Tourist Day

Saturday, Jan 22nd, was "Tourist Day." Construction team #1 got to have a fun day before leaving for home, and the medical mission team got to have a fun day before beginning their week of work. Both teams were together for breakfast at Los Cedros, and then each team left in a separate conveyance for sight-seeing and recreation. Before we left, though, I took this photo of Joel in a hammock surrounded by some of the little girls. Joel had his cell phone on speaker and the girls were talking and serenading somebody. I took a short video of them singing a Christmas song to the tune of "Jingle Bells" but couldn't upload it due to slow internet here. Sorry.

It seemed like we spent most of the day in a van (or bus for the mission team). It took at least an hour to get to the location of the zipline experience. It was somewhere south of Managua near a huge inactive volcano in mountainous, coffee and banana growing country. The standing joke was whenever anyone asked Joel how much longer it would take to get there, he always said, "About 30 minutes." When we arrived, those participating paid their $28 and got harnessed and helmeted for the sport. I chose not to do the zipline for two reasons: (1) I wanted to take photographs of the others doing it, and (2) I had recently done zipline in the Dominican Republic. Here is Bud Ritter all ready to go. The guides loaded my friends into the bed of a pick-up truck (typical Nicaraguan style) and drove them to the first of the ziplines. I was given a 15-year-old guide to show me where I could take photographs. My young guide, George (pronounced "Hor-hay"), couldn't seem to understand my protestations of "No hablo Espanol," and/or "No comprehendo." He kept telling me things I couldn't understand in Spanish. I did figure out when he pointed out an iguana to me, and I took a photo. Then I took a photo of him. As we walked through the forest, he pointed out various trees and plants and told me their names--in Spanish, of course. I understood the word for coffee, though, expecially when he started picking red coffee-berries and handing them to me. I said, "Gracias" and put them in my pocket.

I took lots of photos of people on the zipline, but I obviously can't show all of them to you. In this one, Ron Schaad is using the "standard" form of ziplining. You hold onto the harness with one hand and use the other riding lightly on the cable as a brake. To slow down, you don't grasp the cable, but just pull down on it.

The guides allowed some "funny stuff" we weren't allowed to do when I was in the Dominican Republic--hanging upside down from the cable or riding in tandem with a guide in the "Superman" position. Here Ashley Johnson of the medical team is doing the latter.The cables of the zipline course were strung high in some large trees with metal catwalks to get from the end of one cable to the beginning of the next. Here some of the medical team stand on the catwalk waiting to go on the next one. Our second "touristy thing" of the day was a visit to a pottery shop. We had the opportunity to watch a master potter at work on a "kick wheel," a method of throwing pots that dates back thousands of years. After the demonstration, we browsed the shop and selected some to purchase and take home.

I am trying my best to line up my explanations of photos with the pictures, but the blog-site isn't letting me do it. You'll have to figure out what caption goes with what, I guess.

We had lunch at a resort restaurant called "Norome" located beside a lake in the crater of a volcano. The food was OK, but nothing to write home about, and the service was slow--especially when we wanted to pay our checks and get on our way. The ambience, however, was very nice--the tropical plants and view of the lake.
It took so long to drive back to Managua that we had only 45 minutes to look around in the marketplace. The medical team left the restaurant even later than the construction team, so they had NO time in the marketplace. I stayed with Construction team #1 and ate supper with them at the Camino Real Hotel. I took a nap beside the pool as some of them swam, and then we met Construction team #2 and the airport; they came in about 9:30. We delivered them to Los Cedros, and spent the night there again.
Sunday morning Construction team 2 went to church in Managua. I joined the medical team on the long bus ride to Jinotega. We left about 8:30 and arrived in Jinotega about 1:00. We had lunch (salad, rice, and beans), and spent the afternoon counting pills and packaging them in small plastic bags for distribution to the people we will serve at the clinic tomorrow. I took some scenic photos on our drive into the mountains, but it's getting late as I write this, and it's almost bedtime. I'll try to put a few of those in with tomorrow's account so you can see what a beautiful country this is.