Jon Came to Town!

Well another visitor has come and gone. It's still awesome to have company so feel free to come on down :) About a month ago my brother sent me an email saying, "I hear you're homesick...tx are 500...I'm free the 8th. Realistic?" I'm not summarizing here. That was the extent of the email. At first I wondered what in Texas was $500...a slow moment for me that I'm not too ashamed to admit to having. Two days later he had his tickets = Oct. 8th-16th.

We made plans and he arrived on time around noon on the 8th. We carefully chose a taxi cab, making sure all the numbers matched up and I checked out the guy's ID (taxis are a little dangerous sometimes). Everything checked out and we were off...to pick up the driver's son for baseball practice. After that we were on our way to Leon. It's a city famous for the insane number of churches it has...but we were going to a different reason: to hike up and sled down the side of a volcano.

Cerro Negro is the youngest volcano in Central America and is located about an hour outside of the city of Leon. There are two companies who offer volcano boarding that I know about: Bigfoot and Quetzal Trekkers. We wanted to go with Quetzal Trekkers because they let you go up and down twice for the same price...unfortunately there weren't enough people to warrant them going so we ended up defecting to Bigfoot. Still awesome but a second run is necessary because on the first one we had no clue what we were doing.

The hike up took about 45 minutes and then it was time to go down. I'm still mystified as to how the volcano grew so high while we climbed because it definitely didn't seem that big from ground level. It was scary. Our guide Roger explained how to steer and how to sit on the sleds. The record is 82 kph. No. I am NOT kidding. Jon and I cruised on our sleds at about 45 kph. It was way harder than it looked. I thought we'd just sit down and go in a straight line. That was not the case. I ended up having to stop, stand up and clean the volcanic rocks off my board about 4x. I'm pretty sure Jon only had to stop once. By the time I got to the bottom I was covered in black dust...a quick rinse of the mouth was necessary.

Once we got back to the hostel and showered we were off the the crater lake...still one of my favorite places in Nicaragua. We went for a swim, ate delicious pizza, and had a rather revealing conversation with a Swiss woman who has apparently been constipated for the last three years. Yeah...that was our first conversation with her. Anyways, the lake was beautiful as always and I even convinced Jon to put on some sunscreen while we were there (it's a little dark in the pic but I'm wiping sunscreen on his face). We caught the 11:30AM bus out of the crater and proceeded to Masaya where we'd be staying for a couple of nights with my PCV friend Alex. She's a pretty fabulous hostess.

In Masaya we ate a bunch of typical Nica food, which I'm not a huge fan of...except for gallo pinto which I could eat every day. Alex, Jon, and I went to the market, which is the largest in the country outside of Managua and walked around for most of the morning. While Jon normally cuts his hair himself he couldn't resist the $1.50 haircuts that were offered there. I mean...who can?! We saw the pigs' heads that are laying out for whoever wants to buy one (he almost couldn't resist those either but wasn't sure if one would fit in his carry on). We passed by the pinata place, plastics place, shoes place, candy place, food place, and every other kind of place you can imagine. All under one roof. An interesting morning but not such a great smell.

Our next stop was San Juan del Sur (near where Survivor was shot) to see some turtles lay some eggs. A couple PCV friends came with us. We stayed at a cheap hostel and signed up for a turtle tour. The woman I'd emailed about it a week beforehand said they'd been going every night and that it was high season or whatever. She is a dirty liar. Our tour was supposed to leave that night at 6PM...we didn't leave until almost 7. I hate waiting. I know, I know, who likes it? I'm just saying. An hour later we pulled up to the reserve and the guards told us there was a turtle on the beach right then. We headed out and saw it lay eggs. It was still breath-taking and surreal. Then we walked on the beach for an hour or so. It was beautiful and deserted of both people and turtles. I was disappointed because I thought there'd be a ton, but I'm glad we at least saw one.

The next day we hung out on the beach all day, got banana splits for lunch (Jon's first EVER) and went to the circus at night. That's right, the circus. It's actually the second one I've been to since being here. This one was way better. Granted, most of the performers were under the age of 12 so I think some child labor laws might have been broken but, it was entertaining. There was a 10 year old contortionist who had arms of steel (straight up hand stand for at least 2 minutes). There were two boys around the age of 15 who flipped each other around. There was a 5 year old boy clown. There was a troupe of boys ages 3-12 who did flips on a giant trampoline (while older people pulled the edges so it wouldn't break!). There were other human trick people.

FINALLY we went to our last stop: my training town! They were in the Fiestas Patronales (patron saint parties). We stayed with some Nica friends of mine who are conveniently the owners of the ice cream store. The highlights of our stay there were the bull-riding competition and the fiesta at night. During bull-riding competitions in this town you pay $2 for a seat, $1.50 for no seat, or FREE if you GO INTO THE RING. We paid $2. Basically in the ring there are the guys working the bull-riding and the drunk guys. A guy rides one of the bulls and jumps off when it looses steam. Then everyone else in the ring tries to get it riled up again by throwing stuff at it or waving those red towel-like things at it. We stayed for about 5 of the bulls. All of the riders did okay...except for one who fell off, got trampled, passed out and had to be hauled out of the ring. Don't worry, he woke up within about 15 minutes. He had a pretty bad limp though. I'm not a doctor, but I'd say he broke a bone.

Saturday afternoon I dropped Jon off at the airport and headed back to Matiguas with my bag full of dirty clothes. Sunday was not fun. I hate washing clothes.

Short term future: I take the GRE this Saturday in Managua. Pray that I guess right!

Slightly longer term future: I'LL BE HOME IN LESS THAN TWO MONTHS!