The blue dot-arrow below shows where we were in Jinotega. The jagged line between Nicaragua and Honduras is the Cocoa River - it's also the border between countries.
This zoomed-in map shows the capital Minagua, the coastal town of Leon, and again the blue dot-arrow shows Jinotega - the river is off the map further to the right.
Our last night, Friday August 15th we arrived back in the cool mountains of Jinotega from the hot and humid, though pretty, beach region of Leon. I took a self- guided walking tour of Jinotega.
Probably 80 people packed into this bus:
Claro is their biggest cell phone provider:
Internet cafe on the left - there are many of these.
My walking tour coincided with school being let out. This candy seller had her cart right in front if the school exit, smart!
In Nicaragua everything is locked down with iron bars. Every fence has barbed wire and every window and door has iron bars. You cannot trust anything to be left out or it will be quickly stolen(...like my sandals). Some examples below of this:
We stayed our final night in Jinotega in a nice hotel called Hotel Cafe (Hotel Coffee is the translation), everyone got to have a shower with warm water!
We woke up in the morning to an awesome parade put on by a huge amount of school age kids, it was very interesting! I took video and pictures. I was probably a parade spectacle too being a "Gringo" 2-3X the size of all of them!
Cool drum beats kept the marching and dancing together and entertained us as well, I loved every second of it:
Nicaragua has a couple of very special things that grow here that get exported: Cafe (coffee) and (Cacao) which is made into chocolate. I bought some for gifts and for a fundraising dinner I am going to put on.
The coffee is so good sixteen companies re-sell it with their own label including Peet's Coffee! The elevation of Jinotega qualifies it as premium "Arabica" coffee. The name of this coffee translated is the "Flower of Jinotega":
A lot of their chocolate available for sale has coffee in it but I found some that was "puro cacao"(pure chocolate) also:
I have been working on my Spanish constantly on the trip and I am starting to pull sentences together. I also helped several people we worked with learn more English. I hope to return and invest more time in Nicaragua so when I return home I am going to look into either Rosetta Stone or Duo-Lingo language software.
Leaving Jinotega to head back to Minagua to depart for a 3pm flight Saturday, August 16th:
Heading down out of the mountains and the cool air. You can see the last remnants of Jinotega below.
On the road again - we spent probably 10-15% of the trip either on roads or the river, not efficient at all and many of the roads were very bumpy (often filled with deep mud holes). I almost knocked myself out our first night with the side to side bumping action of the truck we were in. At least this road is taking us home.
Outskirts of Minagua:
Pulling into Minagua Airport:
The five "gringos" who were on this trip. Someone quickly hand-made plastic ponchos for us one day when it started raining. Left to right: Brian, Eric, Ashley(writer-reporter), Martin, Andy - all US Citizens:
Lots of scruff on all of us. Happy to be going home to our families.
This type of trip involved the jungle but Martin also does non-jungle trips and welcomes anyone. There is plenty of opportunity to help people everywhere- I was worried I was taking a week away and might not be useful but nothing could be further from the truth. In spite of not speaking Spanish Eric and I were both equal contributors on this trip. The little kids only wanted love (ok and our toys and crayons) and there was plenty of activity and work to help with.
They always say these trips change you and I see that - but we changed a lot of Nicaraguans too - and the change in me is more than character forming - it's really more like an activation. I want to be involved in this moving forward - I want to get my family involved as well. Martin inherited some land to be used for ministry purposes which will eventually have a clinic and an orphanage. He is also receiving a potential grant from Rotary International to fund a jungle boat+Land Rover ambulance shuttle to regularly take people needing care out of the jungle and get them to a hospital.
I hope to fund a dorm for orphans after the clinic is done as a project for my family which I would accomplish through saving and fund-raising. I hope to not only fund this but to bring my family to help during construction.
During this journey I kept a Vlog, video journal every step of the way. I am going to turn that into a video story and show it at my house and have a fundraiser for these projects soon. If you would like to be invited or would like to help - or would like to join an upcoming trip please drop me a line on Facebook or email me at christianbusinessguy@yahoo.com.
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