Mini-vacation...Miraflor

I just got back yesterday from my first mini-vacation in Nicaragua and it was an overall success with a few interesting stories along the way.

The trip was to Miraflor, a nature reserve/coffee farm/pretty place in the mountains, to spend the weekend with my training group discussing the good, bad, and funny of our first three months in site. The trip from Corinto to Miraflor took about 10 hours on 5 different buses. The buses were either minivans packed with people, or old discarded yellow school buses from the U.S. packed with people. When you get on these buses there are vendors that come on selling a variety of things such as tomatoes, beverages, enchiladas, books on how to learn English, or bananas. This always entertains me because these buses are super cramped with people and these vendors try and pass through everyone yelling out what they’re selling. Once the bus gets going, there is always people getting on and off, we pass through villages and sometimes stop briefly for vendors to get on and try to sell stuff again. In other words the bus rides are definitely uncomfortable, hot and cramped but the time usually passes quickly in an entertaining way.

We all arrived to Miraflor on Friday after everyone had long busrides. Mine was one of the longer bus rides, but one girl in my group rode about 15 hours to get there. It was great to see everyone and find out about their sites. We stayed at Posada la Sonada in a cabin that had about 14 beds.


This is a cabin where the 14 of us stayed. Thats me standing in the green shirt there.


The owner was a sweet lady who cooked all our meals for us (delicious I might add) and arranged for a guide (read: 22 yr old neighbor boy) to take us on a hike to the nearby waterfall on Saturday. The hike was great because I finally had a chance to walk around in the mountains in Nicaragua.

The weather in Miraflor was a lot cooler than what I am used to in Corinto because it is in the mountains. I slept with my jeans on, two long sleeve shirts, a jacket, and a heavy blanket. In Corinto, I sleep in boxers, with a sheet and a fan pointed at me. The hike was great because the weather was still fairly cool, even at midday. Despite the cool weather, when we arrived at the small waterfall we decided to go swimming. There was a small cliff overlooking the waterfall where you could jump off of into the water below. We all took turns doing the cliff diving into the frigid cold water.

Thats me jumping into the water...I jumped from where the girl in the pink shirt is.

This is part of my group posing for a beautiful pic in front of the waterfall.

Later that day we returned to the cabin played cards and hung out. Most of the weekend was spent exchanging stories. For example, a guy in our group who lives in a very rural site was taught by his Nica friends how to make a chicken poop any time and any place. It involves spinning the chicken and spitting on its stomach and he says it works every time. Then he proved to us that it works every time by grabbing one of the chickens where we were staying. But the question we all asked was, “First off, why would you ever need a chicken to poop, and second off, who figured out that this was the way to make a chicken poop.” I guess you can never underestimate the lack of “normal” entertainment in farming communities.

This is our buddy showing how to make a chicken poop. Another one of the many valuable life skills we pick up in the peace corps.

On Sunday, we all said our good byes and left again to our sites with plans to meet up again in September. I left with my two friends that live close to Corinto and we hopped on our series of buses. The trip back was a bit exciting because about 30 min into our third bus it broke down in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road. We had already paid and we were in the process of getting our money back (of course not in full, but about a 70% refund) when another bus passed by and picked up some of the passengers from our bus that were standing on the side of the road and had already gotten their refund. That other bus started to leave and so we are trying to hurry up our refund process so we can chase the bus. We finally get the refund and start chasing after the bus yelling “Suave! Suave!” or slow down. Keep in mind that we are running with big backpacks on, the stupid Americans chasing after a bus full of Nicas. They finally slow down enough for us to jump on in the back door (remember the back door of school buses?). Well, there are three of us, and since the bus just picked up a bunch of new passengers, all the seats and the aisle were completely full. There was room for about 1 more person in the back there, but somehow we managed to squeeze the three of us on, barely being able to close the door behind us. Anyways, we spend the next three hours standing in the back of a packed old school bus, on dirt roads, holding our backpacks and bags. When finally arriving to our destination, we were exhausted but also felt lucky because if we didn’t get that bus, we may not have been able to get home that day.

Its times such as those that remind me that I’m in Nicaragua. Corinto is fairly developed, I have internet a block away from my house, almost always have running water, electricity, and cell phone service. So sometimes I think that my life here isn’t much different from life in the states. But riding on a school bus on dirt roads standing up makes me think, I’m probably in country a bit different than home. Then I learn the definitive way to make a chicken poop, and I know I´m a long way from Chicago.