We went to León on the 7th to attend the ‘Gritería’, which is a tradition in honour of the holy Virgin María’s ‘concepción’. Technically comparable to a halloween ‘trick or treat’, or the singing of ‘drie koningen’ on the 6th of January in Belgium, people of all ages and classes run around in the streets. They go from door to door, ‘shouting’ (gritar) at the houses where there are altars: “Quién causa tanta alegría?”; which gets the reply from inside: “La concepción de María!” and then a handful of treats comes your way. It can be anything: sweets, soap, pens, salt, beans, cake, fruit,… We don’t have any pictures as we had been warned more than once about the masses in the streets, and how the event does not only attract people with good intentions. With hindsight it was less crowded than expected; but after all the saying goes ‘better safe than sorry…’
To give you an idea of the activity, we've included some pictures from the internet. The source is mentioned.
http://simonrach.blogspot.com/2010/01/griteria-in-leon.html
http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/260849
People construct the altars in their living rooms and open the doors, leaving the bars closed, and hand the gifts out through the bars. Some of them are really amazing, with fairy lights, flowers, curtains, and are as high as the ceiling. There's also fireworks at 6pm and midnight, but the attitude to health and safety doesn't really exist.. going back to our hostel at midnight we had to wait because men were setting them off in the street just by lighting them in their hands and throwing them up in the air! They were going all over the place, sideways, up and down. We didn't see anybody get hurt so they must have some skills or just be very lucky!
Las Peñitas
The next day we went to the Pacific coast which is only 20 minutes from León. We ate fresh, delicious fish and had a dip in the sea while the sun went down. The water is the perfect temperature and the colours at sunset were beautiful. The only downer was the black clams which didn't agree with me and meant that Frédéric had to eat tea on his own, but the next day we had to be up early for a trip so we needed an early night anyway.
The trip was a tour by boat of the protected reserve of the Isla de San Venado, which is an area around a river which runs parallel to the sea and has mangrove habitat on either side. We saw so many different birds that I can't even remember them all but there were the royal heron, white heron, blue heron, tricolour heron, ibis, kingfishers and vultures. Also, a big green iguana resting on a log, and crocodiles which we had given up seeing and only just saw on the way back. First a baby one, then an older one and they stood their ground for a while posing for photos before they slipped into the water!
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| Blue heron |
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| The mangroves |
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| Royal heron |
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| Vulture |
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| Kingfisher |
Our guide was brilliant, he was a local fisherman with no shoes on who was really enthusiastic and spotted things that blended into the background that we never would have noticed. We were out for 4 1/2 hours on a tour that was supposed to be only 3 hours. That's also my excuse as to why my sunburn was so bad as anyone who saw me (Laura) on skype after will understand.
He took us to the beach at one point to look at a nest a crocodile had used to lay her eggs and then to a turtle hatching project, where baby turtles had just hatched that morning and were waiting to go off into the big wide ocean at night. A bucket full of baby turtles.. SO CUTE!
The area on the beach where they re-bury the eggs after digging them up from where the turtles lay them. They do this because racoons, dogs and sometimes people eat them. They are experimenting with using the bags full of sand in the picture because they can put several lots in one bag and they seem to have a better rate of hatching in those.
So we'll probably being seeing Felipe again, he told us about a trip on the ocean we could do, spear fishing and then cooking the fish on a fire on the beach, I think it's got your name written all over it dad!
Felipe strolling casually over thorns that went through Frédéric's flip-flop to show us the crocodile's nest
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