Pueblos Blancos--Nica Style

It's the first of the belated Nicaragua posts! I really loved Nicaragua, so even though I am already living it up in Greece, I had to show it a little blog love (if for no reason other than so that everybody can see there is more to it than the civil war that ended two decades ago!). So here we go: 

One of my first afternoons in Nicaragua we took a little afternoon trip to the Pueblos Blancos (The White Towns) in southern Nicaragua. It struck me as strange that in southern Spain around the city of Granada there are clusters of white villages known as the Pueblos Blancos, and then here in Nicaragua, around their city of Granada, there were the same type of towns. Who knew?

After an helado (ice cream) we stopped in the white church in San Marcos. Our fearless leader Bergman leads the way!

The church holds one of only two "black Jesuses" in Nicaragua

Bell tower: we were all very tempted to pull that string...

Roof view

Street view of San Marcos with volcanoes in the distance

Another shot of the church

We visited a little farm that had every kind of medicinal plant you could think of. They also had all kinds of regular things growing--but things that most of us only knew in their processed state. For example, here Bergman is taking a machete to a cacao plant!

There are the beans--the cacao is inside them. You can suck on them, and they are sweet, but if you bite in, it's bitter. Very interesting. 

We also stopped in Masatepe, Nicaragua's furniture making capital, to watch them weave banana leaves into furniture

We then passed through Niquinohomo which is the birthplace of Augusto Sandino

Ah, and finally we stopped in Catarina to take in the view at the Mirador. The view was so beautiful that it was jarring (unfortunately my pictures can't do it justice!). From there you could see Laguno de Apoyo (a crater lake), Granada in the distance, Lake Nicaragua and the slopes of the volcano Mombacho (see next picture). 

The view was fantastic, the musicians were good, the company was lively and the drinks were cold. An all around good afternoon and beautiful part of the country. 

{...I'm not going to lie...I kind of miss Nicaragua}

Week In Review Sabbatical Style: Week...?

OK, so it has been forever (or at least since Panama) that I did a proper week in review, so here's a go at the old standby:

• Yesterday I bought my tickets out of Santiago in Spain to Croatia. I bought a ticket with Ryanair from Santiago to Barcelona (From the far west to the far east of Spain) for 6 euros including all taxes! Of course then I went to pay and remembered that they charge you 7 euros just to pay with a credit card. Oh well, I won't complain about my 18 dollar flight!
• When I got to Greece it was cold. It was the coldest place I had been in 2011. Colder than London. Colder than Denver. Have I mentioned that there was snow on the ground? Thankfully things are warming up. It's been in the 60s-low 80s during the days!
• Greek food is delicious. 
• I ate Moussaka yesterday, which, while nothing like this one I made, was very, very good. 
• We went to church yesterday at the 2nd Greek Evangelical Church, and as I followed along in Greek as we sang it reminded me of the time I decided I would follow along with the Arabic when I was living in Brussels. I figured one day it might all make sense to me...until I realized that I was following along with the Arabic from left to right instead of the other way around. Oops. 
• I was a bit worried that traveling with the group was going to be stressful. I was wrong. I took a 3 hour nap today.  
• This is my third time to Athens, but the sights are still impressive!
• My usual trick of learning a few words in a language and then using them liberally is still working beautifully. Kalimera, kalispera, efxaristo and yasas (good day, good evening, thanks and hello/goodbye) seem to bring out a smile. I think its just good manners to learn at least a word or two of a language, but it doesn't hurt that it usually brings other benefits... like occasionally a larger scoop of gelato (just sayin!). 
• Today we helped cook and pass out food for hungry people in the neighborhood with the church. One guy came through and only spoke French and Albanian, so I tried really hard to dig back up that tiny bit of that French I learned in Brussels. Let me tell you, it was rough. 
• I'm still catching up on Central America blogs--next up is Nicaragua. Maybe I'll get around to it some time this week. 
• I keep forgetting to take pictures. I'm kind of feeling relaxed about it because I took so many pictures the last time that I was here with bright sun and clear skies that taking more now seems like overkill. I'll have some more pretty Greece pictures up soon though. 

OK, so that is the week in review. I'm a bit out of the habit--I'll be more interesting next week, I promise!

Coffee Tour: Finca La Milagrosa in Boquete, Panama

{Another catch up/Panama blog!}

It was a cold rainy morning in Boquete, but I wasn't going to leave town without a coffee tour. So up we went (myself and my friend Laura) to Senor Tito's Finca La Milagrosa. I got soaked, but then dried out, and then got really hyper sucking on raw coffee beans, chomping down on toasted ones, and drinking cups of coffee made by the owner himself. It was tons of fun and everyone there was so happy and young looking that it also definitely affirmed the benefits of coffee. 

Senor Tito made everything himself! Our guide was quick to point out every two minutes or so, that Senor Tito is sooo smart!

Ready to be go from: 

this

to: 

this. 

There were lots of different things involved in the drying process

Senor Tito roasting us a sample

Coffee beans starting to get toasty in there

taking a look (Senor Tito made that spoon--look closely and you see that its a spoon welded to a screw driver so it's long enough to reach inside the roaster)

light, medium and dark roast (or American, French and Italian)

The grinder (made from an old hand cranked corn grinder)

and our lazy friend. 

Baile Folklorico

By happy chance I was in Boquete during a region wide (I think) celebration that brought in baile folklorico (traditional dance) and music groups from all around. Everyone got dressed up, paraded through town and then took turns dancing in the town square. It was a misty and cool day, but I loved taking it all in.

I was amused watching all of the dances thinking back to my experience with baile folklorico. When I was in high school I got placed in a native speaker's Spanish class because of scheduling conflicts or general incompetencies, or I don't even know what. Needless to say I was not a native speaker and was lost the whole time (embarrassing myself on several occasions). I finished the class without learning a lick of Spanish (but with a decent understanding of how to put accents on words). Anyway, when it got close to Cinco de Mayo, my teacher thought we should get in touch with our roots and learn some baile folklorico. My protests of not even being hispanic fell on deaf ears and I ended up spinning around in big skirts with the rest of my class. 

More pictures:

The tiny kids were my favorite. 

Good Vibes In Boquete, Panama

Where do I even begin on Boquete? I only planned on going for a couple of nights and ended up staying for almost a week. Boquete is a small town, and even though it is a well established stop on the backpacker trail and has its fair share of expats and NGO workers, it also boasts some beautiful scenery, lovely gardens and the best coconut flan I have ever tasted (why, oh why didn't I take a picture of that?!). 

I hiked, strolled through beautiful gardens, visited a coffee farm, saw live "gypsy music," observed a centennial parade, almost sold our soul and/or a passport to rent and watch Volver again (love that movie!) and also got a brief chance to volunteer: I got to spend a morning doing puzzles with mentally handicapped indigenous children, and then got to participate in what my host for the day Jenni deemed PX90 real life--turning a slab of concrete into gravel with a pickax inside a green house. I learned about smokeless stoves and aquaponics and offered up the only piece of useful information I could muster--that plant there is okra and it is best eaten fried. (I couldn't believe with all the collective knowledge they had there that no one had eaten okra. Southern girl to the rescue!) The entire time I was with their family I was amazed by the smart way they went about trying to assist the bottom tier of the economic structure. (Check them out at here.)

Boquete was also the first place I have ever been kicked out of a hostel. The people in charge told me I could only stay for one night because the place was full from then on. This was fine, but also perplexing because there was hardly anyone there. The next day I double checked and she told me again that it was full, so I moved across town. My friends in that hostel assured me that the hostel has not been full. I still have no idea what that was all about, but it made for some nice jokes. 

Speaking of friends, I met a ton of amazing people in Boquete--in the hostels, in the gardens and volunteering. I generally say the best and worst parts of traveling alone are all the people you meet. In Boquete they were definitely of the good variety. 

Some pictures below:   

The beautiful gardens in Boquete came with the reminder that I am allergic to seemingly any kind of plant these days. I got to make a fun trip to the pharmacy after this one for some allergy meds. 

Colorful buildings

I stopped in for mass one day and heard a sermon on the creation story. The priest used a metaphor of God going about creating like a pregnant mother preparing a nursery for her unborn baby. It was a surprising place to find a metaphor that was both feminine and compatible with an evolutionary take on creation. After spending a solid month this summer doing nothing but writing papers on the first 12 chapters of Genesis, I loved it.

Check out all those SPAM varieties!

In a photographic failure I somehow neglected to take a picture of the tricked out Diablos Rojos (repurposed  yellow school buses) in Panama City, but I did capture one in Boquete (and actually rode this one all the way back to David). But just so you get an idea of  how much more awesome the ones in the city were, if this one passed me on the street in Panama City, even with the fins on top and dual exhaust, I would have just let it pass and waited for a cooler one to come by. 

Machetes for sale in the corner store

A typical meal for me in Boquete. I ate in this cafeteria at least once a day, every day. All that goodness for about $2.50. 

So many gardens! So many pretty flowers!

My grandmother used to grow these. 

I trekked out to the hotsprings, which turned out to be a whole ordeal. It took me forever to find this sign. (And then forever still to get there from this sign.)

Oh yeah, did I mention I rode a bull? For more than 8 seconds too. 

(It's true. I don't always make brilliant decisions.)

The pharmacy where I got my allergy meds had all kinds of stuff in it. I suggested it as a possible place for a friend to find a copy of the new Girl Who Kicked the Something or Nother book. When we got in there I remembered, oh yeah--all those books I remembered seeing in there were all copies of the Santa Biblia (Bibles). Oops. They did have an EXACT replica of the scarf I was wearing though. Which was especially strange because I bought it at a Moroccan market in Brussels. 

OK, so that is a glimpse at Boquete! Next up, a few pictures from the parade/centennial celebration and my coffee tour.