Aunque sea un pedacito, ya queremos pastel! This line comes at the end of a very long traditional birthday song…and translates to, Although it might only be a small piece, now we want cake!
For his birthday, Steve received a few small items, with a few more on the way. First, a shirt he picked out some time ago. The T-shirt reads, Wonderful climate, relaxed people, Matagalpa. Perfectly stated, we couldn’t have agreed more! He also received a leather wallet, made here in Nicaragua, close to Matagalpa.
He also decided to do some traveling, so we packed up and headed out around 10 am to Esteli, the city in which we spent 6 weeks for language study. Hard to believe it's been 2 years since we last visited this pretty city. We head south from Matagalpa and after meeting up with the Pan-American Highway, we headed north. It is always
interesting to see all the rice fields, tractors and wildlife along the valley. Such a different landscape from our home in hilly Matagalpa.
We first visited La Casita, situated just south of the city, and set up by a Scotsman who spent some time doing development work here. La Casita is an experimental/demonstration farm, as well as small restaurant, plant nursery and artisan craft shop. I enjoyed a delicious swiss cheese, tomato and whole wheat bread sandwich, all organic and grown/made right there on the premises, as well as a refreshing banana milk shake. The kids enjoyed some time in the playground.
We then went down to the central market in search of some cheese with chilies, but weren’t able to locate any. So we then went to a fast food restaurant with a large play area for lunch, then headed to a nearby reserve and enjoyed the waterfall. The water was quite cold, and although a nearby group of Europeans jumped in, they quickly got out and sunned themselves. As we were getting ready to leave, one of the girls approached us and asked if we were leaving. Could she get a ride back to Esteli?, she wondered. She had been quite sick the day before and wasn’t feeling well again. So we took her back to the city, and enjoyed chatting with her for a few minutes. From Canada, she was slowly making her way through Nicaragua, and eventually hoped to make it down to South America. She was backpacking by herself and her Spanish needed a lot of work. It’s truly amazing to meet people like her that travel alone and without good knowledge of the local language…something that Steve and I can’t quite see ourselves doing, but always interesting to talk with others about their experiences. Very brave!
After dropping her off, we looked at an old map of the area, and decided to try to make our way back home using some back roads. We questioned a man at the nearby gas station who pointed us to a very smooth looking road, and we were off! The road was in very good shape, just haven been repaired and all new cobblestones put down ( a common method of street construction here). The view was glorious as we passed by tobacco upon tobacco fields and their gigantic wooden sheds. Esteli is known as the tobacco capital of Nicaragua and actually produces Cuban quality cigars, from which the plants are originally from. We passed farms and even bigger farms, rock walls, horses and of course, cattle.
We started to climb and the temperature quickly dropped, which was a nice respite at first, but then I soon had to roll up the window as it became too cool for me. After winding our way through several small towns, then an even larger town and then eventually into Jinotega, our sister city to the north, we stopped for ice cream. Being so cold, we were the few customers, but kids always want ice-cream, right?
After quickly slurping down the ice-cream, we climbed over the mountains once more and headed home. Normally the commute to Esteli takes about 1 ½ hours, taking the Pan-American highway, but the back roads took us 3 hours. No matter...upon arriving home we quickly devoured a hot meal of beans with cheese, gave the boys their baths and put them to bed. Within minutes they were asleep.
Zach was disappointed that we didn’t have cake or a piñata, and soundly proclaimed that we needed to celebrate Steve’s birthday again tomorrow, the RIGHT way. But Steve seemed pleased with his low-key, adventuresome birthday.
So Sunday I made a cake, and today we bought a pinata...nothing like dragging out a birthday celebration!
No comments:
Post a Comment