Nicaragua...various thoughts and photos.

We are in Granada expecting the Semana Santa (Holy Week) festivities to really pick up today. We thought we would put up some photos from our time in Nicaragua so far and throw up some random thoughts.

This is a photo of the front wall of the small church in Solentiname. Really beautiful and is in a close tie for Adam's favorite church art with First Baptist Church of Matanzas, Cuba.


We got to meet our first tarantula. For as beautiful as Solentiname was, it was really hot and full of bugs and such.


This is a picture with our friend Richard. This is a fun story that tells a lot about Nicaraguan culture. We met Richard because we wanted a drink and went into a little store. But stores are not just stores, they are usually also someone's living room. The bottles are considered valuable and the stores are persistent about getting the glass bottles back, so part of getting a drink is sitting down in the living room in a rocking chair and chatting with the people there. Richard's mother sold us the drinks and we quickly started chatting with Richard. He is a big Creedance Clearwater Revival fan, so we knew he must be a good guy. We ended spending a few days in San Carlos and spent a lot of time with him. Anything we expressed interest in, he would help us find more information about, would tell us his own stories or help us to find it somewhere. We told him we were trying to track down a Sandinista t-shirt for a friend. He went to the local headquarters, but when they were closed, he showed up the day we left with shirts from his own closet. We tried to refuse the shirts or at least pay for them, but he would have none of it and instead threw in some of his mother's home made jam and some Guayabas from the tree in his yard. A warm welcome to Nicaragua to say the least.


We headed to a small island made up of two volcanoes, one active, the other not with a small isthmus connecting the two. The boat ride there across Lago Nicaragua took about 13 hours, so we set up the hammock and tried to rest as we rocked all the way there.


The island is full of neat little communities, great swimming spots and nice hikes. This is the active volcano.


One of our longest hikes ended at the base of this waterfall. Really beautiful little place.



We found a quiet little hostel to relax in for the week. We have little to do except for read in the hammock and wander around town watching the Semana Santa festivities develop.


We are suckers for colonial cities and colorful cathedrals. Granada is a very picturesque place with a fairly nice vibe although the ex-pat invasion has really changed its dynamics and hearing English walking down any street is not out of the norm, in fact we ran into two guys from NC that went to UNC when we unfortunatley went to watch the basketball finals.

Speaking of language, we had a request for an entry on language. We still speak English with one another, however, language has been a fun thing for us. Each country has its own set of slang or its own set of accents and it is fun for people who speak good spanish to constantly try to adjust spanish to fit in with the locals. It can sometimes take a few days for the brain to catch up with a new accent, but it always happens. Here are a few examples to illustrate the point.
The word for street in Spanish is 'calle.' In Argentina, one must pronounce this 'cah-shay' or else you will likely not be understood. Here in Nicaragua, no one would have a clue what you were referring to if you said 'cah-shay' as it is pronounced, cah'yay. Another fun example of the differences also has a cultural aspect to it. In Argentina as well as several Central American countries, there is a verbe tense that is considered to be very informal. It is Second Person. The cultural aspect is particularly present in Central America. If two men are speaking to one another, it is somewhat taboo for a man to use the 'tu' form with another man, but instead is expected to use the 'vos' form (the form I refer to before as the very informal tense). It has a different conjugation from the tu form as well. In case there are aspiring Spanish speakers, I will attempt to share the conjugation, though I have never formally learned it and may be wrong (if someone sees an error, let me know).
'Vos' conjugation is just the tu form, but with the accent moved to the last vowel. The biggest difference is with irregular verbs, which become regular. For example, the tu for of querer is quieres, however the vos form would be queres, with the emphasis on the last 'es.' Tener is tienes in tu form, tenes in vos.
It is acceptable to use between women or between men and women, but is not as expected as between two men. Non native spanish speakers get a pass (as they do on many cultural expectations), and no one thinks twice if you use the tu form as a non native speaker, however, if you are able to use it, you gain points and most people are rather impressed. It can also gain machismo points, which is a whole other cultural point that is not worth going into today.

-Politics here are very interesting. We have had no less than 4-5 people in the past week and a half show us bullet wounds in their bodies and even more discuss people they lost in the war. They tell us this, usually, with a great deal of compassion in order to teach us about what they went through. They express a great deal of anger toward Ronald Reagan, but thankfully for us, they differentiate between what a former president did and what two backpackers should be held responsible for and desire our friendship. We welcome these conversations with people as they tend to be a fascinating window into that person's experiences. We often apologize on behalf of our country for its behavior in the 80's, not really sure what else we can do. We are not sure we have been granted any authority to do this by our government, but we do it anyway. Perhaps a controversial subject, but this has been a big part of our experience here in Nicaragua thus far (more so than in any other country) and thus deserves to be shared.

-Hope everyone thoroughly enjoyed our April Fools joke. We planned that one for a long time. The one thing that was true is that our parents are coming to visit us in Guatemala at the end of May. We are trying to plan lots of adventure for them.

-The beard. Adam has now been either called or compared to the following people-Osama bin Laden (ouch!), Jesus, Santa Claus, Chuck Norris (double ouch!!!), the unibomber, and Kenny Rogers.

-With the sad events of the week (the evil college basketball empire winning again), we were glad to run into this guy, sporting a happier, more holy and righteous jersey.


-We mentioned Semana Santa a few times during this post, but it may deserve a bit more attention. Semana Santa is the week leading to Easter. If we were to rate holidays on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the biggest and most celebrated, Christmas in latin america would be a 6, Carnaval would be a 4, New Years would be a 5, and Semana Santa would be an 11. The streets are often filled with processions, each church brakes out its own marching band, with an instrumentation of about 4 trumpets, 4 trombones and 4 sousaphones. Palm leaves are used liberally and many processions carry an altar that is high enough to require a person in charge of lifting the power lines up with a long wooden stick. We haven't seen the best of it, as today is Maundy Thursday and the real beginning of the festivities, so we look forward to sharing more as the week goes on.