Nicaragua

Traveling in Central America is great...everything is so close together. It's like going to Wisconsin to get to another country. 2 buses and 2 hours from Monteverde, we were crossing the border for Nicaragua and what a difference it is. Nicaragua, finally, is what I expected South America to be over a year ago when I got here. Traveling is done in chicken buses and they're hilarious. If you remember the Bluebird yellow school buses that we took to 5th grade circa 1992, then you now can know what happens to those things when Americans are tired of using them; they send them to Nicaragua and then they're covered with house paint and used to transport people all over the country. After about 2 of these and a ferry crossing we got to Ometepe Island on Lago Nicaragua.

The island was formed by two competing volcanoes (the Nahuatl words ome (two) and tepetl (mountain), meaning two mountains) that sprouted up on either side. It has a small bustling population spread along the coast of the island. It's pretty beautiful and unspoiled since it's not incredibly easy to get to. We rented a motorcycle to be able to transport ourselves around since we wanted to stay on the outskirts of the island on a beach. We spent our time hiking up the largest of the volcanoes Concepcion and almost dying, swimming and walking around the reserve. I finally got to see wild monkeys (Capachins and howler monkeys) as well as a super strange looking bird with a ponytail called a white throated magpie (huge bird but fast, I wish I had a good picture).

Learning to drive a motorcycle was...interesting. It was only a 125 CC'er so not hard to handle. It only fell on me once. I had a hard time getting the hang of moving from idle to 1st gear and actually getting going since I never learned how to drive stick. I stalled out in the middle of a farm and couldn't get it started again. I spent 5 minutes trying over and over again to move without stalling out again in front of a Nicaraguan farmer who was obviously having a good time watching me. Denise tried it and moved forward on the first try. It was emasculating. However, by the end of the three days I'm now pretty sure I could go cross country in a Harley. The last day when we had to return the bike in the main town of Moyagalpa, we strapped our daybacks to the rear with bungies and took off for town.

When we stopped for gas 20 minutes later, I noticed something missing from the back; my bag. We frantically drove all the way back towards the beach peering in ditches, scrutinizing villagers looking for my bag and found nothing. I had no idea when it flew off and it was probably instantly scavenged by any Nicaraguan passing by so it was pointless to look for. And so goes the last of my remaining electronics; camera, ipod and some chargers. Luckily, I didn't have my computer in the pack. This is the last item that gives me any kind of comfort in this rough life as an international backpacker, I think I'd just weep and fly home if it was stolen or lost. My only solace is that a group of 10 year old Nicaraguans are sitting around my iPod in this moment watching old episodes of Family Guy and laughing at jokes they don't understand.

Losing the bag put a pallor on things but I guess I'm used to losing things at this point and, plus, now I have less weight to carry. Traveling is all about looking for silver lining in crap colored clouds sometimes. We got another bus to Granada two days ago. Granada is...well, it smells like horse excrement and it's full of Texans smoking cigars. I'm very confused.