Our Trip to Nicaragua by Matthew's Parents

A Trip to Nicaragua by Matthew's Parents

Dave and I had an unbelievable experience visiting Jess and Matthew in Nicaragua this summer. We were there for ten days in August.

After arriving at the Managua Airport, it was hugs and kisses as Jess and Matthew met us just the other side of Customs. The flights from New Jersey to Houston and Houston to Managua were smooth. We left our home at 4 in the morning, and we were in country in time to eat lunch with Mathew and Jess.
We stayed at a beautiful hacienda-like hotel in Managua. At night after swimming in the warm pool, we sat on the veranda in our wicker rocking chairs. Palm trees all around us and the calls of some native birds…we knew we weren’t in New Jersey anymore!

We were fascinated and a bit alarmed by the method of providing hot water in the showers. Cold water passed through an electric fixture which heated the water quite warmly. The bothersome part was seeing the electric plug in the wall above the shower head.

We visited the Peace Corps office (El Cuerpo de Paz) and met some of the administrative people that make decisions that keep our kids safe. One item of interest is there is a bell hanging in the entrance of the Peace Corps. Volunteers ring this bell on their last day of service.

We grocery-shopped (we needed lots of goodies and drinks for our road trips) at a market run by Wal-Mart. They had everything. The prices seemed high. There were two categories of fruits, vegetables and meat. One was sold for in country and the others for exporting outside the country; these were the better quality. The price difference was painful.

The next morning we headed towards Somoto to visit Jess and Matthew’s home. We stopped at an incredible hideaway restaurant. We entered a small wooden structure and wondered what the food would be like. After placing our order we walked through an open doorway into an unexpected beautiful area of gardens, ducks, and a babbling brook. It was an amazing sight. A Scotsman and his Nicaraguan wife run the establishment; it is noted for its magnificent breads. We each ordered bread with various sides: applesauce, fruit, cheese, hummus, honey. Delicious!
We walked through the gardens after eating. The flowers, bushes and cacti covered the landscape.

We stopped for the night in Esteli. We drove up to the hotel and passed horse and ox drawn carts. The hotel had a stucco front and looked small. Again upon entering the hotel we were greeted by a two story building with balconies looking down upon a beautiful garden. Again unexpected.

Dave enjoyed an excellent meal at the hotel restaurant.

We shopped in Esteli…everything imaginable was sold in one shop or another. Esteli is noted for leather crafts. We grocery shopped and were introduced to Matthew’s favorite treat, chocolate milk in a foil pouch..a little tricky and messy to drink.

The best part of the trip for me was seeing where Jess and Matthew live and, of course, meeting Astro.

Somoto is a friendly, busy town. The storefronts are colorful. There is a beautiful church across the street from a lovely park. The market is a bustling center of fruits, vegetables and hanging meats. There, at various stalls, women will cook you a fine meal. Everything comes with rice and beans. We enjoyed that very much. A university is housed in buildings from a U.S. Marine presence in Nicaragua in the 1930’s.

We took a walking tour of Somoto, watched Astro run down the slide at the playground, and said “adios” (a hello greeting) to every person that passed.

The highlight of our visit to Somoto was a trip to the barbershop. Matthew wanted Dave to experience a real Nicaraguan extra special haircut and shave. It took one and half hours and five razor blades to complete the experience.

Dave’s face was shaved, oiled, lotioned, powdered,

massaged and was as soft as a baby’s bottom. Jess and I enjoyed watching and taking photos.

Matthew's turn...

Matthew and Jess introduced us to various aspects of their work. We cheered on Jess’s basketball team of young girls. We visited Casa Materna where women from the countryside, who will give birth in a month’s time, will stay to be closer to the hospital. We went to the health clinic built by the Irish earlier this year.

Somoto has a beautiful, new library with very few books for children. Students in my school bought a set of encyclopedias in Spanish for the children. Dave and I brought 70 children’s books. When we opened the suitcase, kids swarmed us, grabbing books. Within minutes they were reading, laughing and sharing the books. It was a wonderful sight!

We were fortunate to meet some dear friends of Matthew and Jess’s, Agnauton and Silvia, and their two daughters, Adriana, 10, and Ena Sophie, 5. They were excellent hosts sharing their home with us. The food was fantastic and we enjoyed watching videos together and playing Uno with the girls.

The most touching and heart-wrenching experience was our visit to a health clinic held in the countryside. Taiwanese doctors and dentists, who travel to Central American countries, set up a clinic in a school. People left their homes as early as 4 in the morning to walk to this clinic. Some would be seeing a medical professional for the first time in their lives. Jess and Matthew acted as interpreters. Many people cannot read but needed to understand the medicine directions.
Dave and I spoke to many of the English-speaking doctors. We also had great “conversations” with young children. Somehow with our meager Spanish and their eagerness to understand us, we had an amazing time learning about the children’s families and lives.
One item to note is that although the wait was long and the weather hot, each person waited patiently in line; we never heard a child complain about the wait or the heat. All were dressed in their very best. Little girls wore their newest dresses and lace-trimmed socks. This was an important day. Nicaraguans care very much about their appearance.
We stayed for several hours and learned so much about the people, their culture, their warmth; about Jess and Matthew’s work.
The rest of the trip was “touristy”. We visited several big cities: Leon, Granada, Masaya and Managua. Driving was interesting. Often we had to wait for some cattle to cross the road…at their pace.
Driving in Managua was as frightening as in any big city. Basically the roads to and from the cities were fairly well-maintained two-lane highways.
In Leon, we learned about the Sandinistas, Ruben Dario (Nicaragua’s Robert Frost/Walt Whitman/Carl Sandburg), and climbed to the top of the cathedral roof. What a view! In every direction we could see volcanoes. Dave wanted us to be sure in which direction was New Jersey.
We stayed at a most fantastic hotel and met the American who owned it. It was a paradise place.
In Masaya, famous for its craft market, we shopped for souvenirs and gifts.

In Granada we walked to the mouth of a volcano and traveled into the earth into a bat cave. We visited the volcano during the day and night. What an experience.
We needed gas masks to travel to the other side of the volcano. The fumes are toxic.

Our next stop was a tiki-kind of hostel. There along a beautiful warm lake (a former volcano) we swam, ate bread and cheese and fruit and relaxed for a day.

The final leg of our tour was an all-inclusive paradise resort. We had a gorgeous warm pool one hundred steps away in one direction, and the Pacific Ocean one hundred steps in the other direction.

It was heart-breaking to say good-bye to Jess and Matthew, but we know they are happy: they are doing important work; and they have many friends. We love them and are very proud!We encourage everyone to plan a trip to visit Matthew and Jess. Experience Nicaragua…its welcoming, friendly people; its dramatic and volatile history; its colorful and lively culture.

Jess the Incredible Photographer

As promised, here are a few of the great photos Jess has taken over the past year. She's got a special knack for kids, but the butterfly photo is too good to not post! Look out, National Geographic!

Additionally, the organization Matt used to work with in Albany, Food Pantries for the Capital District, is now offering a fantastic calendar featuring recipes from the best restaurants around Albany. Matt helped put the calendar together last year and took some of the photos that go with the recipes. The calendars are being sold for $10 each, and they are of great quality. Please take a look! www.foodpantries.net

Thanks, everybody!

A Weekend at the Beach!

As mentioned in the last post, Monday was one of Nicaragua´s biggest holidays, with the celebration of their patron saint, Mary. Called the Purísima, all of the catholics get together at houses, churches, and little alters set up in the streets to pray together. Afterwards, the hosts of every service offer little bags of goodies to the visitors. Goodies include 1 foot sections of sugar cane, palm fronds tied into various shapes, and all sorts of other treats. After the services, kids run from house to house singing and chanting to the homeowners. If the people in the house approve, they pass out even more sweets. It´s kind of like Halloween and Christmas caroling all rolled into one. I wish we could tell you more about it, but being that Monday gave us a 3 day weekend, we bolted out of here as soon as work was over on Friday.

Jess and I haven´t taken very many vacations around Nicaragua during this first year of service, so we´ve made a goal to see a lot more during the second year. Even though we don’t get paid very much and don´t have a car, it´s still easy to get out and see the country. There are plenty of buses, with fairs ranging from 10 to 85 córdobas (50 cents to $4.25). To get from Somoto to the beach outside of León takes about 5 hours of riding, 3 different buses, and cost each of us about 100 córdobas ($5). A dollar an hour isn´t too bad!

So, because we haven´t been to the beach on vacation yet, and because Astro hasn´t been to the beach in his whole life, and because it costs $5 to get there and $9 a night in a hotel, we decided to spend our 3 days at in a little costal fishing village called Las Peñitas. I´m not really sure what the translation of peñitas is, so I can´t offer you that little insight. Sorry. The town itself, however, has about 1,000 residents who make their living off of fishing and tourism. As for fishing, they bring in all sorts of ocean creatures from big red snappers to lobsters to little rock scuttling crabs. You could buy a 4 pound steamed lobster with garlic butter anywhere along the beach for $7.50. Amazing!

As for the tourism, the beach at Las Peñitas has about 200 feet of sand between the hotels and the water and stretches to the north and south as far as the eye can see. To the North (on it´s way to Corinto, a big shipping town, and then El Salvador) is another fishing community that´s a little more developed called Penoloya. To the South (towards Nicaragua´s most popular beach, San Juan del Sur, and then Costa Rica) is a protected wildlife reserve called La Isla del Venado, or the Island of the Deer. A lot of visitors come to explore the island by boat. While we didn´t get a chance to do it this trip we were told by the locals that you can see a bunch of different birds, deer, of course, and alligators as long as a pickup truck. We didn´t feel it was smart to go exploring with Astro. As brave as he is, he probably looks like a plucked chicken to alligator. We did walk along the beach side of the island with was completely uninhabitated. The only way we knew we weren´t the islands first visitors were the sparsely scattered footprints. Google Earth Las Peñitas, look a little south, and let us know if there is anybody on the beach – I´d be surprised.

So, Astro, Jess, and I found a room at a beachside hostel/hotel, called El Oasis.

There was a resident old dog there named Chinga, which means something like ¨stubby tale¨. As you know, Astro also gets comments on his chinga, so he and this dog were immediately good friends. They ran around the beach from dusk to dawn the two days we were there, with Chinga showing the Astro the ropes of beach-dog-living.

Jess and I read a lot, walked a lot, and even tried our hand at a little surfing and boogie-boarding. The surfing didn’t work out to well, but by the end of the second day we were boogie-baording waves from 50 feet out in the surf to right up on to the sand. It was very exhilarating, to say the least. We ate classic Nica food most meals, but found a great new restaurant in town that served pizza and chicken fajitas. That was a real treat.

All in all, our 3 days at the beach were fantastic, and were well worth the dusty, hot, and bumpy bus rides. We´re heading back to Las Peñitas with Jess´s parents over Christmas, so this weekend also served as a scouting trip for their visit. Plans for that trip include a trip to the island, exploring the beach, and, of course, more boogie boarding!!