After Lindsey graduated we drove up to Minnesota for Christmas, stopping in Chicago along the way to visit our buddies Mat, Karen, and baby Amina. Then we drove back to New Orleans, stopping in Chicago again to visit our other Peace Corps buddy Amanda. After spending one day in New Orleans packing, we started our three week trip through Nicaragua and just returned home on January 18th. Lindsey just started her new job, I'm back in school, and things are getting back to normal down here...unless you count the fact that Mardi Gras starts in a week and The Saints are going to the Superbowl.
Can't wait to watch the Super Bowl in two weeks!!! Go Saints!
If you want to look at the 5 bagillion photos that we took in Nicaragua...here is the link to Lindsey's Picasa page where the photos are sitting.
We spent a lot of time outdoors on the pond. Lindsey bought some skates, I had mine sharpened, and Joey got a real hockey stick. Joey was having a blast out on the ice, he even started checking me!
Lets just say that getting full body pajamas with feet and going out of the town is a bad idea.
Lindsey and Joey mercilessly protecting their fort.
Lindsey and some of her college friends on a quick trip that we took down to...'The Cities'.
Derek attempting to make the kids stop thinking about the snack booth and focus on the game.
Stopped in Amanda's hometown for two nights before she ran back to Burma.So, here is our Nicaragua trip in a few photos...if you want to look at more...check out the Picasa link
Surfing! We went on one day and boy do you get tired quick. We took lessons with some Nicaraguan surfers (basically being pushed into the waves so you don't have to use all of your energy).
This was a mural from a small mountain town called Jinotega. The country is a really safe place to travel and live, but there are still reminders everywhere of the recent history and politics. The election next year will be fascinating to follow with Ortega attempting to change the constitution and run again.
When we were up in the north in the city called Matagalpa, we went on a tour of a chocolate factory. This little place called Castillo de Cacao make 100% local organic chocolate with only two ingredients: sugar and cocoa. It was a really neat tour showing how everything there is done by hand. We then got to taste their chocolate and drank some local coffee.
Again, here's the beach we stayed at.
The food was good, but man did we miss a little diversity. Every meal is either steak or chicken, with a cabbage salad, plantains, and rice. The steak was really good, but you can only eat so much steak. The breakfasts were also good, but the same every day with: rice and beans, two eggs, a tortilla, and maybe some fruit.
This is from the top of the cathedral in Leon, the other large colonial city in Nicaragua. This city is the historically liberal counter-point to more conservative Granada. Many a battle fought between the two.
Just a shot of some typical storefronts throughout Nicaragua, this was in a town up in the north, a city called Matagalpa in a region famous for coffee.
We stayed three nights at this beach, Playa Coco, one of the most pristine in the country. An older canadian rents out the top floor of his house for 25$/night. There were only about 10 other people on the whole stretch of beach the whole time we were there. It was nice to just stop moving and relax for a couple of days.
This is a shot from the balcony of an organic coffee farm that we stayed at for two nights. The island is called Ometepe and it consists of two volcanoes (we were staying at the base of the dormant one) in the middle of a large freshwater lake. We went on a hike looking at petroglyphs and walked around the farm.
One of the reasons for the trip is my exuberant excitement relating to volcanoes. We went on a night hike of one volcano and this was one of the neatest parts of our trip. The hike took us up to the rim of the crater to see glowing lava, we went and saw a cave with hundreds of bats flying out, and also walked through an old lava tube. The volcano is quite active and there were a lot of fumes coming out that made you cough and feel kinda sick...pretty cool. If you want to see a little eruption from 2008, search for: masaya volcano, it should be the first hit.
This was one of the many festivals that we drove through and saw. This one was on New Year's Day in this small town that we were passing through on the way to the Masaya Volcano National Park.
This is just some of the many street food stalls. We only ate street food one and it was on the last day of our trip...good thing because our bellies were a little off for a while after.
This is a picture of Granada, the first 'nice' city we were in. We flew into Managua and stayed there for our first night and were happy to leave the capital for places that felt a little safer. Granada was really nice with big old churches, lots of good food, and we stayed at a place with a pool.
