T&K come for a visit

I am not going to lie, when Britsy and I first arrived in Nicaragua and particularly in Leon, the heat was a little surprising and a lot overwhelming. The constant sweating and general swollen-ness of our bodies (no, I swear my love handles are only swelling because of the heat, not the bag of Oreos I eat each night) made us wonder how we were going to last very long down here. So, like in many things in life, we set goals to get us from one day to the next. We would plan Managua days for a week later, where we would go to the capital and enjoy the pleasures of civilization (i.e. air conditioning and nice movie theaters). We would schedule a Tip Top day, where we would go to the Nicaraguan McDonald's substitute and again enjoy a/c. We bought ice cream and popsicles (you can see the trend here), but the furthest out carrot we had to keep us going, was knowing that at the end of May, Trev, Katy, and my dad were going to come visit us. Unfortunately, Stu was not able to join us down here, but on May 22nd Trev and Katy flew in to Managua airport, ready for some heat.

After a long day of traveling, we took it pretty easy the first night. Trev and Katy braved a hostel room without air conditioning, but with a plethora of geikos running about the ceiling. The following night they chose to wisely stay in a/c. Trev and I played a fantastic round of golf in Managua, at Nejapa Country Club. We had a caddie named Victor that Trev and I briefly looked into the laws and regulations for adopting, as he was not only an apparent meteorologist, but he also improved Trev's putting a hundred-fold. Unfortunately the papers didn't work out, so Trev will just have to stick to his wooden putting stroke. Meanwhile, Katy and Brits enjoyed a day at the beach.

The following week was a blur of activities interspersed with chicken buses. Trev and Katy gracefully tore down Cerro Negro volcano on a tour guided by Britsy and myself. Although Katy did have a minor crash, she was no worse for the wear and got to take home a nice scar souvenir. We spent a beautiful day at a beachside lodge, where Trev, Katy, and I walked the wide expanse of empty beach, while Britsy battled a rare dose of rotten milk she had had at breakfast.

What none of us were ready for was the absolute onslaught of rain showers that doused us starting wednesday morning. Fortunately all we had planned for the day was traveling, but the roads turned to rivers and we found our way slightly impeded. But Trev and Katy took it in stride, and we did eventually make it down to Granada that night. The next morning we had a blast doing a canopy tour on the side of Mombacho volcano. We zipped, bounced, supermaned, and flew upside down through the zipline course. It was an absolute highlight of the trip.

At Laguna de Apoyo, a crater lake outside of Granada, we swam and floated, relaxing for an afternoon and a morning. We also took a night tour to Masaya volcano, where we were engulfed in sulfuric gas (enough to necessitate breathing masks), witnessed thousands of bats leave their cave for nighttime hunting, and saw beautiful views of the surround lands.

By the time we arrived in San Juan del Sur, the sun had broken through the rain, and we had a beautiful day and a half on the beach. The second day we spent at Playa Maderas. Here, we soaked in too much sun, as our red bodies would attest, and we tried surfing. After a brief, albeit educational instructional by Britsy, we hit the waves with our rented longboards. Trevor was irritatingly good, especially as I struggled to my feet, despite it being my second go around on a surfboard. Katy took some nice bumps and bruises from the experience, and Britsy glided along like she had been raised in a surfing capital. By the end, we were tired but all agreed it was worth the reddness and bruises.

The final day, we spent in the Masaya artisan market picking out gifts for family. The last night we spent in Managua, so Trev and Katy could make their 7am flight back to civilization. In all, the ten days was easily a highlight of Britsy and my time here in Nicaragua. If you would like to view our photos of the trip, click here.

But now that carrot is gone, so we will have to get another one...I don't think I will stop eating ice cream any time soon. Speaking of which, didn't Britsy say she was making milkshakes right now? She better not be eating mine. Whoa, I gotta go...

More Photos

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let you guys know that we have added more photos to our Snapfish account. We added some from our recent trip to Matagala and Jinotega in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, where we go whenever we absolutely need to escape the oppressive heat of Leon. It rained while we were there and it was incredible. We also added some from our "research trips" to Chacocente, a nature reserve in southwestern Nicaragua and Isla de Ometepe. At each place, we were checking our established non-profit projects to which Green Pathways might send volunteers. At Chacocente, the volunteers would be involved with nightly Olive Ridley sea turtle patrols. The 1.5 km stretch of beach there is one of the key nesting grounds for Olive Ridleys in the world - an arribada site (where literally thousands of female Olive Ridley turtles nest in huge groups on a tiny bit of beach). It would be pretty incredible to see. Anyways, we have a lot of photos of that stretch of beach, which in a few months, will be overrun with turtles. There are also quite a few of me and Graham enjoying a gorgeous sunset.

The second project we visited is called Project Bona Fide on Ometepe. It is a good sized permaculture operation run by an American who has lived here for 8 or 9 years. It was interesting to see the gardens, although the lodging there (an open air thatched lean-to...and the associated army of mosquitos), was a bit too rustic for us and we opted to stay in the one hostel in town 20 minutes away. The farm had incredible views of one of the two volcanoes that constitutes Ometepe, so there are a lot of photos of Volcan Maderas. We hope you enjoy them and that everyone is doing well!


Click here to see the mountain photos and here to see the volunteer project photos.

Volcano boarding & Costa Rica

Hey everyone,

Sorry it's been so long since we last updated our blog or photos, but I guess that means that we have been busy. Graham and I are now the only two volcano boarding tour guides, so we have been alternating volcano boarding tours, each taking one every other day. All of our tours are in the afternoon now, so we often board down or at least drive home during a gorgeous sunset. The tours have been going well and Bigfoot just bought a brand new speed gun, so we will be able to start making our attempts at the record. When Graham and I initially came down and volcano boarded for the first time, I stomped him...I also face planted in the process. Truth be told when they "clock" your speed with the gun, it's not an exact science, so who really knows what the speeds are. Anyways, when we first went, Graham the granny got somewhere in the 40's and I got somewhere in the 50's (kmph). The all time record for boys is 82 kmph and 76 kmph for girls. So, as you can see, we have our work cut out for us. Graham has gotten a lot better, but I am still taking things nice and slow and haven't gone fast enough to where I might fall. So, I may be a lost cause to break the record, but I have a lot of faith in G and we will update you on our speeds. So volcano boarding every other day and a few Isla Juan Venado tours (boat ride through a mangrove estuary) for me are our main activities. We still go to the gym and it is still pretty dirty with an average of one of the three available treadmills actually working. We kind of miss 24 Hour Fitness, but at least the gym helps to offset the pizza we eat religiously twice a week and the slough of ice cream and cookies that somehow find their way into our diet down here A LOT more than at home.

However, for the past week we broke from routine. Our temporary visas for Nicaragua ran out

and so we had to go to Costa Rica to renew them...tough life we know. Last Sunday, we took chicken buses for an enternity, making our way from Leon to Managua to the southern border with Costa Rica. Then we spent about two hours in the dusty and confusing limbo land that is the sprawling, very landfill-like space between Nicaragua and Costa Rica where you wait in a lot of lines and get various things stamped. We were one day over our 90 day limit and so that added at least an hour to the whole process. So, when we finally crossed into Costa Rica, crabby and dust-covered, we jumped on another bus to Liberia and then to the Pacific Coast to a place called Tamarindo Beach.

We stayed here only two days. It was horribly expensive - I paid $8 for a salad at Subway and we paid $18 for one pizza and one bottle of water - and the way in which it was developed made it feel like you were living in an over-priced strip mall. Now we realize that living in Nicaragua (second poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti) for the past six months may have changed our perspective a little, but I think everyone can agree that if it is hard to tell that you are even in Central America, then development hasn't really been done in the correct way. It was one expensive compilation of chain restaurants and beachside resorts and high rise hotels and there only seemed to be Americans visiting and/or living there. We couldn't find any tipical Costa Rican food and we were so burned from our first day at the beach (which you could no longer see from town as the hotels blocked any view) that we didn't venture far outside the main part of town to find any. With all of those complaints laid out, it was impeccably clean, the buses were waaaaaaaaaaay nicer and our hostel had AC. So although it was nice to be in a more developed place, we just didn't think that the development had been carried out in the most tasteful or appropriate way. Plus it was freakishly hot and expensive. So we left and took another series of four buses inland, due east to Monteverde and Santa Elena.

Things in Monteverde were much more our style, although still very expensive compared to Nicaragua. The weather was a pleasent change as Monteverde sits between two cloudforests at a much higher elevation. During the day, it was cool and at night, you had to bundle up, which was fantastic. Graham however, has persisted in his quest to not wear pants for one year and he refused to even pack any for Costa Rica. A couple nights it was super cold and windy and while I had on pants, long sleeved shirt and my wind breaker, G was in shorts and a t-shirt. I guess all that hair helps to keep him warm...

While we were there, we took a guided night hike in the cloud forest and saw a tarantula (terrifying), some pretty cool sloths and some beautiful sleeping birds. However, Graham and I both agreed that we probably would have preferred a day hike...when you can actually see everything. We also took a tour of the Lecheria (the Monteverde Cheese Factory), which was started by Quakers from the states in 1948. They bought a chunk of forested area where there was nothing - no roads, economy, anything. They knew nothing about cheese, but decided that it would be the best product to produce because it could involve more people and had a high value to size ratio. They wrote the USDA to get some instruction and then started making cheese. Now, it is a very successful company and exports cheese to Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. We took a tour of the relatively small factory and got to try a variety of cheeses and caramel that they make. Graham stayed behind after everyone left and refilled his toothpick a few times with the leftover cheese squares. We also walked all over Santa Elena and Monteverde and visited a lot of art galleries as we found them.

It was a great vacation and we returned late last night. All in all, Costa Rica was a lot more expensive, but it was a nice break from the norm. Plus so many more people spoke English there than in Nicaragua, so that helped us avoid some of the awkward conversations we often have here. But we have another 90 days in Nicaragua now and we are eagerly awaiting the start of mango and avocado season.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hi everyone,
Happy Valentine's Day! Hope everyone had a good holiday and lots of chocolate. Graham and I made a massive pancake, egg and bacon breakfast, which we are still trying to digest. When we do, we will eventually roll ourselves to the movie theater to see "Valentine's Day", despite the terrible reviews we've read. We just saw "Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief" when we were in Leon for my birthday and thought it was alright...fun, but pretty cheesy. Oh well, we're not going to keep our expectations too high for this one. We added some of the photos that we've taken around Leon to snapfish, so click here to check them out. They depict our walk from the hostel to central park in front of the cathedral and give you a little taste of Leon. We will add more to this album, but it's a start. Oh and hopefully Salem will appreciate the ones at the end of the kids riding their wave boards...they are all over Leon. Enjoy your Valentine's Day!

Our vacation to the north

Hi everyone. We hope you are all making it through the harsh winter wherever you are. We hear that it is snowing a lot in the east and dusting in the Midwest. West coasters, I am sure you are all surviving just fine. Down here it is steadily getting hotter, much to our bewilderment. Though we have gradually acclimatized to the oppressive heat, the warmest months are yet to arrive. From what we have been told, April is a month of just trying to survive. This wet season we had little rain, which means that in a couple weeks the water will be turned off in the afternoons for several hours. We are hoping to spend a substantial amount of time during the next couple months up in the mountains. So to prepare, we took a mini-vacation last week to Matagalpa and Jinotega, both towns in the mountains.

Matagalpa has about 100,000 people in it, while Jinotega has only 50,000 people. They are both beautiful places cradled in the mountains. In Matagalpa we took a tour of a chocolate factory called El Castillo chocolate, because the Dutch guy who started it built a little castle to house the "factory." The operation is pretty small, but the chocolate produced is delicious. I was a little worried that Britsy was going to quit Green Pathways and work at the castle after smelling the sweet aromas of the cracked cocoa seeds. Fortunately my winning smile and witty charm seduced her back to Leon. We have a couple pictures of me demonstrating the seed crushing technique. Though I may not have shown much promise on the basketball court (we did win a game my senior year), I was fairly confident that my natural ability at seed breaking was going to win me a substantial job offer from the Castle. The worker next to me was giddy with surprise at my organic talent. Though she may have been 5-6 times more efficient than me, I believe my courage and care spoke for itself. If you ask Britsy she will tell you the woman was laughing at me not with me, but I am pretty sure I know when someone is laughing with me, people have been doing it all my life. Regardless, after buying probably five too many chocolate bars, one of which was 75% cocoa, we headed further into the mountains to Jinotega.

On the cusp of the cloud forest, Jinotega is the coffee mecca of Nicaragua. Here we took a coffee farm tour, watching them pick the fruits, clean them, dry them, and bag them. The farm we visited was not a tourist hotspot, so we got a lovely tour by the daughter of the farm owners. She said she was sixteen, but I am pretty sure she was 11. They were exceptionally kind and served delicious coffee.

Going a little further north, to a small town called San Rafael del Norte, we took a zipline tour in the cloud forest. Up here it was very cool and beautiful. Flying through mist enshrouded valleys was the highlight of our trip (except maybe devouring bar after bar of decadent chocolate). At one point Britsy went down one line first, and when she reached the platform and unhooked from the line, the guide told her to stand back because, "he is coming and he is out of control." When I heard this I took it as a compliment that I was pushing the envelope like only a hero would. Britsy assured me it was not meant as a compliment. Apparently it was meant that I am big and reckless. Could have fooled me. Anywho, the family run operation charged only ten dollars for something we would have paid much more. The mountains of Nicaragua are not part of the gringo trail, thus receive very few tourists. This is a shame as we have enjoyed this area the most...helped by the fact that it is so cool. But I suppose we should be grateful to get to enjoy such a gorgeous place all to ourselves...and all the people who actually live there. We have uploaded our photos from our four days there so click here and enjoy.

We hope you are all doing well and if anyone is cold remember that down here it is the "land of eternal spring" (technically that is Guatemala, but lets not get caught up in semantics), so feel free to visit.

Majestic Mountains Tour

Hi everyone,
So I (Britsy) went on my first, official tour with GP - a 3 day, 2 night tour to the mountains in the north. It was myself, Gemma and three Canadians...one of whom was the 2007 Canadian women's 100 mile run champion. Yeah, my two and half to maybe three miles on a good day treadmill jogs looked pretty pathetic compared to her. Anyways, it was a lot of fun to be on a tour and to get out of the heat of Leon. I was freezing both nights and wearing pants during the day, which was awesome. I added my photos to our snapfish account, so click here to check them out. It is really beautiful up there and oh yeah, wonderfully cold.
So for a breakdown of the trip. We left Leon and headed to Somoto Canyon close to Esteli. It is this beautiful, granite canyon that was only "discovered" (aka when white people stumbled into it) in 2003. We boated down part of it and then tubed a section. The guys jumped off these huge rocks at one point, so I told Graham when he leads it, if he doesn't jump off, then he's a huge sissy. So we'll see. Although to be fair I didn't jump either...mmmm, I blame the collarbone, which is pretty much 100% now thankfully.
After the canyon, we drove through Esteli to a place called Miraflor, it is a protected natural reserve, but also a working community that supports over 4,000 people. All the people have formed cooperatives and make a living through eco-tourism or sustainable agriculture. We camped on the property of the head of the largest coffee cooperative (the staple crop in Miraflor) the first night and enjoyed a HUGE tipica dinner, followed by a campfire. No one else was really eating the marshmallows we had brought, so I pounded way more than my fair share.
The night was freezing, windy, rainy and incredibly enjoyable. We woke up to a thick fog enveloping our tents. We had another huge meal with the family there, which included spaghetti noodles (no sauce), gallo pinto (mixed and fried rice and beans), a kind of crazy veggie concoction (including ground soy meat, zucchini, squash, soy beans), platanos (plantains cut thickly and then fried), whole wheat tortillas and rice pudding. It was insanely big and that was just a good, normal breakfast for them. Then we took a three hour coffee tour with Don Adolfo (the head of the cooperative and father in the family) through his coffee fields, coffee husk fermentation station, the massive de-pulper, washing stations etc. It was cool to see each step in the process.
We then drove further up into the cloud forest, where we took a sweet nature hike instead of eating lunch. We saw Golden Orioles, Parakeets as well as a slew of blooming orchids. The trees were covered in Spanish moss and we saw a 250 year old strangler fig. Basically it starts as a vine in the canopy and then eventually strangles the host tree, killing it and leaving a huge hollow space inside. We came back and I was asleep by 8 pm. In the morning, after an early morning tortilla making lesson, we visited the massive cigar factory in Esteli. It was really interesting, but the smell of the place was almost unbearable. They basically ferment the tobacco leaves and ammonia naturally comes out and it is overpowering. The Canadians took some samples home, so they were happy. We quickly visited a waterfall nearby, grabbed some lunch and headed home. All in all, it went really well and I look forward to doing it again - mainly for the cold. Hopefully Graham and I will be able to lead it together soon as well. Anyways, hope all is well and things are picking up at GP!

Volcano Boarding

So, I got to go on my first Graham Neale-led volcano boarding tour. I went mainly for photography purposes and to witness the magic. I was expecting to have some material that I could use to make fun of him later with, but I came home empty handed. I was extremely impressed and although our group was small and quiet (that's a diplomatic way to say it right?), Graham was informative, thorough and entertaining. He actually knew a lot about the volcano and its geology as well as history of the area etc. Nobody asked him if he was a scientist this time, which according to him happens somtimes...so I no longer believe that. Anyways, I took a ton of photos and put them up on Snapfish. Click here to see the new Volcano Boarding album.

The photos start with us driving to the volcano, where the only traffic we hit were serious herds of cows and horses. Then we get to the volcano and there are a lot of everyone following Graham, carrying their boards up the path. He stopped at various points to talk about the volcano and so there are A LOT of photos of hiim doing that too. We hike past two craters and have some amazing views along the way. Then everyone puts on their bright orange jumpsuits and goggles and Graham instructs them before sending them down the mountain. Apparently one of the guys on the tour today was the slowest Graham had seen to date, so that was kind of funny. Everything went well and everyone had a lot of fun so all in all Graham Neale's Volcano Boarding Tour was a wild success. Oh and I took a couple of videos, which I will upload later.