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Articles Tagged ‘Granada’

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Two Weeks of Cyber Space and Trivia

Sunday, January 14th, 2007

Our lives for the past two weeks have been centered on a specific Internet cafe. They now know us there and surely, must find it strange that two gringas came all the way to Nicaragua just to spend all day everyday staring at a computer screen. In fact, it is a bit strange. If this is what they’re thinking, then they’re right. But, alas, some things have to get done no matter where you are in the world. Megan just finished applying to grad school. Sarah has now applied to about twenty teaching jobs and programs across the country.

When we haven’t been in the Internet cafe, we’ve mostly been hanging out with Ken, our new Austrian friend, playing trivial pursuit and drinking Toña. We’ve noticed that the French have a particular affinity for trivial pursuit, they often join our games and stay for a few hands. One eavesdropped on Sarah getting a question wrong and chimed in with “oh, that’s an easy question” and then left. Thanks a lot, man. Thanks a lot. Anyway, we’ve played so much trivial pursuit that there is no longer a card in the deck we have not conquered. We’re still unsure about whether we should admit to this in the future, or just use our creepy knowledge of trivia to beat all future competitors.

Today was the first day since ziplining that we’ve done anything besides play board games and work. We took a boat trip around “Las Isletas,” which we thought would be a nice little jaunt through nature, but turned out to be a “lifestyles of the rich and famous” type tour. Las Isletas are a bunch of little islands formed from a volcano eruption many years ago. These days they almost all have gorgeous vacation homes on them all owned by Central American business tycoons and foreign vacationers. We learned that we could, in fact, buy our own private island for a lot less than it would cost to buy any kind of home in San Francisco. Go figure.

We head to San Jose, Costa Rica tomorrow and the day after that we catch a flight to Panama City. We’ve got a lot of travel ahead of us. Wish us luck.

-Sarah (with help from Megan)

Posted in Nicaragua, Travel | 1 Comment »

Zip-a-dee-doo-da

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

Megan’s birthday was spent on the shores of Lago de Apoyo, a crater lake near Granada. We spent the weekend at a lake-side hostel swinging in hammocks, reading, floating in tubes, kayaking, and jumping off docks again and again and again. We stargazed and marveled at the rising of the moon over the crater. We made delicious fruit salads and smoked fine cigars. All in all, a good way to celebrate 25 years.

Today we flew through the air attached to cables and carabineers and ropes. Needless to say, it was slightly less relaxing, but equally as fun.

After following the bumpiest road I have ever been on in my entire life for about an hour, we reached the coffee finca above which our “canopy tour” (basically a ropes course) was to be held. This road is was definitely intense enough to warrant some blog attention. It was as if someone had haphazardly strewn boulders across a rocky beach and then decided to dig trenches between said boulders and then out of spite or malice decided to call his creation a road. It was that bad. It was so bad that it was kind of like another ride that we got to go on before and after our main event. So really, we got more for our money.

The course itself was fab. It was just the two of us — I think because we were supposed to do it yesterday but they forgot us, so they felt like they owed it to us to squeeze us in today even if no one else was signed up. We donned super stylish equipment and dragged ourselves up into the trees where we proceeded to slide on zip lines from one tree platform to another attached to pulleys for about an hour. About halfway through we began discussing how we weren’t scared at all and that even people who harbor a fear of heights would probably be okay since the guides make sure that you are, at all times, attached to a rope or cable. Directly after bragging to each other about our bravery, our guide non-chalantly said “hey look, there’s a gigantic spider!” Oh how we spoke too soon. He wasn’t joking; it was, without a doubt, a gigantic spider. Luckily, we were able to quickly zip away. The course ended with a 60 foot rappel, which you can choose to do kind of like a free fall. I told them I wanted to free fall it and then proceeded to scream bloody murder when I fell. Who knew that free falling out of a tree would be so scary?

-Sarah (with help from Megan who is now a year older)

P.S. In unrelated, but even more fantastic news Brick by Brick: A Civil Rights Story, the latest film by Bill Kavanagh (fabulous father and documentarian) will be airing on prime time in New York on channel Thirteen/WNET February 2 at 9 PM. Right after NOW with David Brancaccio. Remote controls at the ready, my friends.

Posted in Nicaragua, Scary Bugs, Travel | 1 Comment »