Ricardo, and we went back to the room. We ended up going shopping again and grabbing a late lunch. That night a bunch of people were going out for dinner and drinks again, but I wasn't really feeling super social, so I just hung out in the room and read some more.
 The next morning we ate breakfast and then left to come back to Samara. It was a nice change of pace to be out of Costa Rica and off the beach, but I was mighty glad to be back where I knew people and where the kids weren't begging and the guys weren't grabbing me. Cities have never really been my 'thing', and that trip just reaffirmed that knowledge.