Sunday, April 11, 2010
Esteli murals
Esteli is in north western Nicaragua, and is known as being a sandanista stronghold in the 80s and the residence of one of Latin Americas premire poets, Rubens Diario in the 1800s. Many of the murals portray sandanista rebels and leaders, much like the mural below.
Managua suposedly has a famous mural of a sandanistan rebels marching over an American soldier. I will try to find it on my way back through Managua.
Esteli waterfall
We rented bikes and walked them for about an hour uphill. I wouldn't say it was exactly worth it even for the easy ride back.
Miraflor cloud forest
Just as we encountered in costa rica and new zealand, all of Nicaragua shut down for samana santa (Easter week). We chose to take preemptive measures by booking 4 nights at fuente de vida in the highlands of the cloud forest miraflor communities.
Strangler fig!
For those of you who don't know about strangler figs, I highly suggest you look into them, but I will try to sate your curiosity for the moment: Strangler figs (genus: ficus) produce figs which are eaten by birds, carried far and wide, and shat out on the branch of a well established rainforest tree. The strangler fig germinates on the host tree above the understory, starts growing up and wraps skinny roots around the trunk and down to the forest floor (imagine the liliputians tying Gulliver to the ground). Once the roots reach the ground it is like a shot of steroids to the strangler. The roots swell and tighten their grip on the host (imagine the scene in Golden Eye with Anya Top in the bath house). The strangler takes advantage of the host's height in order to reach the precious sunlight beyond the canopy. Over a number of years the strangler puts down a lattice of expanding roots that envelope the host, competes for water and nutrients, and eventually squeezes the host's plumbing (xylem/phloem) shut. Eventually the host dies and decays, leaving behind the boas empty coils. In many cases these stranglers who no longer have a host for support will topple onto another prospective host, start the process anew, and in some cases will create a sinuous wall that looks like a Myazaki-esque monstrosity (to see some pictures of famous giant strangler, look up photos of cathedral fig or curtain fig in australia's north eastern atherton tablelands).
This is a photo climbing up the inside of the strangler fig, the vacant area where the host once occupied.
Pheew, I'm glad I got that out. You shouldn't fear strangler figs, you should revere them. If you thought strangler figs were cool, just wait and learn about the relationship between each species of fig and it's specific species of pollinating wasp.Dead bee
I saw a bee sticking head first in the head of a sun flower, it looked as if someone was playing darts with bees. I poked the bee, and it fell out with a bright yellow spider sucking on it's head.
Mari milkin mothers
We had the opportunity to milk cows while we were staying at fuente de vida, an opportunity I would love to have jumped on, but apparently they discourage people from jumping onto cows. The milking was much easier than I thought it would be, but I could tell it took a lot of skill and dexterity to milk quickly and efficiently, two things we didn't do. The basic procedure was to tie the mothers back legs together so she couldn't walk off or kick, and then tie a calf to the front leg, just out of reach of the utters. You began by coaxing milk from the top of the utter to the squirting end with your thumb and fore finger, and then squeeze with your whole hand so the milk shot out in a windex style jet spray. If you really got into a rhythm you could spray some milk on your hands to lube them up. My only regret was that I hadn't taken my morning coffee down with me for a little squirt of fresh cow juice.
Sucker animals
For some reason animals love me, and usually to their folly. They think I am just playing with them, but usually you will find me mocking them. Perhaps animals flock to me because I treat them pretty much the same way I treat people.
Look out!
We spent all day looking for some stupid lookout ostensibly to see where we had wasted our whole day wandering around looking for the lookout. After many contradictory and vague directions we saw this "lookout" tower, and figured that had to be it. All around the tower was fenced farmland with a house on one end. We asked a woman if this was the lookout, and if there was an entrance. She pointed with nod of her head to a section of barbed wire fence that wasn't as taught as the rest of the fence. Our first reaction was "REALLY!!!? C'MON!", but put in the perspective of most tourist attractions in Nicaragua, it seemed quite reasonable that some partial hole in a fence of some random womans back yard would be the main entrance to the trail to the lonely planet endorsed miraflor highlands lookout tower. After passing a number if grazing cows we reached the base of the tower, which under not so careful scrutiny was completely rusted out and absolutely unsafe to climb. Needless to say I was the first one up, and then Sam. There was a pretty good view of farmland, rolling hills, jungle canopy, and some more shit like that, but more importantly there were BEES! Every time I get somewhere hard to get down there are ALWAYS BEES! Gaagh! We made it back down flailing, but relatively unscathed, and began the long circuitous path back to our cabin.
After conversing with a couple who had just gotten back from a horse back ride to the lookout, we confirmed that we weren't at the lookout, we were just on some janky ass piece of junk in someones pasture. Well, at least we didn't have to pay for a guide!
Duped!
Sam and I had talked with our other roommates about extending our lease for another year, but we couldn't get in contact with our landlord. Sam and I got back from miraflor on April 3rd , but more importantly we got back to the Internet. We recieved an email from Ian saying he had managed to contact our rental company, only to find out our lease wasn't going to be renewed and that sam and I would have 2 weeks to pack up and find somewhere to live once we got back from Nicaragua. I was outraged, and immediately started looking for a new house. After several self pittying emails back and forth to Ian he said to look at the date of his email: April 1st.
He got us pretty good. Here is a picture of how well he "got us"
Flying to great corn
We decided that we had seen almost all of mainland Nicaragua, or at least the jist of it in the last month, so we decided to spend the last 10 days of our trip chilling on the tropical carribbian paradise of little corn island.
View from our plane of great corn island
Crabs, hammered in the carribbian
Here is an embarassing video of me drunk pretending to be a helicopter tracking a crab perp.
Ahhhhh (the relaxing one, not the screaming one)
One of our favorite lunch haunts (now that rosa has left for Managua). The only place on the island that has icy fresh fruit drinks.
Sounds like a coconut
Well, whatch you got here is your typical coconut, ovoid, arboral, greenish brown, clocking in at 23.8 m/s with a rehash interval of 6.3. Yup your gunna get a clean 60 miles outta her before she starts rattlin, maybe 70 if you shift her up to 4th.
Coconuts!
We asked to borrow this dudes machete in order to open our coconut. He looked at his machete, up at us, the coconut, and then back at his machete. "gib me da coconut"
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