Nicaragua

I spent the last couple of days in Nicaragua. It was really charming and the people were very warm. Granada was an absolutely excellent city, with colonial style houses, a great square, etc... The morning there I spent walking around, and had a seafood soup, which can be seen below. I should be much healthier now though, I was told to suck the brain out through the eyes. I can´t say it tasted great, nor can I say I feel much better. Maybe I am smarter now though?

In any case, to get Granada, I had to take a taxi from Managua, with several others. It was Sunday and there were no more buses. I had an excellent conversation with the driver about prices, the economic state, etc.. Here are a few details. A factory worker earns aprox. $40 per month, for a 8 hour day, but all work overtime to get to about $100 per month, or 16 hour days. Also, there is a major power problem there, where the power gets shut off nightly. THe KW costs $0.80-0.90, so most people are hooked up illegaly. Anyway, I will write more later.



After leaving Granada, I headed to San Juan del Sur to try and learn to do a bit of surfing. The sunset is of the bay, the night I arrived. The picture of the bus is similar to the one I took there (about $1, 2 hours), but my bus was passing this bus when I took the picture. Keep in mind, that I didn´t ride on the top of the bus, though that was an option. I did chose to ride in the bus, crowded as it was, because I am slowly maturing and being much safer, so need to worry about me.

The following morning, I rented a board, and headed to that bay, but the waves were too small to ride. I then caught a shuttle (a broken down looking pickup truck which carried 8 boards, 2 boogie boards, and 10 people) down a really bad dirt road to a famous beach called Playa Madera. There, on the other hand, the waves were too big to surf, and I boogie boarded most of the day. The funny part of the ride, however, was that I met a girl named Rebecca Zgraggen. We started off speaking Spanish, then realized we could speak english, and I eventually found out she grew up in my mom´s hometown in Switzerland and we actually knew people. In any case, that was an excellent lazy day at the beach.