During the week, we literally have the beach to oursleves.  It’s not tourist season (it’s hot) and anyway Nicaragua doesn’t have the thronging tourist trade of Costa Rica or Belize.  We can sit on the balcony of our bed and breakfast and see endless sand in either direction, and not another human being other than occasionally when Wilbur spots us and comes trotting down to say hello.  When we decided to stay here for a week, we handled business with Wilbur, buying three of his seashell necklaces for a ridiculously high price ($5) on the deal that he would no longer pester us for sales.  He’s kept his word, and now only comes around to say hello, teach us a few words in Spanish and ask questions about America. 

On the weekends, healthy numbers of Nicaraguan tourists visit the coast, which brings some vibrancy to the otherwise sleepy fishing town.  Hay mucho sol!  Okay, I’m a white girl, but I tan at a fairly reasonable rate and I did have some melanin in my skin from our fall travels.  But after twenty minutes in the sun I’d started to pink up.  It’s the easiest place to work on a tan because you can go out for ten minutes, flip, do ten more minutes, and your baking time is done for the day.  Long hours of roasting and reapplying sunscreen aren’t necessary.  Las Penitas is located a mere 12 degrees off the equator, as evidenced by the moon’s near lack of movement and the clockwork functioning of the sun.  Sit on the balcony.  When the sun hovers above the first railing, it’s almost 6:00.  When it has lowered below the second railing, it’s about a quarter after six.  As the sun is setting along the ocean’s horizon, it’s just after 6:30, and time to eat dinner before it actually gets dark and the crab hunting commences. 

But to tell you about catching congrego, I’ll have introduce you to my incidental Nicaraguan family: Pedro and his son Jose, and Maria (Pedro’s cousin) and her son Yader.  There are a surprising number of hotel/hostel options in the town, though only a handful right along the coast and within walking distance of the inlet, which serves as the town’s center.  Pedro and Maria manage Sol y Mar, the only hotel that I found in Las Penitas which markets to foreign tourists but is Nicaraguan owned.  Maria and Pedro run Sol y Mar with hospitality which in itself seems to be a bit of a foreign concept in this country.  If you are shopping for a hotel, don’t expect the pretty girl behind the counter to welcome you, or for that matter show the slightest interest in your being there.  If you are lucky, she will tell you how much a room costs, and if you insist, she will roll her eyes and let you take a look before you pay.  Things are different at Sol y Mar: Pedro actually opened the door.  He welcomed us and in introducing the accommodations, gave reasons why we might prefer his quarters over others in town. 

We quickly realized that with little effort on our part we had my very own home-stay, with a family eager for the exchange.  We have daily Spanish-English lessons, Maria and Yader learning common phrases helpful for interacting with tourists, the entire family correcting our pronunciation and feeding us words in espanol.  When we took the bus back into Leon for supplies, Pedro rode in with us, we all shopped at the supermarket, then he toted our groceries back home to leave usunencumbered while enjoying the cities’ huge market, banking, and finding some breezy beach-appropriate skirts from local used clothing stores (yup, even in Nicaragua I’m going thrift!).  When we returned on a mid-afternoon route (siesta time for anyone with sense) Pedro was on the sidewalk scanning for us, then flagged the driver down to stop and let us off.  The bus goes past every hour, and we’d been gone for at least six, leaving us to guiltily wonder how many times that day he’d already left his hammock to look for us!  We have our own shelf in the refrigerator, hang our laundry alongside theirs, have full use of the kitchen, and get constant reassurance that our enormous (compared to theirs) consumption of toilet paper is no problema.  And don’t forget the nightly crab hunting, in which Fred and I, Jose, Yader, and an assortment of neighborhood kids set off down the beach with a flashlight that runs on a handcrank.  Fred is the lamp man sweeping a beam of light over the beach while everyone keeps their eyes peeled.  When a crab is spotted, the kids scatter to surround the thing, then one pounces.  If they miss, a great chase after the scurrying crab ensues and ends in one of three ways: it is caught (the kids are about as quick as them), it escapes into the ocean, or it burrows into a hole deep enough that the kids can’t dig it out (it’s ingenious how often they do).  The kids seemed as surprised as I when at one point a champinano grande came running straight past me, I leaped into a wave after it and came up clutching it in my hand, screaming, I admit, because the flailing of multiple legs and pinchers against my skin was creepy, but holding on all the same.  The kids eyes stayed wide as we returned home and they relayed the whole story to Pedro and Maria, Pedro disbelieving that a girl would do such a thing!

So far, Nicaragua, so good.  As we travel around the country more, we’ll have to see what effect our nationality will have on our reception, given how deplorably involved the U.S. government has been in Nicaraguan political affairs for the last 100+ years.  We aren't necessarily looking forward to leaving our beach haven tomorrow, but if we don't go now, we may never leave!  So we'll head into Leon to catch a bus to somewhere, we'll let you know in the next blog post where we end up.

(Carlo trying to teach Fred how to fish without a rod.)

Leon is Nicaragua’s second largest city, with a population of over 400,000 people so though we know the country is underdeveloped, we must admit we expected a bit more from the cities’ main bus terminal.  Which, as you can see, turned out to be little more than a pot-holed dirt parking lot filled with a collection of old school buses (translate regular city buses), trucks with high, tarped roofs and chained sides (translate really regular city buses), mini-buses (translate high class transportation: a mini-van packed with only 12-15 people), and the city to city buses.  These are a cross between a school bus and a Greyhound and are the method we chose to get from Leon to the beach town of Las Penitas.  The bus waits at the “terminal” until all of the seats are full, and then until the entire aisle is crammed with standing passengers, and then until the entry way is full from beside the driver all the way down to where the bus attendant stands/hangs out the always open door.  On the way to its destination, the bus stops anywhere along its route where a person is hailing it or anytime a rider whistles out to be dropped off which prompts an intricate shifting of bodies while one or several people negotiate their way into or out of the bowels of the bus.  There is no better way to get up close and personal with local Nicaraguans! 

Our only aim was to head to the beach, and beach we have found.  Miles and miles of beautiful waves and sand, not white sand, but clean volcanic rock crushed to fine grains with an abundant mix of seashells and the occasional outcropping of rock for the waves to break upon.  And the best part: we walked the beach today for over and hour and saw a total of oh, maybe six people!  Hay mucho sol!  Even with his Italian skin, Fred got a bit of sunburn after being out for less than an hour.

Las Penitas is a fishing village, so small it doesn’t even have a market, which didn’t match our dreams of fresh mango every morning and had us questioning whether to stay.  Enter Pedro, who operates Sol y Mar, a bed and breakfast that will throw in a custom ordered dinner for $3 a night. So, as I write, I am sitting on a balcony, 50 feet from crashing waves and an uninterrupted view of the sunset.  For less than $20 a day, I get the view, a room with a private bath, dinner, breakfast with a full pot of coffee, free purified cold water, and the company of Pedro and Maria.  Sold.  We signed on for another week! 

You've seen it as golden, late fall grass.  You've seen it frozen, crystallized.  Now experience a third season with my trusty Ohio farm field, though it's not the image you might expect.  I bragged all winter about the tranquility of my winter farm life, days in front of the fire, endless stretches of white and ice beyond my window.  Well, springtime is a different story!  As the creatures and plants come to life, so do a farm tender's responsibilities.  In the last few weeks we've cleaned the bird boxes scattered all over the property; sawed fallen trees, split the rounds, and stacked them for drying so next winter will be as warm as this one; built a fence; patched and re-installed the dual gas tanks in the pick-up truck; and spent several evenings monitoring controlled, agricultural burns in the fields.  It's a common practice, one my Dad is well trained at though that didn't stop some of the counties' implanted city slickers from getting scared and calling the fire department.  A field fire creates a lot of smoke, and occasionally some pretty tall flames so we can't blame them, but it was still embarassing at 9:30 at night to hear sirens from three directions barreling toward the farm.  Real fire trucks, fire deparment vehicles, and volunteers in their pickups all arrived to discover no flame, no "explosions" as had been reported to 911, just three ragedy farm folks (since we're playing that part well lately) holding rakes on the edge of a smoldering field. 

The volunteer fire chief laughed at the whole scenario, made some jokes about our venison smoking techniques (a deer carcus was creamted in the fire) and gave us an inside number to call the next time we decided light up a section.  That's what you see in the picture: what looks liked dying is really rebirth, the ashes of an overgrown field now ready for new sprouts.  In a matter of weeks, it will green up and match the rest of the place which is full of daffodils, tulips, spring birds, sunshine...and more chores!  Good thing we are getting out of here!  On a midnight plane to Nicaragua today to try our hand at speaking Spanish, being beach bums, and more writing of course!