Terremoto!

Terremoto=Earthquake. So, I finally felt my first earthquake! I woke up around 3 on Thursday morning to the violent shaking of my bed. Although I had never felt it before, my first thought was EARTHQUAKE. However, I looked at my roommate who was sleeping soundly and did a quick inventory of all of the things on the shelf above my head and concluded that I must have been dreaming. I quickly fell back asleep with little concern. I woke up later (4 am) when my roommate, Marta´s, phone rang. It was her mother calling, which in my sleepy stupor I thought was totally resonable since, given the time difference, it was the middle of the afternoon in Spain. After hanging up, Marta got on the internet and told me (in rapid spanish) that someone had died in San Pedro Sula due to a terremoto. I grunted as if I had a clue about what she was saying and then made a mental note (which I had no hope of remembering) to look up the word terremoto in the morning. Hours later, my alarm went of at its usual hour and I got up, got ready, had breakfast and went to work. Later that day, I recieved a text message asking if I was alright after the earthquake. I jumped up and ran across the school yard to the room of Candy, another volunteer, and questioned her about the quake. She told me that there had actually been an earthquake that was fairly stong and had done damage on the coast. I hadn´t been dreaming! I couldn´t believe that it had taken all morning for me to hear that information. Especially since the ranch is in its own small world and word travels very fast. So, the rest of the day was like a bad flashback to hurricane season in Florida. Nobody talked about anything but the earthquake and everyone speculated on whether or not there would be an aftershock or a tsunami. Fortunately neither occured and as far as I can tell, there was no damage in this area. The moral of the story: don´t live anywhere near me because natural disasters are sure to follow!

Nicaragua Trip (really long-read at your own risk)

I spent 5 days during the Semana Santa vacation traveling around Nicaragua with another volunteer, Emily. Here are some of the highlights:
Day 1: I arrive at the Tica bus station 2 hours before the bus leaves for Managua because it is the most popular travel week of the year, I have no tickets or reservations and this is the only direct bus leaving on this particular day. There is a couple already there purchasing tickets for the same trip and I overhear the salesman tell them that they can’t choose their seats because there are no more available. I silently freak out in my head, but wait patiently for my turn. The man sells me a ticket, which I later learn is the final ticket for this bus.

I spend all day on the bus watching first a movie (in English, yea!) and then old eighties MTV videos (hilarious, can’t believe anyone ever thought they were good). During our only stop, which was at the Honduras/Nicaragua border, a nice German girl introduces herself to me and asks if I am traveling alone because she is and would like company while finding a place to stay in Managua for safety. I tell her that I am meeting Emily in Managua (Emily had left 3 days before me.), but that she is welcome to join us in finding a hostel to spend the night.
Day 2: Emily, I and our new friend (we can’t remember her name) catch a bus to Granada in the morning. We arrive in Granada and soon after, meet a man (speaking great English) in the central park, who leads us to a really cute hostel (this is a very common job) where we secure beds and drop our backpacks. We spend the entire day walking around Granada. I LOVE Granada! It is an adorable little touristy town that is really clean, for CA standards, and has great shops, coffee shops and restaurants. It lies on the coast of Lake Nicaragua, which is almost the size of Lake Michigan. I could have spent more time there, but we were on a mission to get to the island of Ometepe and didn’t have any extra time.

For the evening, we got dolled up and hit the town for a nice dinner and some dancing at the town’s most popular club.
Day 3: We are told that the usual bus to Rivas (the town where we will get the bus to the ferry that goes to Ometepe) isn’t running due to the holiday. We decide to walk over to the bus area anyways to see if there are any other options. Of course there are plenty of other buses that will take us to Rivas and a driver tells us that his bus is leaving in 10 minutes. We board a bus and proceed to sweat for the next 45 min as the bus slowly fills to about double it’s capacity. Finally, the bus leaves and we soon arrive in Rivas. From Rivas, we take another bus to San Jorge, where we board a very questionable looking ferry to the island of Ometepe. This ferry ride was the second most frightening of my life (please refer to earlier blog for the first). This was a wooden boat that, due to the holiday, was probably filled (again) to double it’s capacity. By luck of the draw, I get stuck on the lower level of the boat while Emily and our German friend, along with another new friend, Monica, who used to work at NPH Mexico, are safely stationed on the upper level. As we pull away from the dock, I notice that the boat is more than slightly tilted to the left side (my side) and not leveling out. In addition it is making a horrible moaning sound not unlike that on the movie “Titanic”. As the people around me are happily chatting and guzzling beers sold by a smart Nicaraguan entrepreneur, I am inching my way closer to the ten visible life preservers and mentally planning my escape route for when the boat capsizes. At this point, one of the novel attractions of Lake Nicaragua: the home of the only species of fresh water bull sharks, is throwing a wrench in my plans to swim back to shore. Fortunately, I don’t have to carry out my plan and we arrive safely on the volcanic island.

As is true of the entire trip, we arrive on the island without a hotel reservation and really don’t even know on what part of the island we would like to spend the night. We hop on a bus (the last of the day) that circles the island and decide that we will get off at Playa Santo Domingo because the guide book recommends it and the name is nice. We exit the bus and our German friend, who we have finally figured out is named, remains because she has to stay at a hostel near the ferry in order to return to the mainland early the next morning. (This bus ride is her only activity while on the island.) At the first hotel in our path, we are told that there are no vacant rooms or beds in the town, but we can rent a mattress on the floor of the lobby for $6 a night. (This is more than we paid for any other rooms during the trip.) We figure the woman is bluffing just like all the people who keep telling us there are no busses or ferries due to the holiday, so we move on to the next hotel to inquire. We are told repeatedly that there are no rooms or even hammocks available for the night, so we return to the not so friendly mattress lady and secure our sleeping arrangements for the night. As Emily is showering in the beach side shower in her bathing suit, I discover that Monica, our NPH friend from the bus is sitting at the table next to me and I strike up a conversation. As it turns out, she is also going to be joining our lobby slumber party along with another American couple. We all get to know each other over dinner and a couple of drinks then retire early to our lobby accommodations.
Day 4: We wake up bright and early, pack our bags then head to the neighboring hotel to hire a guide to lead us up Volcan Maderas, the smaller and inactive one of the 2 volcanoes on the island. Monica decides to join us. We spend the entire day hiking up the volcano, which is 8 hours round trip. It is easily the most challenging hike I have ever done, which isn’t saying much considering the only other hike I have done in my life was just a few months ago dragging my sick self up Mt Si with Hopper and Dan. This hike was more challenging because it was much more steep and the top half of the climb was in a cloud forest which caused the path to be very wet and slippery. However, climbing down into the crater of the volcano and hanging out in the lake situated in the center was worth all of the pains of getting there.

After the hike, we were all covered in mud and I am sure not smelling our best. Unfortunately, we still had the chore of finding a place to stay for the night and had decided to return to Moyogalpa, the town where the ferry would leave from the following morning. Monica had heard about a hostel while in Granada that was there and known to be popular with backpackers. Due to the fact that there were no buses running that day on island (again due to the holiday), we hitched a ride along with a young family in the back of the truck of a young man and his girlfriend. We had to negotiate a price since in Nicaragua, unlike Honduras, it is common to pay for hitchhikes. We arrived very tired and still dirty at the hostel only to be told that they only had one open bed. However, after Monica flirted with the owner and threw out some names of mutual acquaintances, 2 more beds magically became available. Little did we know that this was by far the dirtiest and most uncomfortable of all of the places we would stay. However, by that point we didn’t care and the atmosphere was really fun due to all of the young backpackers staying there. We finally showered and cleaned up before sitting down to a great dinner and some beers with some guys that Monica met as I was showering. A crazy night ensued that ended with Emily and I crawling through all of the other backpackers to climb into our very narrow and wobbly top bunks without sheets or pillows and Monica making out with a handsome hippie Costa Rican man in the courtyard of the hotel.
Day 5: We fall out of bed and practically sleep walk our way onto a much more secure looking ferry boat back to the mainland. We have to back track our way by bus back to Managua and then on to Esteli, where we spend the night in order to be close to the Honduran boarder for the chicken bus boarder crossing journey the next and final day of our trip.
Day 6: We take 5 buses hopping from small town to town, crossing the boarder and finally ending up in Tegucigalpa where we run into some fellow volunteers and the director of the ranch who thank goodness gives us a ride back, allowing us to avoid the final bus ride and the dreaded ½ mile walk from the ranch gate back to our house. Although I was dead tired and had been dreaming of my bed all day, I realized as we entered the house that I had really missed the ranch, my girls and all the other volunteers and proceeded to spend the rest of the night catching up with everyone on all that we had missed and telling some of the more funny stories from the trip.

Molly Visits the Ranch

When I announced that I was moving to Honduras to volunteer as a PT at an orphanage, there were numerous people who said that they had always wanted to do something similar, but didn’t want to commit to a year of service. With this in mind, I sent a mass e-mail to all of my therapist friends inviting everyone to visit me on the ranch to help me out with my work with the kids for 1-2 weeks. Surprisingly, Molly, a co-worker (and friend) from La Rabida jumped at the chance to visit and help out. She also graciously agreed to bring a walker that I had requested as a donation from Mike, an equipment rep in Chicago.

Molly arrived on a Wednesday and because she was bringing a much needed (and very large) donation, I was able to arrange for transportation and my boss, Kate, met her at the airport. Although she arrived in the late morning, Molly didn’t arrive on the Ranch until the evening because Kate kidnapped her for the afternoon and dragged her all over Tegus. (Actually, the transport guy, Manuel, had to run a bunch of errands in the city and they took the opportunity to visit the mall, which means Molly’s first exposure to Tegus was ironically the most/only Americanized part.) When she did finally arrive, it was just in time to join me for the evening in hogar with my girls. Of course all of the girls loved having her there all week and we spent most of the time just talking with them. Molly shocked me with her Spanish and willingness to try to speak to all of the girls. It also boosted my confidence in my Spanish skills as I was able to translate for her.

One big project that I had scheduled for Molly and I during her visit was making bi-valved casts for two of the girls here with cerebral palsy (or what appears to be CP). We spent all morning Friday making these casts and I am so thankful that she was here because I couldn’t have done it without her.

After casting, we headed off to spend the weekend at a bed and breakfast type place near the National Park, La Tigra. It is a cabin owned by a German couple who moved to Honduras 11 years ago. The cabin is immaculately clean and incredibly comfortable. As soon as we arrived, we took off for a hike through the park to a very popular waterfall. The hike started off going straight uphill and Molly and I huffed and puffed our way up behind our 60 year old guide as he huffed and puffed his way through the first of many cigarettes. The hike took a total of 3 hours and by then end, our guide had finished about 10 cigarettes, married us off to several random Honduran men and Molly and I felt we had fulfilled our desire to be out-doorsy and active for the weekend. When we returned to the cabin we relaxed and enjoyed the amazing view. The most amazing part about this particular place is the food, which is vegetarian and not typical Honduran dishes. Also, the owners have put a lot of effort into making their dining room homey and the view from the many windows is beautiful. We ate dinner with the couple (an older German woman and young Honduran man) who was staying in the only other room at the cabin. It was a fairly awkward dinner since Molly spoke English, I spoke English and rough Spanish, the German woman understood all of the three languages, but spoke Spanish and the Honduran spoke only Spanish. Also, I am pretty sure we had nothing in common with them even without the language barriers. However, we were all enjoying the food and wine and the conversation revolved around that. Molly and I retired a bit early to avoid the uncomfortable silences that followed dinner. The next morning, we stuffed ourselves with an amazing breakfast (outside on the porch overlooking the valley below) of homemade bread, lemonade, coffee and jam. Then we set out on what turned out to be another long hike down the mountain to the bus stop. I think Molly surprised herself with her cardiovascular endurance and perseverance.

Throughout her trip, Molly also got a good taste of the Honduran “work” ethic and prioritizing. During her first week, one entire day was spent preparing and celebrating the “Day of the Worker”, which is of course an occasion that requires the cancellation of school and a party for all of those who work in the school. Work was halted during the second week for a big celebration for Mother’s Day, which again required cancelling classes and another party. This was nice, but I was a little disappointed that Molly was unable to work with some of the kids I had scheduled for those days. However, it was an accurate representation of what work is like here on the ranch. All in all, it was great to have Molly here and she helped tremendously with all of the kids’ therapy.