updates plus some photos of estelí

i spent all day yesterday on a series of chicken buses from estelí through honduras, which i´m sure some of you are familiar with -- former u.s. school buses painted all these crazy colors crammed with people, bags, bags of potatoes, furniture, musical instruments, bicycles, and of course, chickens. the other gringo on all the buses i seemed to be on was this 40ish belgian version of jamie mccallum, and we´re now traveling together for a couple days. once we got to tegucigalpa, honduras, all the bus companies have their own bus stations and it´s pretty confusing to figure out where to go. we wanted to get to san pedro sula, which is in the north, so the guy at one bus station told us to get in a cab to another one. we got there and upon purchasing tickets, realized this was the serious luxury bus line and we´d just paid about 15 bucks for a ticket. ugh. had a few beers in tegucigalpa and then hopped on the airplane-bus for the most incredible four hours worth of scenery i´ve ever seen. the stretch of highway between tegucigalpa and san pedro is stunning -- green mountains giving way to valleys with visible waterfalls, people selling pottery on the side of the road, i can´t believe more people don´t come here. i am in this awesome hostel in san pedro and heading to the copan ruins this afternoon.

ok,
here are some shots of the museum of heroes and martyrs in estelí. the outside had these murals and inside were collections of news clippings and photos of people from estelí killed during the revolution and the contra war. this museum was incredible. just one homemade, crowded little room, run by mothers of people killed, but so so powerful.

below, the guy on the left was the father of my host mother, geovanny. they look almost identical.

this bar in town was filled with FSLN, sandino and che guevara photos and sketches. here´s me with the local heroes:

and, i got an FSLN hat in leon!

i spent saturday in this gorgeous national nature reserve called miraflor, about two hours north of estelí by a (6am) bus. it was one of the first sandinista collective farms and still has several settlements of people living there. everything is farmed organically and there are miles of hiking trails and waterfalls and amazing trees and monkeys.

i went there with my norwegian friend kristen and although we´d paid for a guide in advance, we couldn´t find one once we got there. so we met this guy who lived on one of the farms nailing a horseshoe onto his horse. he said he´d be our guide for the day, for free, explaining that it was a collective and that´s just what you do. whatever commie!

he swam in the freezing river. we did not.