Hola
Long long time since I have written. Sorry about that but I have just gotten sort of sucked into life in Leon, Nicaragua plus there hasnīt been a ton going on here. With that said things are going well except for Hurricane Beta. Because of Beta Iīm not taking a spur of the moment trip to the Corn Islands which are off the coast of Nicaragua in the Caribbean. Iīm actually trying to find out now what they are forecasting the storm to do because Iīm supposed to go climb a volcano on Sunday and Monday. Hopefully the storm will stay out to sea and we will only get a little rain.
Things are going well though. I got stuck in Leon for almost a week and Iīm not really sure how that happened. The city is-was one of the strong holds for the Sandinista movement and is an old colonial city with lots of churches. It is a nice relatively small city. The best part of the city is that it is closed to some other cool things. For example I spent a day at the beach yesterday swimming in the Pacifc. A couple of days ago I went and climbed a volcano called Cerro Negro. It was a pretty easy climb but it was cool because we got to walk above and through the crater. We were surrounded by many different vents releasing steam, sulfar, and lots of heat. Pretty cool and definitely something that you wouldnīt do at home. Besides that I have really just been sort of hanging out and exploring the city and meeting a bunch of different people.
It is very interesting to see all the people selling stuff on the streets here and as you can see in the pictures people commonly cart stuff around in big human powered carts or get around the city in horse drawn carts. Maybe these things are proof that Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. With that said the people here are extremely happy and friendly.
Before coming to Leon I spent a couple of days in Gracias, Honduras. I met 3 American guys on the bus so we decided to rent an apartment which was really sort of cool to have a little kitchen and a lot of space. We went for a day hike in the cloud forest which was really cool The hike was actually pretty tough but I got to see a ton of plants but no animals. It was interesting because there must have been about 4 or 5 different ecosystems that we saw during the hike. The terrain and plants just changed a lot and Iīm looking forward to experiencing more cloud forests in Costa Rica.
A once in the lifetime experience happened in the dorm room the other night. I was woken up at 3 in the morning when the guy sleeping on the top bunk next to me fell on my bed. He promptly got up, walked across the room, started peeing on someone elses bed, and then climbed right back into his bunk and fell back to sleep. Since he was sleep walking he was quite shocked to learn about what he did the next morning. Luckily the guy who was on the receiving end was very cool about it and was laughing about it in the morning.
It turns out that baseball is very popular in Nicaragua so I got an opportunity to watch all the World Series games which made me very happy. Especially since the Astros couldnīt capitalize on all the opportunities the Sox pitchers Gave them. It is very exciting to have your team win the World Series
finally. Plus because baseball is so popular I will probably go to a professional baseball game here tomorrow night. Should be fun.
After that Iīm off to climb a volcano on Sunday and Monday weather permitting and then Iīm heading south to Granada and Lake Nicaragua.
Love
Scott
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