wrapping it up in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

San Juan del Sur is amazing. I could definitely spend a month here and am already contemplating how I can fit in another week on some part of this trip. Above is the family I´m staying with -- Jesus, Guadelupe and Jesus Jr. It´s funny, when I first walked into their house I assumed they were poor as the tiny bathroom/shower is outside with a small piece of aluminum for a roof and things seemed pretty barren. It´s interesting, as that impression was totally wrong. There are two maids in the house and it´s so uncomfortable that I haven´t done any dishes or lifted a finger this entire week. Last night they let me chop garlic though, which was very exciting. Jesus is a retired sailor and his son is a fish distributor. Yesterday he brought home shrimp and snook and we had a feast. The food here is surprisingly amazing. I can´t tell if everyone is eating this well or if Guadalupe just has some crazy skills in the kitchen but I´ve tried a million new things that I want to recreate at home. It´s also incredibly windy here this time of year and the power keeps going out. When the power goes out, the water stops flowing, so I have gotten used to flushing the toilet with a bucket of water.

Politically things seem quite interesting too. Even though my Spanish is on par with a three year old, I´ve been trying to decipher the morning paper. A few days ago was a front page shot of the president of Iran kissing a Nicaraguan child with Ortega in Managua. Yesterday´s front page announced that Ortega hadn´t appointed anyone to lead the police force or the FBI and inferred that he was going to lead those as well. He seems pretty controversial around here -- young people seem to like him but the family I´m staying with is upset and worried about reliving the days of government rationing. And then there´s some pipeline deal with Venezuela -- should be heating up. Doesn´t seem to stop all the American real estate speculators down here though. Perhaps they know something else..

Tomorrow I leave this lovely place and bus to the ferry which goes to the island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. I´m staying on this awesome organic cooperative coffee farm for the weekend and then heading to Granada on Sunday. Check it out: http://www.fincamagdalena.com

made it to nicaragua

from the top: a view from the bus riding through costa rica, at the nicaraguan border, my spanish class and a cheap shot of the beach in san juan del sur

made it! the border crossing was confusing as hell, thankfully met some nice kids from LA who helped me navigate the border (exit stamp in one unlabled line, then walk 10 minutes to enter nicaragua -- one person working at each station). the LA group rented a car and gave me a ride to san juan del sur. it´s pretty awesome here. i checked into the spanish school and was promptly hooked up with a host family. they are these two older folks with some grandchildren and children intermittenly around. the mother is a sweetheart and the father bears close resemblance to james earl jones. it´s awesome. not sure how much longer i can subsist on gallo pinto (rice and beans), but i´m doing my best. for lunch today she mixed in some deep fried shrimp that i was pretty psyched about.

the bus ride from jimenez to san jose, costa rica was much easier than i expected. the little girl in front of me kept peering around and staring at me for five minute sets, so i eventually gave her the earphones of my ipod. david bowie happened to be playing and she smiled at me the whole three minutes. after the song was over i thought i´d give her something a little more palatable perhaps and selected an abba song, but the smile faded and she gave the headphones back. priceless.

san jose was also better than i expected. made it into town around five and the art museum was still open so i had some time to check it out. hostel was a complete dump so i took myself out to a nice dinner and soon discovered i was on the lonely planet trail -- about half the people there were by themselves with their fat central-america-on-a-shoestrings.

class was great today and i have a significant amount of homework for tomorrow. went surfing with one of the spanish instructors and another student at this gorgeous beach about 20 minutes outside of town. the waves were small at first then eventually a big set came and i totally ate it. putting the surfing thing on hold for awhile..

this is a great little town - touristy, but mostly with nicaraugans. i´ll be here until friday and then heading to isla ometepe, the island in the middle of lake nicaragua for the weekend, and then on to granada to another spanish school.

howler monkeys, the end of extravagance and the case of the stolen purse

what a few days.

first of all, i´m totally bummed that marnie´s leaving tomorrow. it´s been so awesome with her here and this trip is going to be pretty different from here on out. ¨the end of extravagance¨is the next chapter. while we haven´t exactly been living large, we definitely have not been sleeping in bunkbeds or taking the chicken bus quite yet. that starts tomorrow when i get up at 5:30 to hop on a 6am ferry and then a bus to san jose, where i´ll stay for one night and then head to nicaragua. i´m looking forward to having a little bit of structure (for real!) and starting spanish classes. god knows i sure need them.

two days before we left zancudo, i am sitting on the porch with a book and marnie´s out in the ocean. this guy appears out of nowhere and strikes up a conversation and i´m thinking that this is strange but also a nice way to practice my spanish, so we end up talking for a half an hour or so. he eventually left and marnie came back and we got ready to go out. as we´re locking the door, he reappears and asks if he can use the outdoor shower. we said fine and went to talk to the cabina owner for a few minutes. we both had a weird feeling and came back about 20 minutes later. the padlock was still on our door, so we were relieved, but as soon as we got inside the bed looked really messed up and the sheets were overturned. stolen purse. why he didn´t take my ipod that was sitting right next to the bed, i have no idea, but he got my purse, which thankfully had nothing in it except my flashlight and some batteries. he´d reached through the bars on the window by the bed and we were pissed. we hopped on our wobbly bikes and headed into town for dinner. we spotted him on a pay phone in town and he didn´t look very happy to see us. we yelled at him to give me the bag back and he played dumb. anyways, as we´re going to sleep that night, we hear all these weird noises around the cabina. a half an hour later or so, there´s a knock on the door and it´s him with the soiled bag, which he claims to have found in the river. flashlight was gone, but the bag is back. i´m a little more on guard now.. however, the next day i got a surfing lesson from the husband of this girl we met at the disco on saturday night. i am positive that i looked like a complete moron, but i totally stood up!

we left zancudo and took a boat across the gulf to puerto jimenez and then got on the colectivo bus to this eco lodge in matapalo, about an hour south on the beach. the ride was crazy -- we were all crammed on this short bus, literally an old american school bus going over the bumpiest road i´ve ever been on (i´m sure there´s way more of this to come), a few bridges without guard rails and it feels like the whole thing is going to tip over. we met some awesome swedes and some people from brazil and they´d just been to nicaragua, so i got some tips on where to go up there. we spent two nights at this magical hippie lodge -- no electricity, no walls, just this gorgeous main room with chairs and a long table, all open and beautiful, where they made meals out of all organic ingredients. our little hut didn´t have any walls, just a roof and a platform and a couple of beds with mosquito netting. it´s right in the jungle and on the beach, so going to sleep there was amazing. the whole jungle was hissing and sounded alive and then the monkeys started screaming about 4 in the morning. we hiked up to this gorgeous waterfall and swam in some of the swimming holes along the way. saw a macaw and a million monkeys, an iguana, huge cockroaches and lizards and geckos everywhere. since we missed the early bus out of there this morning, we decided to try and hitch a ride instead. we waited in the sun for about an hour, and ended up hopping on this gasoline truck. these guys put our stuff in the back and we white-knuckled it in the cab squished between two men as this rickety truck made it down the bumpy roads, through streams and over the same bridges we´d come in on. having an amazing time and it´s a relief to be back in town..

love to you all!

panama city: casco antiguo, the old town, with the new skyline in the background

panama: bocas del toro, 7am

from l-r:
me drinking a beer on the porch of our beautiful cabina in playa zancudo, our cabina -- which was a few hundred feet from the deserted beach, a shot of the beach, the biggest shrimp i´ve ever eaten, marnie swimming in the river in matapalo, the river meeting the ocean in matapalo, marnie waiting for someone to give us a ride back to puerto jimenez!

i´ll figure out a better way to post these hopefully. this took like a half an hour. they are still playing buffalo soldier. jesus.

perfection

can´t post any photos on this computer but there are plenty of good ones for later on. marnie and i have spent the last few days in playa zancudo in the southwestern part of costa rica. it´s amazing here, no taco bells or many people at all, just a quiet beach town with a bumpy dirt road and a big beautiful ocean. the ride here was gorgeous -- several iguanas ran out on the road and we passed miles of palm trees and small towns and jungle. we are staying in this gorgeous cabina with our own kitchen and have made some pretty hilarious bike trips, sometimes after a few imperials, down the road to the grocery store. the last few days have consisted of getting up early, drinking coffee on the porch, reading, swimming, making food, swimming, reading, etc. it´s just what we both needed. last night was the town disco which only happens on saturdays so of course we had to partake. i was the beneficiary of an impromptu salsa lesson from a fisherman and marnie met some really sweet people who are going to take us to this other beach on tuesday and get us on some surfboards. it´s awesome to be out of the rain. our bug bites are starting to heal up and we´re here for a few more days..

Finally got a picture to work! To the left, it's the miraflores locks at the panama canal. We watched a bunch of ships go through and it was pretty awesome. To the right, is the requisite new years eve party shot. We are currently stuck in the rain in Bocas del Toro and are getting pretty stir crazy. Apparently there's lots to do here when it's sunny, but in the rain it's quite different.. we did go swimming at this gorgeous beach the first day we got in, but it's been raining since. Tomorrow morning we're getting out of here and heading to Playa Zancudo in Costa Rica. We've written you guys postcards but like many things in Panama, the post office won't have any postage until next week.

happy new year

i made it into panama city yesterday afternoon and met marnie at the lovely hostel we're staying at. we hopped in a cab to the old town where there are supposed to be interesting restaurants and bars, etc, but we couldn't find any of the places we'd heard of, so the cab driver took us out on the causeway to this TGI Fridays-esque outdoor restaurant where we rang in the new year with some excellent ceviche and cocktails and some pretty lame tourists. we decided to live it up anyways and ordered pina coladas and danced. afterwards we found where panamanians actually party and had a nightcap at this bar owned by these lebanese guys who ensured we had enough to drink. we did. got up early-ish today and headed to the parque natural metropolitano where there are hours of trails through the jungle. we watched a crew of anteaters for awhile and then made our way to the panama canal. the canal is incredible! we paid the full eight bucks to go up to the top of the visitors center and watch the ships go through the locks and then had lunch overlooking everything. we're going back out to the old town tonight and then getting on a plane tomorrow morning for bocas del toro, these islands in northwestern panama in the caribbean.

some of you have asked about the itinerary, so here's what i've got so far. it's definitely subject to change:

early january: panama city, bocas del toro and the pacific coast of panama, southern pacific coast of costa rica, perhaps zancudo (thanks desi!) and puerto jiminez and then hiking around in corcovado national park. (all with marnie)
mid january: heading up the pacific side of costa rica into nicaragua, enrolling at a spanish school in san juan del sur nicaragua
mid january: isla de ometepe in nicaragua (3 days?), then up to a week at a spanish school in grenada
late january/early february: about a week at a spanish school in leon and perhaps another week in esteli, nicaragua
mid february: meet rana in antigua, guatemala. we're going to travel through guatemala and belize -- heading to chichicastenango, lake atitlan, the tikal ruins, san ignacio in belize and caye caulker in belize.
early march: rana leaves and i head south on the coast in belize through possibly placencia and punta gorda, then back to guatemala for two months of spanish study in either xela, antigua, the lake or in flores, or a combination of some of those. i hope to make it to honduras and el salvador as well, we'll see what happens!

miss you all!