Leon - city of the revolution...and churches

December brought cooler temperatures and more visitors to Nicaragua, auspicious for a trip up to Leon - the capital of the revolution in Nicaragua, the colonial city that rivaled Granada for dominance in the 1800s (and which never got burned down), and the city that is known for being even hotter than Granada (a cool 91 degrees today as I write, only 81 degrees in Granada). Leon is the second largest city in Nicaragua in its northwest and has long been an intellectual and political center for the country with quite a few universities and a whole lot of churches. Until 1858, when Managua was chosen as the capital of Nicaragua, Leon and Granada switched off as capital of the country, and since Leon never burned down, historical buildings and monuments are in much better shape.

My friends Rachel and Ashley, who I got to know in Guatemala as a Peace Corps volunteer, came down to Nicaragua from New Orleans and Florida for a tropical holiday and we were off to the races! We headed up to Leon on public transportation and got there after three and a half hours on microbuses.

 Reunited and it feels so good!

Our first day in Leon, we walked around the historical center, visited a lot of churches and checked out the really cool murals in the university center area that document the repression of the Somoza regime. As the capital of the revolution (the first Somoza was killed by a poet and university student in Leon in 1956), there is a lot of support for Sandinistas to this day, and it was interesting to see the murals depicting revolutionary heroes and Daniel Ortega (none of that in Granada). Below, a selection of photos from our wanderings around town.

Traditional Giant in front of Municipal City Hall

 One of many churches, this one is notable for the cartoon-strip like scenes on the front facade

 With Ruben Dario's grave in the Cathedral of Leon - the largest Cathedral in all of Central America and resting place of many a famous Nicaraguan

 Mural next to the monument of martyrs of the revolution with the famous Sandino shadow

 Monument to martyrs of the revolution, part of the massive Cathedral in the background

 Graffiti supporting Ortega under posters for the last election in November. "Hugo, Daniel, and Fidel - all of Leon is with him"

 Monument to four university students killed by the National Guard in a protest in 1959

 Depiction of the massacre of students by the national guard - four killed can be seen on the right, an additional 41 students were injured when the National Guard shot into the crowd of protesting students. More about universities in Nicaragua and this event can be found in this article

Clockwise from top left: Sandino in the sun, three founders of the FSLN (Fonseca and Borge met as university students in Leon), and Sandinistas taking up arms. Quote on the top right from Augusto Cesar Sandino: "We will go towards the sun of liberty or towards death, and if we die our cause will continue on, others will follow us."

 Daniel Ortega with a mural celebrating the literacy campaign that the Sandinistas undertook when they came to power

 Perhaps the most photographed church in Leon, the beautiful La Recoleccion has a Mexican-baroque style

Our second day in Leon, I participated in my second (and last) extreme sporting experience - climbing up a volcano in order to slide down on a sled. Ashley and Rachel were excited to participate in this crazy activity, which is according to our guide the second highest rated extreme sport for travelers. We drove an hour or so outside of Leon to Cerro Negro (Black Hill) the youngest (circa 1850), smallest (700 meters tall), and most active volcano in Nicaragua. Since we were 200 meters above sea-level already, we spent most of the morning hiking up 500 meters and then approximately 2 minutes to slide down (well, it took me 2 minutes, others spent closer to 30 seconds on the descent).

 Pre-hike with our sleds, Cerro Negro behind us. To the left you can see the smaller-looking hill - that is where three different craters have formed, known as the three graces (las Tres Gracias). These craters indicate that the volcanic activity is shifting around Cerro Negro.

At the start of our climb

 Almost to the top!

Mineral deposits in the center crater behind us

I was not excited about sliding down the volcano, but since that is what I had signed up for, down I went. Before the descent, we were told how we could control our speed, so I sat as straight as possible and dug my heels in as hard as I could. Ashley took a video of my descent, which was probably the slowest of the day, but it felt unbelievably fast to me!

Notice all the dust from my feet digging in HARD

We returned to Leon dusty and tired, and the next day went back to Granada to get ready for a trip to another part of Nicaragua - Little Corn Island in the Caribbean -  where we'd meet up with Jesse and Jasmine, Aaron's brother and his girlfriend.

Northern Nica with Nikki

As sad as we were to see Roque and Aimee go back to California, we had Nikki with us for an additional week of travel and we were ready to cool down. First, Nikki and I took a short trip to the top of Mombacho, the volcano right outside of Granada to see its cloud forest. Mombacho rises 1400 meters above sea level and is MUCH cooler than Granada thanks to both its height and extensive vegetation. 

 Nikki leading the way on our Mombacho hike

Usually the top of Mombacho is covered in clouds, but we got lucky on our hike since it was clear and got to see amazing views of Lake Nicaragua and Granada. 

 Looking out over Granada and the lake. One the right side on the photo, around the peninsula, are 365 of small islands known as the Isletas that were created when Mombacho exploded many years ago. 

Getting a taste of cooler weather on top of Mombacho got me excited for more - time to head to the highlands. We headed to Matagalpa, The Pearl of the North, a city in the mountainous north of the country that averages ten degrees cooler than Granada (still 80%+ humidity). Matagalpa is the second most important city economically in Nicaragua since it is in the center of coffee production - one of Nicaragua's most famous exports. Our timing for the trip was also auspicious - the coffee harvest begins in November, so we would get to see coffee harvesting and production in process!

Matagalpa is a part of Nicaragua with a lot of European influence, especially German. In the 1800s, gold was discovered around Matagalpa, attracting immigrants. Some Germans who settled in Matagalpa acquired coffee beans from Carazo (I wrote about coffee in Carazo in this previous post) and planted them. Coffee did really well and quickly production in and around Matagalpa overtook the coffee production in the hotter and lower elevations of Carazo. The success of coffee attracted even more immigrants, and a lot of the German immigrants who moved to Matagalpa ended up marrying local women and have descendants living in Matagalpa to this day.

Our home-base for the trip was Selva Negra - an eco-lodge twenty minutes outside of Matagalpa up a mountain owned by a German-Nicaraguan coffee family. Selva Negra (named after the Black Forest in Germany) is a 100 plus year old coffee plantation which has been by a fourth and fifth generation Nicaraguan-German couple for the past 40 years. Selva Negra is in a beautiful location with a lot of potential to be a great hotel/tour operator/restaurant...potential not yet fully realized. While at Selva Negra, we did some hiking, took tours of the coffee plantation, and enjoyed sitting outdoors with light sweaters on.

Heading out for an early morning nature tour

 Humongous ficus tree 

The highlight of the trip to Matagalpa for me was visiting a few women's cooperatives - both the journey and destinations were great. One afternoon we headed out to find a weaving cooperative and a jewelry cooperative. The weaving cooperative, Telares Indigenas, El Chile, in a small community thirty minutes outside of Matagalpa is well-known in Nicaragua, so we popped the name of the community into GPS and headed off to find the group. Unfortunately, as is often the case when I am in charge of directions, we missed our exit to El Chile off of the highway and while looking for a place on the road to safely turn around, GPS found a new route for us to take. We got onto a gravel road with our low Toyota Yaris and hoped for the best. The road started off pretty smooth as we passed children and families in houses staring at us as we drove by. After five minutes, we got to a huge hill and as we skidded down, we realized that there was no way we would be able to return the way we had come.

We continued on the road, passing over a riverbed and by cows, until we got to another hill that we could not climb. Not bueno. Since we couldn't go forward, we decided to turn back and try our luck on the hill we had skidded down since we could not see any other way out. As expected, we could not climb up the hill we skidded down, we were stuck. Our rental car had service for calling a tow truck, but since we had no idea where we were, getting service would take a while, so I decided to try my luck with the locals. The house next to where our car was stuck told us that another house had a truck, so I hiked up to ask for help towing us out. I went up to the house where two women were shucking corn and asked if anyone could help us with a truck and apologized for the inconvenience. The women went back to speak to someone, and the entire family came out to see the stranded gringos (at least three men, five children, and three or four additional women). One man, Abner, told us there was another road that we could take to get out and joined us in the car, directing us to a road that GPS had not highlighted as a way out. Abner sat in the car with us and explained that we had gotten lost and taken the wrong exit (we realized this when we saw the cows) but that we should not worry since we were not the first people this had happened to and that he would explain the right way to go. As we drove out on a new road to the highway, he told us a little bit about his family and within five minutes we were back on the highway. Before dropping him off, Abner pointed out a few landmarks to make sure we found our way to El Chile and declined our offer to reimburse him for his help. Getting lost and having Abner help us get back on track was both the most stressful and most wonderful part of the day, reminding me of the hospitality I used to get from women's groups I worked with as a Peace Corps volunteer.

After our unexpected detour, and with Abner's clear instructions, we made it to El Chile and met the group of women weaving there. The women weavers of El Chile are well known in Nicaragua and have been highlighted in a few different national news pieces. The story of the cooperative in sum is that the women in this community used to weave, but that tradition was stopped by Somoza during the 1940s as part of his effort to modernize Nicaragua. In 1984, an Argentinian woman inspired by the revolution came to Nicaragua and ended up in El Chile, where she taught women how to weave incorporating new techniques to make their work more economically viable. With the support of Ernesto Cardenal, the culture minister, the women's cooperative was formed, women were trained, and they began to produce and sell weavings. While their weaving is not purely traditional, traditional weaving takes months to produce and would need to have a very high sales cost to cover production, the tradition of weaving is something that has been re-established in this community and cooperative members are able to earn a good income through their sales.

 Aaron and Nikki with some members of the cooperative and their rugs

 Outside the cooperative with our purchases!

After finding El Chile, getting to the women's cooperative making seed jewelry was much easier. This women's cooperative, Artesanias Mujeres del Plomo, is much smaller with four members and started out with a few women trying to find a way to make income in a community that does not have much by way of jobs. After testing out jam-making, the women switched to jewelry made out of seeds and make really beautiful earrings, necklaces, and bracelets that are also sold around the country. While there are only four women in the cooperative, they have children in the community who find seeds and provide them with school supplies, and they have teens in the community that are learning how to make jewelry as well. With money from sales, the cooperative has purchased a house to showcase their jewelry and built up a patio for jewelry-making classes.

 Nikki with the leader of the El Plomo cooperative

Outside of visiting cooperatives, the majority of our time in Matagalpa was spent in nature. We went on a coffee tour one morning while harvest was in full swing and got to observe the wet-milling process, and we went on a tour of a cacao plantation and processing facility. 

 In the coffee field at Selva Negra

 The end of the coffee wet-milling process at Selva Negra (waste water with coffee bean shells is washed out, leaving quality coffee to then be taken to dry)

 Victor, President of a cacao cooperative, sharing some heirloom cacao from his plantation

 With a cacao tree full of not-quite-ripe pods, eating a pod from another tree

 Victor with Jackson, the plantation caretaker's son, in his plantation

 Elias, Jackson's little brother, enjoying cacao

We finished our trip to Matagalpa off with a trip to a beautiful waterfall called Cascada Blanca (White Waterfall).

 Sign on a tree next to Cascada Blanca says that swimming is not allowed due to its depth and mystery. According to our guide, the sign is to discourage people from entering the water more than anything during the coffee season, when water from wet-milling is dumped back into rivers, polluting them and making the water unsafe for swimming.

Cooling off at Cascada Blanca

Traveling to Matagalpa with Nikki was literally and figuratively cool. We are now waiting for our next batch of guests to come to explore some hotter parts of the country later this month - Leon and the Corn Islands coming soon!

Primera Visita!

Over the past two weeks, Aaron and I have hosted our first guests to Nicaragua – Roque, Aimee, and Nikki (his daughter, her mother and my comadre, and Aaron’s mom)! For one week, all five of us traveled to the island of Ometepe, Playa El Coco on the Pacific Coast, and Granada. The trip was amazing and wonderful and really helped highlight what a beautiful country Nicaragua is (not that I cannot see it, but when we are sitting at home sweating and trying to kill mosquitoes that somehow make it into our mosquito net, I lose perspective).

Aimee and Roque arrived a day before Nikki, and when we told them that a volcano in between Managua and Granada where you could see the lava, they told us that they had to see it. So when Nikki arrived, we picked her up at the airport and told her we were having lava for dinner. 

The Masaya volcano has a bunch of craters and around 7 months ago, one of them erupted, leaving lava visible. A reddish sulfer haze can be seen above the Masaya Volcano at all times, and at night cars wait in line to go to the top of the crater and look down at the lava. We joined the line of waiting cars to have our brush with lava. Safety measures in Nicaragua are more lax than I expect they would be in the USA - after an hour of waiting we drove up to the top of the crater and were asked to back into our parking space (for a speedier exit in case of a new explosion?) and then were allowed to walk to the edge of the crater to peer down into the crater with a waist-high stone ridge as our only protection. The view from the top was like THIS - both really cool (we were a bit higher than the video vantage point) and scary. After fifteen minutes of staring into the center of the earth, we went back to Granada for one night's rest before continuing our volcano tour. 

The next day, we headed out to Ometepe island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua to spend three days at on a secluded farm on Maderas Volcano (Ometepe is the largest island in Lake Nicaragua and has two volcanoes connected by an estuary, making it look from above like an infinity symbol. Volcan Concepcion is the larger of the two volcanoes, is sometimes active, and is on the more populated side of the island. Volcan Maderas is inactive and less touristy since it is harder to get to and most people do not travel with cars to the island - we did).

Aimee and Roque ready to get on the boat to Ometepe (sadly, we did not get to ride Ferry El Che Guevara)

 Roque steering the ship to Ometepe (you can see Concepcion Volcano in the background, Maderas Volcano is behind Roque)

After an hourlong boat ride, we arrived on Ometepe and drove forty-five minutes around the island, arriving at Finca Mystica around sunset. Finca Mystica is a beautiful eco-lodge with cob cabins built by Americans Ryan and Angela, who bought the property ten years ago. For some reason, Finca Mystica is not in Lonely Planet, but it is the #1 rated specialty lodging on the island and if anyone is thinking about where to stay on the island - this is the place to go. When we arrived at F.M., it was to the sounds of howler monkeys, who live in the trees around Finca Mystica and who were having a loud argument with the dogs who were barking up at them. 

 Sunset at Finca Mystica

Roque at the end of a path

Ryan recommended a lot of activities for our time on the island, and we opted for one activity a day followed by hanging out at the beautiful F.M. On our first full day, we did a kayaking trip into an estuary in between the two sides of the island and we saw caymans, turtles, and a lot of birds. It was beautiful and Roque helped Aimee and I kayak through the estuary and then back through the lake. 

The next day, we decided to do a recommended hike up to a nearby waterfall. Ryan told us that the hike from Finca Mystica to the waterfall was 3-5 hours round trip, a slight underestimation of how long it would take us. With a 4x4, we were able to drive halfway up a half washed out dirt road to the waterfall, cutting the journey by at least half. Once we started walking, we realized that without the 4x4 we would not have been able to make it to the waterfall - the trail was extremely steep and challenging. Nikki and Roque were the oldest (72) and youngest (5 and 1/2) people on the trail by at least 15 years on each end, so our abbreviated trip ended up taking close to four hours! Going at a slower pace, we got to see a lot of beautiful butterflies, some gorgeous trees, and found quality walking sticks for Ro and Nikki.

 Taking a break on the trail up to the waterfall

We made it! Time to cool off under the waterfall

When we got back to the lodge after our big hike, half catatonic, Ryan was worried about reports of Hurricane Otto - a late-season hurricane headed to Nicaragua with projections of more rain in two days than in an average rainy season! As the country prepared for the worst, we wondered if we should continue on to Playa El Coco on the Pacific Coast. Since we already had plans to go, Aimee loves the ocean, and were not sure what was going on with the Hurricane, we decided to stick to our plan.

Playa El Coco is where Aaron and I went in August and saw baby turtles released into the ocean and we planned to take our guests to the same beach in the hopes of seeing some of the last turtles of the season. When we got to Playa El Coco, it was practically deserted, unlike the last time we had been there. Aimee could not wait to get in the water and plunged in within minutes of getting on the beach. Aaron and I had heard of stingrays sometimes being in the water when the water is especially warm (known as aguas malas, literal translation - bad waters), so we warned her to shuffle her feet to avoid getting stung, and off she went into the waves.

 Roque an Aaron making sand art

After a short time in the water, Aimee came out...unexpected from our human fish. Unfortunately, Aimee had entered aguas malas and was stung by a stingray while shuffling along in the sand. When I told some people at the local store, they said it could be due to the hurricane that the ocean waters had been all mixed up and turned bad. Luckily for us, Dr. Sachs had access to internet and found an effective cure - submerging the sting in piping hot water for 60-90 minutes neutralizes stingray venom - we had Aimee's foot in scalding water for 90 minutes and her sting stopped hurting and bleeding.

Roque running to Aimee

Helping mom walk ashore

We had planned on staying on the beach for two days, but everyone's desire to get into the water was dampened by the sting ray (pun intended), so we headed back to Granada the next morning. As unlucky as Aimee's sting was, the change in plans that it precipitated were very auspicious - within a few hours of our leaving, an earthquake off the coast of El Salvador led to a tsunami warning and the whole coastal area we had been in was evacuated (there was no tsunami, so ultimately everyone was OK, thankfully).

Back in Granada, we waited for the hurricane to land, but it ended up losing a lot of steam upon hitting land and Aimee and Roque had a beautiful last few days in Nicaragua. Our time in Granada was spent on play dates with Silvana (Aaron's friend Jefferson's daughter), and walked around town taking in the sites, taking a chocolate tour, and swimming in our backyard pool.

 Family portrait at the cultural center

 Roque with all her parents at the Cultural Center

The Choco Museo Bean to Bar tour was surprisingly really fun - we learned about the history of cacao, got to roast some, and made a few different chocolate beverages from throughout history before each getting to make our own bar. 

 Learning a little bit about cacao history

 Doing the special song and dance to help roast the cacao seeds - "Bate, Bate, Chocolate!"

 Tasting one of our chocolate drinks (made with the cacao that we roasted and mashed ourselves!) - Mayan-style, Aztec-style, or European-style.

 Roque mixing one of our drinks with the molinillo

Getting ready to make her chocolate bar

Roque riding Aimee around the pool

Saying goodbye to Aimee and Roque was really hard, but more traveling was yet to come! Nikki stayed on another week for a trip up north to the cloud forest near Matagalpa, coming up next.

Our beautiful first guests drinking tiste at the Masaya crafts market