Hello, Hello!! Hope you all are ready for this month´s edition of Carolyn does Nicaragua!
So this last month (well I guess its been the last part of June and the first part of July) has brought my village's fiestas and a canoe trip down the Rio San Juan. Let the stories begin!
So, fiesta time in my village began on Sunday morning with a band consisting of a tuba, drums, trombone, and trumpet (all of which have the ability to play as though there were 15 of them rather than 4) and really loud fireworks going off at 4 am. Let the fiestas begin! Traveling bars and gambling games were brought in and set up in little tents, bulls were brought in for the bull ridings (who, coincidentally, were not at all mean...rather they jumped once or twice and then began walking around with the rider still on board...riveting.), and the worst DJ in history was brought in so we could all get our groove thang on. Luckily Susan, the volunteer I replaced, was visiting during these festivities, so I was able to duck out a bit early with her. I can only handle listening to really bad music and the DJ attempting to sing over it for so long. The next day of fiestas started off much the same, this time the band was accompanied with all the drunk people of the town. Everyone has told me about this little tradition for weeks so I was SUPER excited to see this little parade! So at 4:00 I went outside to watch them pass to find only 4 drunk guys parading behind the band dancing like fools. It was a bit of a let down seeing as I was expecting at least 20 drunkards...but alas, what can you do. Overall, I am glad they are over! I was sick of all the anticipated chatter leading up to the fiestas, which were not quite as fun as they all made them out to be!
This week was a school vacation and seeing as 3/4ths of my group is currently in the states and I was sad I was not among them, I decided to head out on a little trip myself. So I joined up with a group of friends and we canoed down the Rio San Juan for 4 days. This is the river that separates Nicaragua from Costa Rica. It was absolutely AMAZING!!! Almost the entire Nicaraguan side is a Rainforest reserve meaning we saw 3 different types of monkeys (can everyone please imagine my reaction...I nearly wet myself every time we saw one!), alligators (or maybe it was a crocodile, I have no clue), iguanas, toucans, and lots of other birds! It was so cool!
So the trip begins when the six of us met up to set out on our little river adventure. We pack our things in the three boats, choose pirate names for each member of the group, and christen the boats with a Toña each (really bad beer). As we are about to head out, we realize there are rapids that are we have to cross, so the guy we rented to boats from gives us instructions to cross the river and pass on the left-hand side of the rapids and we will be home free without any problems. Great! Off we go, paddling as hard as we can to cross the river when all of a sudden 5 different people start screaming at us from the shore 5 different sets of directions on how to cross the rapids safely. As you can imagine, we were very confused and were quickly approaching to the rapids. So as we are screaming back to different people trying to figure out what to do, we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of the worst part of the rapids. Ugh. Steph and my boat has somehow turned sideways, and rides about 4 inches shorter than all the other boats, and we hit the first big wave made by the rapid. Out boat is immediately flooded, Steph falls out of the boat, and all of our things are falling over the sides as well. I somehow manage to stay in the boat and am desperately trying to hold on to my stuff, our water, and the paddles still left in our boat. Meanwhile, we still have quite a ways to go till we have passed the rapids. Steph climbs back into the boat, I begin trying to bail us out with my Nalgene water bottle, and the next wave hits us. Repeat the last scenario...Steph falls out and I am struggling to keep our stuff in the boat. So luckily two guys in a motor boat came and saved us. They bailed us out and brought us to shore. Overall, we lost a bottle of water and a paddle. Everything I owned was soaked including two books, which I am sad to report will never be quite the same after their traumatic dip in the river. Overall, a fabulous start to the trip!
After we passed the rapids (this time aided by the motor boat), we were catastrophe free the rest of the trip! We averaged about 8.5 hours of rowing a day(side note: i now have arms of steel. we´ll arm wrestle when I get back) and stayed in Nicaraguan army bases at night. As stated before, it was absolutely gorgeous! And because we were in between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, we were able to pop over whenever we wanted. (This was normally done when we needed a potty break...take that Costa Rica!) We saw animals and found a mini waterfall, and went swimming...so fun! So after two days of exhausting rowing (the first day was only like an hour or so of rowing before we hit the first army post), we decided to give ourselves a break and float until we hit the ocean. We were so relaxed and decided why not go swimming? So out of our boats we jumped and were having a grand old time, when some people on shore told us we should get back in the boats because there were lots of alligators around. We laughed to ourselves and didn't believe them, and continued on with the swim. Luckily we saw nothing, but when we finally got to our hotel and saw a map, we realized we had been swimming in an area that is apparently known for having a higher concentration of alligators than the other parts of the river. hahah. go figures. Whatever, no one was eaten!
However, after 6 hours of floating and seeing no sign of the end, we decided we had to paddle to get to the ocean. We paddled for about an hour and a half and finally reached the ocean. Sweet victory! After the celebration, we sadly realized that we were not quite done with the journey and still had further to go to get to the town. This time, however, it was against the current. It was an hour of pure torture. My arms almost fell off, we looked miserable, and the people on the shore were all laughing at us because we looked so pathetic. Whatever, we made it! We were so proud of ourselves! So we had a couple of days to hang out in the little town at the end of the river, took a tour, at AMAZING food that some random guy we met cooked for us, and had all of our disgusting smelling clothes cleaned for us. It was glorious!
Anyway, thats all I have now. I just realized this is really long! Hope I didnt bore yall! And as always, send me emails and keep me updated!!!
Carolyn
