Arrival

I arrived in Nicaragua last sunday after a wonderful roadtrip from Portland to LA that included some exhilerating climbing, beach combing, an unexpected reunion and a minor flat tire on the grapevine. When I got to Claremont, I had the pleasure of attending the 27th annual Claremont Folk Festival which included Jackson Browne, Ben Harper and Taj Mahal, all of whom gave awesome performances. After only a few hours of sleep that night, I embarked on my journey south.

When I arrived in Managua after a short stop in the Miami airport (which has the worst signage I've ever seen in an airport), I was greeted by a waft of hot, humid air and a welcoming party of Victor, the local blueEnergy taxi driver, David and Lynn, two new volunteers who has just arrived from Costa Rica where they are studying at the American University. Although I had originally planned to spend the night in Managua before catching a bus overland to Bluefields, David and Lynn were planning to embark that night (about 2hrs after I arrived) and had graciously reserved me a seat should I like to join them. Rather than completing the 12hr trip on my own, I was happy to take their invitation to travel overnight with them.

On the way from the airport to the bus station, we stopped for a quick meal at a roadside restaurant and filled up on rice, beans, marinated onions and a little meat. Of course, we also had to enjoy a toña, the local Nicaraguan beer. When we arrived at the bus station, we passed off our bags to men packing everything into a tarp on top of the rundown old school bus that would take us clear across the country and sat down to wait. An hour or so later, people began cueing up, so we followed suit and were quickly (by nicaraguan standards anyway) on our way to a chorus of car horns.

After a relatively uneventful ride over the mountains and through the jungle, we arrived in el Rama, where the road from Managua ends. From there, we were to take a small boat called a 'panga' down the river to Bluefields. However, the boats wouldn't depart for a few more hours, so we settled in to take a brief nap as the sun rose and the sleepy little port slowly woke up. Around about 6am, we started loading into a small open motorboat with wooden bench seats and rather limited space. Being the last boat to load up, we still had a couple seats left open, which meant we waited for another 45mins or so while we watched the rest of the pangas embark without us. A little nervous to travel without the backup of another boat nearby to help with engine trouble, but mildly comforted by the dilapitated lifevests we were each doned upon boarding, we eventually managed to fill the boat to capacity, which meant being crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder with barely enough room between benches to place your feet. Nonetheless, we were soon on our way down a wide river lined by banana groves and towering trees with tendrils of vines tracing their way down through a thick canopy of broad leafed trees and mangrove swamps.

A rather windy and bumpy 2hr ride later, the river openned up to a large lagoon and Bluefields came into view on the horizon. Disembarking at the docks to a crowd of taxi drivers vying for our business, we climbed aboard one and were zipped across town to 'casa blueEnergy.' Happy but exhausted, David, Lynn and I were shown our rooms and allowed to gratefully pass out for a few hours in the midmorning heat.