Day 1 Nicaragua

Day 1 July 3rd, 2007:



Wake up: 2:30 AM after two hours of sleep and previously way too many hours of packing. Actually, more like throwing everything I own into a suitcase and trying to make it weigh under 50 lbs. Not an easy task I’ll tell you. Lee and Akhil rumble up to the garage in the red Durango and step out to get me. As Lee jogs down the walkway I come out the front door dragging behind me my two suitcases (Almost a hundred pounds of luggage), my backpack and purse. Akhil opens the trunk to expose that we have nowhere to put my luggage and we still have to pick up Toni. The back of the car is filled to bursting with suitcases, backpacks and other travel equipment. In a rush, Akhil tells Amy to sit on Lee’s lap in the front and puts my suitcase (about a 2’ x 3’ by 1’) into the seat next to Jason. Along with my other, only slightly smaller one on top.

Quickly hugging Mum I realize I’ve forgotten my cell phone. It won’t work down there but it still is a calendar, alarm, calculator and other useful things. Sprinting back to the house to grab it off my bed I realize I have not said bye to the dogs but I don’t have time so patting both of them gently on the head as I run by will have to do. Silently cursing the fact that cats are always so god damn hard to find, I keep running. Once again rapidly hugging my mom saying “I love you, I’ll see you in three weeks” I squeeze in next to Jason. We pull away, off to get Toni. Akhil remarks that we are right on time and talking about the time it takes to get to the airport from Peterborough vs. Harrisville. I zone out. Watching Windy Row pass by and suddenly realizing how long three weeks is. I hope I love it down there.

At Toni & Jay’s Akhil has to wake Toni up because her clock was an hour slow. I’ve never seen someone get out of the house in five minutes at 3 o’clock in the morning. She was already smiling and full of energy. She never ceases to amaze me, It was like she’d been awake for hours and it was just a normal day. Being told that she had to sit on my lap in the back all she had to say was “Yippee!”, a typical Toni Garland remark.

The drive to the Manchester airport was long and I don’t
remember most of it but when we got there it was quite a chore getting everything out and checked in. Between the five of us we had ten huge bags to check and then all our carry on. However, none of them could weigh over 50 lbs. or they charge you up the ass. So switching some stuff to different bags right there at the desk must have been quite a sight. The check in lady was very prissy and kept saying “We have to get these done” and stuff like that. Akhil was getting annoyed because he didn’t like using the check-in machine, he wanted a person to do it. But we got everything checked and headed to the gate. Getting through security took a little while because Ak had Jason carrying a UPS (some surge protector thing) which they had to test and look at and everything.

The flight to Atlanta, GA was about three hours and we got there early (at about 8:30 in the morning). The flight attendants were both blonde bells from Texas and Akhil loved that they called him “Darlin’”. It was a small plane and we were almost all the way in the back but we each had entire seats to ourselves so we could lie down. It felt later than it was when we got into Atlanta. Our flight to Managua, Nicaragua wasn’t until 10:15 so we walked around a bit, got some pizza and waited.

From Atlanta to Managua was about a four and a half hour flight. The movie was interesting….kinda Sci-Fi. I don’t know but the first sight of the coast was gorgeous. We could see the tan line of the beach outlining the lush green interior. Mountains came into view as we flew further into the country. Lake Managua, the murky expanse of water almost in the center of the country came into sight as we began to descend, almost as if we were going into the lake. Some little girls screamed as the plane hit an air pocket and dropped slightly but very suddenly. We laughed. Filling out the last minute immigration forms as more and more details on the ground came into focus. Landing in the tiny Managuan airport we could immediately see how much greenery and life surrounded us. Getting passports stamped, paying five dollars each to get into the country and getting our luggage didn’t take long. We expected for customs to take a while but all they did was look to see that our luggage was really ours and look at our passports. Very security conscious country it appears. As we got out of the doors separating the gate from the rest of the airport about ten Nicaraguan men in blue shirts descended on us to take our bags. Blue shirts with red circles on the back with “Claro!” we had no idea who they were. Lee later explained that we had to give them tips which Akhil was not happy about because he did not have a choice, they had just grabbed the bags. They would not take Lee’s dollar though because it had some blue stains on it. She really can speak Spanish well!

After what seemed like hours of waiting around having everyone stare at us, the only white people anywhere around, Ak had rented us a truck. We had to wait until 2:30 for Lee’s friend Velvet and her daughter Isabel to arrive on another plane. We went to what was kind of like a mall food court but smaller. We ate at a “Restaurante de Carne” and ate a tortilla kind of thing with rice and a tiny bit of beef inside. It was delicious. Velvet and Isabel got there but Velvet had to get her passport back from Immigration because they live in Guatemala and she only had Guatemalan money which they did not like. After everything we finally got the truck, a little Ford Ranger that sounded like an F250. All the trucks down here are little and almost every single one is a Toyota. The biggest one I’ve seen is a Dodge Ram and there has only been one. All of our luggage went in the bed, along with Jason, Amy and me. Down here everyone rides in the backs of the pickups. It wasn’t very comfortable but we managed. It was about an hour and a half ride to El Pie del Gigante but it felt like four or five hours. Along the way we saw a lot of what the country is like. It’s so poverty stricken it’s hard to believe. There were a lot of men at one point next to a huge pile of scrap metal. And by huge I mean bigger than a small house at home. They were throwing stuff into trucks to be taken away to some unknown location. There are no buildings like anything you’d see at home. Everything is made with gate type things and looks like it will fall down in a minute. Nothing is over a couple rooms and nothing is over one story. There are people always just standing around. It’s like nothing you will ever see at home. They all stare at us like the foreigners we are. I’ve never felt so white or out of place. There are horses pulling carts and it is painful to look at. They are all bone, look dead tired, sweaty and sore. There aren’t that many but still it is hard to see. You also see some just on the side of the road eating grass and things but you can see all their ribs, their hip bones protrude…its horrible. Also, none of them are over fifteen hands, they are all very little and I have no idea what breed they are. We pass things like a whole community of black plastic tent houses. These are what a lot of people live in. But the roads were surprisingly good: paved and smooth for the majority. Akhil stops at a little stand and buys fresh fruit. There are men in the middle of the road selling things too and we bought some bread at one point. We passed lots of field with…I want to say water buffalo but I’m actually not sure what they’re called (they’re the things that The Heifer Project like to give because they are very easy to take care of and produce a lot). The last place we stopped was in some town. It was a grocery store where we got some food for dinner and breakfast. There wasn’t much there. We got some pasta, cereal, toilet paper, coffee….things like that. Passing the meat counter made me feel ill. All the meats looked gray and the smell was awful. Amazed that the line was so long with such a smell, I walked by. Amy and I used the bathroom which was up some stairs and was gross and there was no toilet paper, not even a toilet paper holder. No one uses it down here because their septic system does not take it, well the ones that have septic systems.

Back in the truck the darkness was beginning to fall over everything. Lighting was splitting the sky in the distance as I watched the road disappear behind us. The roads got worse as we got further away from the capital and more into the woods. Getting damp from the slight drizzle as Ak sped over the dirt roads that meant we were getting closer to the house. For what felt like even more hours we went up windy, bumpy roads until we finally got near where we were staying. We then found out that we were staying in house #20, not our house. Not knowing whether it was just for a night well they finished touches on the house or if it was for the whole time, we drove up the steep driveway and parked. A man named Carlos met us there and showed down the stone steps, past the dark blue tiled pool, onto the wrap around deck and into the house.

Interested in why we were not staying in our house we decided to walk the short distance down the steps to where it was. It was not even close to done. No doors, floors still unfinished, wires hanging from the ceiling, and many other things. Ak and Lee seemed to take it well considering the fact that they said it looked the same as it did before. But Akhil talked to a man named Alex who was doing the kitchen cabinets and everything seemed to be okay. As we headed back to the house my legs were burning from the incline. I was ready to go to bed even though it was still early their time (2 hours behind) but we had four beds and seven people so Alex said he would bring up some of the mattresses (one of the few things that was actually in the house) in his truck so well we waited for those we swam in the little pool and looked around the house. The color that the wood is stained is gorgeous it’s a dark reddish, I’m not sure what the name is. It’s dark outside but I could hear how close the ocean was. Standing on the deck I could almost see the dark blue waves crashing against the rocks on the beach.

A man was inside the house with a laptop who we later found out was trying to hook up the internet. Unfortunately it didn’t work, something with the connection between the tower and the hookup here. When the mattresses arrived I decided to go to bed. The AC was on so it was quite comfortable inside but it really wasn’t that hot out, just humid.