Estelí

Estelí

It took me a long time to get used to living in Managua but after a month and a bit in Estelí, I already feel really at home. This is the city, nestled between mountains. It's quite flat so on almost any street you can see the mountains, it's comforting in a strange way. This is the north central highlands, and feels a million miles away from Managua, but it's only a bit more than 2 hours on the express bus.

There's a husky puppy (six months and giant) in the house I live in, we go wandering the streets at around 6pm most evenings when it's quite cool and the light is turning orange and red over the hills, it's my favourite time of day. People have their doors open and sit on their doorsteps chatting or in rocking chairs on the patio watching the world go by. It feels really safe here. Until a ferocious dog throws itself at the gate of a house and scares me and Saskia to death. 

Estelí was where a lot of the fighting took place during the revolution in the 1970s, there are lots of murals around town supporting the revolution and remembering many of the compañeros from here who died. This is a more recent one showing the current president who is from the Sandinista party that led the revolution. 

Jumping to another subject, here are a couple of photos from a nature reserve nearby, Tisey-Estanzuela. This mirador (viewpoint) was just ten minutes walk from the cabin on a farm that we stayed in for a night. We were told sometimes you can see over the border to Honduras and to the coast the other way, but it was a bit hazy while we were there. Still, not too bad a view. We could see a few different volcanoes as well.

This one was taken from the bus on the way up. The coating against the sun on the windows gave it the sepia kind of effect, a nice surprise! There's lots of cattle farms along the Panamerican highway and you often see the cowboys herding them along the side of the road.

The project

I'll try and explain a bit about what I'm doing here, apart from hanging out with a husky and improving my Spanish by drinking beer and chatting to people.

There is a non-profit social enterprise here that uses funds from a hostel and (very nice) café to run projects in the Miraflor Protected Area, which is about 45 minutes. It's been going for quite a few years and does micro-loans for house-building/improving, an organic gardens project, a library bus for children in the reserve which is just about to start running next week, and eco-tourism with families in the reserve who take in tourists to stay with them for some extra income. It works directly with the communities in the reserve and only employs local people. They want to start using some money raised from the tourism office and homestays to do conservation, as Miraflor has been downgraded from reserve to protected area and has been heavily deforested. So my job, and another volunteer who has just joined me, is to help plan this and work with the employees here to get trees planted in May/June when the rainy season has begun. We want this to become a sustainable, ongoing activity for the communities involved so we're planning a program of environmental education for the children at school to get them interested and enthusiastic about the benefits of reforestation.

I'm learning lots about tropical tree species and traditional agriculture techniques where selecting certain species of trees can help improve your crops and even cattle in so many ways, it's incredible! Need to get myself a big garden to practice for myself in.

There's a LOT to do but there's loads of people, local and foreign around here who can help us, and want to. I'll put more information and photos on here, as it happens, hopefully sooner rather than later!

This photo is taken from one of the two tree nursery sites, we're looking forward to spending some time up there after working a lot from computers here! This one is in the lower, dry zone, and the other nursery is in the high, humid zone which is cooler and a lot more green.

Ariel, on the left in the photo below, works in the tourism office and took me for a visit to the site this week on his motorbike. His family have land all around the site and we dropped in on his grandparents because he needed to help his grandad brand three calves. I definitely learned something new watching that! I wasn't sure I wanted to watch the actual branding but his grandma kept telling me to come over, she was pretty excited for me to see so I went and watched with her.

 This is the cafe where I spend a lot of time, mostly working on the plans and fundraising, but plenty of relaxing too :-)
There was live music on this night and I got lots of salsa lessons, didn't learn much though due to all the nervous giggling I was doing. Loads of fun though, and much looser after a couple of mojitos.

Peñas Blancas

A few weeks ago, I finally saw the place that Frederic has spent/will be spending a lot of his time. Two buses, half a day, and some terrible roads brings you there, in the Northern highlands of Nicaragua, coffee growing country. Its the sort of place where you don't mind things like ice cold water for the shower, bigger-than-acceptable bugs in the bedroom at night, HEAVY food (like rice and cheese 3 times a day), and sporadic electricity cuts, because this is what you see from the doorway of your cabin:

It's also a special place when at dusk a gang of toucans arrive and you can wander from tree to tree following them in their evening routine and listening to their strange, toad-like sounds. No decent photos of the toucans but this is the species, photo taken from the internet, a keel-billed toucan  

The sunset, as seen from a spot five minutes walk up the hill, each range of hills a different shade of pinky grey and changing faster than I could take pictures as the sun disappeared

One of the ladies who lives on the farm cooking our tea over a wood fire. Cheese is freshly made each morning, coffee beans from the farm are ground in the kitchen and Don Chico occasionally gets out his battered mandolin and plays old Nicaraguan songs with a grin on his face. At the same time the younger men compare their motorbikes and everyone knows the best spot to leave your mobile phone to have a chance of receiving some signal, its always a blend of old and new 

Fried plantain banana, rice, beans, freshly made cheese and tortillas

Playing cards after lunch 

Some residents of the farm. The calf was three days old and probably still hasn't grown into her ears now

The Macizo de Peñas Blancas

The area is named after the white rock formation which dominates the community living below it. I felt like it was watching us, most of the time in a friendly way. 

The macizo de Peñas Blancas

The first morning there we had a big breakfast that I later regretted slightly as we dragged ourselves up the mountain (well, I dragged, Frederic clambered, and Arturo, the farmer acting as our guide, skipped up without breaking a sweat. I pointed out my shorter legs while they waited for me, then sheepishly realised that Arturo is the same height, if not shorter than me). 

We went up towards the right of the picture, almost vertically,hoping not to grab on to a spiky tree trunk for support as we slipped, and trusting the 3 or 4 wooden ladders not to lose their grip on the rock and send us toppling back down the mountain.

All of a sudden we hit the ledge, and found ourselves on the almost-flat plateau where there is a icy cold stream running into an incredibly inviting pool and then a waterfall .. swimming will be for next time though because Arturo seemed keen to get back to the farm. Although he didn't actually say this, being the strong (well, small) and silent type. We didn't see much wildlife at the top, a couple of times a hummingbird flashed in front of me, an iridescent blur, and every now and again we would hear the song of the oropéndola, which sounds to me a bit like a xylophone being played. When we go back we might spend the night at the top sleeping in hammocks, and could see much more wildlife, though that probably includes much more mosquitoes too. 

Then we crossed the plateau from the right to the left, and stumbled down at only a slightly lower gradient than the way up.

It was all worth it for these views.

Frederic on red alert for interesting birds, while Arturo leads on through one of his coffee fields. The plants here are around one year old I think, and need 2 more before they're ready to bear fruit 

So, Frederic will be back soon to start interviewing the farmers in the area and I'll be back to visit one day. The 5 hours of bus journeys to get there only builds the anticipation 

Monkeys and more of the Monkey Hut

Monkeys.. lots of them

A couple of weeks ago we stayed a night in a hotel, only half an hour from Managua but couldn't have felt more different. It's tucked into the forest away from the road and is much much cooler than here. The best things about this: I could wear one of the many surplus jumpers I brought, and we slept with 2 layers of sheets (still no duvet) and no fan on all night! Luxury, although probably not what you want to hear whilst freezing your socks off in England and Belgium. We had a cheese fondue for tea, the only vegetarian thing on the menu, but it was delicious, apart from the gherkins which had been inexplicably pickled with a massive amount of cinnamon. Not a good surprise. The next day we went for a walk after breakfast having been told there were trails, and arrived at a viewpoint at the top where we could see a volcano in the distance (not sure which one). We thought 'oh we'll go back down a different way, the other paths must lead down to the hotel. WRONG. After at least half an hour of walking down quite steeply we finally admitted we weren't on a proper trail anymore, we were just wandering through coffee plants getting deeper and deeper into the forest. So we went back up in the heat of midday, already nearly late for lunch. I had a minor tantrum but Frederic handled it well. We did see some really nice birds on the way back up so that made up for it, and for the first time this trip I actually had my binoculars with me when we needed them. 

We had a good dinner and then I heard howler monkeys, like Frederic during the night. I walked a bit away from the hotel and they were suddenly above me, no-one else around! Special moment! I watched for a couple of minutes and then ran like mad to get Frederic but by the time I got to him they were in the trees right next to the hotel, where they stayed for the next hour! So I had to share them then, but I got a few photos, and realised that I want a longer lens for my camera! There was a couple of big males, younger ones and a mother with a baby. It was sooo nice to just lie on the grass and watch them for an hour through the binocs, but I paid for it with a nice bit of sunburn. 

View from the top before we strayed from the route and got lost .. it's cloudy but spot the volcano in the background

Moon rising over the lake 

We were at the Monkey Hut last weekend and it was a full moon, the most orange moon I've ever seen! You can see the moon come up every night, it appears on the edge of the crater and then really quickly its up. We weren't quick enough with the camera to get a picture while it was just appearing but we got this one. It was more orange in real life! Couldn't see many stars though, it was so bright!