Screens, Guitar, Bulls, Volcanoes, Borders, Astro

It's been awhile since my last post.


Now that I have the obvious stated, I can begin on things that you actually may not be aware of. One of the reasons for my dirth of posts is that I accidentally broke the screen on my laptop.

It happened at The Camino Real. We had just picked up my parents from the airport in Managua and arrived safely back at the hotel. Vanessa and I had a bottle of Flor De Cana rum waiting and ready for my dad, so we all had a few drinks in their room and then went to bed. I didn't realize I was tired, so I started watching a movie on my laptop, which was propped up on my belly kinda like how otters eat clams. Well, I ended up falling asleep with my laptop on my belly and woke up a short time later to find it still on my belly unbroken. Even in my groggy state I thought this was dangerous because I could knock it off the bed onto the ground, so I decided to move it off the bed altogether. I set it on the ground beside the bed, but a second later it registered that this was also dangerous, so I picked it up and put it in my daypack, and promptly fell asleep. I woke up early in the morning to use the washroom. It was dark in the room and I stepped on/tripped over my daypack on the way to the washroom. I didn't realize it was broken until the next time I turned it on to use the internet in the lobby.

The computer still works, but there is a growing blob of darkness that is slowly creeping across the screen.

Christmas in Pochomil was fantastic. We stayed in a large house drank a lot of rum, played pool, played in the pool with coconuts, and generally lounged. Vanessa tried to stage an underwater rendition of "Dirty Dancing", I tried to avoid boogie boarding into the garbage tides that floated up and down the beach -- life was good.

After Pochomil we stayed another couple weeks at The Voodoo Bar in Granada. Not too much of note happened. We won second place at trivia at O'sheas two weeks in a row (20 pounds of free laundry). I tried to learn guitar. I switched to an open door policy in my room, where I kept all of the windows and one door open, so that anything that got into my room could easily fly/scurry out -- better to be a road/flightpath than a bottleneck.

However, we did go on one trip to Ometepe, which is an island formed by two volcanoes in Lake Nicaragua. The boat ride to the island was a little rough, and a few people jetisoned their food stores. Once on the island we stayed one night at the port city drinking and then moved to Balgue, which is at the base of the smaller volcano. Luckily we caught the last two days of the rodeo at Balgue.

We saw Nicaraguan bullfighting, which consisted of cowboys dragging a reluctant bull from the pen into the main arena, pulling it to the ground around a post. Once the bull was on the ground they wipped it a few times to make it angry and one guy (anyone could try for 20 cords $1) would then get on the bull just before they released it. The guy would ride on the bull while others tried to entice the bull to charge with red flags, while the bull tried to figure out the best way to get back to its pen. Occasionally others either from the groups of young men milling in the arena or the crowd would make daring dashes past the bull their courage as unflinching as their gelled hair.

What may have help sustain the courage of the mad dashers is the fact that they, like everyone else involved, were drunk. Some were Sunday afternoon tipsy, but many others were full on New Years Eve staggeringly inebriated. One of the flag wavers dropped while waiting for the next bull; a couple guys tried to take his flag, but he would have none of it and successfully matadored for the rest of the night. I also noticed a very drunk cowboy and since his horse was controlled by applied pressure it was staggering all over the place, and some of the less innebriated cowboys occasionally reined up beside him to keep him in line. At least I think that's why the horse was staggering. I guess a scarier thought would be that the horse was also drunk. Regardless when I saw him later that night he was almost asleep on the saddle and someone else had jumped up on the horse with him and was steering it home.

A couple days later Adam and I decided to climb Madera (the smaller of the 2 volcanoes) against the advice of the hostel owners. Apparently we also needed a guide to climb it, but both of us being money conscious(cheap) decided to go it alone. It was a grueling hike, especially since I had my first bought of food poisoning and hadn't eaten anything (or at least kept it in my stomach) for a day or so, but we made it to the top.

The next day we left the island, when the wind died down and it was safe for the ferries to run.

We stayed in Granada for a few more days and then took off towards Costa Rica. Here is our story about leaving the country.

First off we found out that the custom agent at the border coming into Nicaragua wrote down the wrong date for when our insurance expired, while we were trying to get our car inspected so we could leave Nicaragua. It had expired the day before.

The inspector told us that we needed to pay a fine, so he took our paperwork walked into the custom office and gave it to a nice old lady in uniform. She promptly looked at it lifted up a pile of papers and set it underneath of this pile, put the pile back down, and then sat there doing nothing. The guy told us to wait, in no particular line because there really wasn't a line for what we needed. So we waited in the general vicinity watching nothing happen. Eventually this nothing was followed by more nothing, so we kept waiting until the point when something wasn't happening. Ben then walked up to the lady who had our papers, and whom had not moved or done anything during the entire time when something wasn't happening, and asked what we needed to do. She promptly smiled and said nothing. He asked again, and again nothing was replied to.

Ben walked back to our area of the general vicinity. Eventually when somebody emerged at the Caja where we would need to pay I went and tried to explain what we needed or I thought we needed to do. She sort of understood and I led her to our papers with my broken Spanish and hand gestures, kind of like how Lassie used to lead people to a kid trapped in a well. They never really understood what he was getting at, but he just seemed so damn adamant that they followed anyways.

She went and retreived the papers from under the pile, carefully looked them over and then found a computer. She typed a few things into the computer, while Ben and I stared rapt by the progress. After awhile she moved across the room back to the Caja and printed off a couple tickets that we needed to go pay at the bank. We gathered the tickets found the bank and started waiting in line. After some interesting line waiting we paid the tickets got the stubs and stamps required and briskly walked back to the Caja. She took the stubs and receipts, stapled some things, stamped others and then informed us that we needed 5 copies of it all, and that the photocopier was outside of the building and across the park.

We set off on our newest quest, found a large patch of grungy grass, assumed it was the park and crossed it. We didn't see it at first, but eventually we found a small building wedged in the sea of semis. It did photocopying. We got our 5 copies and returned to the Caja. The lady took them, I think more stamping was involved, and then she passed them on to another lady who set them underneath another pile. At this point more than nothing was happening and we were standing in the wisp of an actual line (more an assortment of lost souls all hoping to be realeased from purgatory). We watched more than nothing happening to other peoples papers for awhile, and eventually stared with jubilation as something other than nothing happened to our papers. We received the original papers back, while many of the copies were draped over the leaning piles of papers stacked against the off-white walls. Ben then walked back to the lady who had initially placed them under the pile and warrily handed them back to her. She looked at them, again I think stamping may have been involved, and cheerily informed him that the we were good to go (apparently the inspector to save time had marked off that he had inspected the vehicle -- the only ladder in this game of snakes and ladders).

We now needed to get the form signed by a police officer, so we left the building and tracked one down, who was in the middle of a conversation with a taxi driver. We waited until the conversation died down, and the officer took our papers glanced at them and signed the bottom. We returned to the customs building and Ben began waiting in another line; a proper line this time, orderly, cohesive and consistent -- not at all like the other lines we had been in that day, which were hardly lines at all. Probably the best line I had come across in Nicaragua. Anyways he stood in this magnificent line for some time and we were then finally able to leave Nicaragua and start going through the Costa Rican customs.

Costa Rican customs were much better, but we did run into a few issues. One of which involved the customs agent putting Vanessa's passport number in the box for our plate number and us having to turn back into Nicaragua for the second time. I rarely see Vanessa yell in English and have never seen her yell in Spanish, but she let them know that they were "culpable". And in no time the guy who had messed up emerge from the back and printed off a new form (without saying anything at all).

We made it into Costa Rica.