4 days of isolation
After Granada Sarah got some serious FOMO (read as: fear of missing out, my fave new word. Thanks nick and phil!) and decided to head back to the sun, surf, boys, and hippie festival in San Juan Del Sur while I decided to continue onwards to the gloriously cool weathered mountains of nicaragua.
This was the first time I have been alone in MONTHS, literally. In fact the last time I remember being alone was for a day or two in Bogota, in between dropping Julien at the airport and meeting up with Sarah in Medellin. It was rather disconcerting and sort of a hard adjustment at first, but I slipped back into it quickly and rediscovered my original joy of traveling alone. Most obviously I noticed I just had a lot more TIME on my hands to do things like go on the internet, read my books, and talk with locals. I´ve spoken more spanish in the past week or so than the entire month and a half with Sarah. Not that I blame sarah, but it just seems to be one of those natural things where if you HAVE somebody to speak to in english, you won´t bother trying to speak in your second language if you don´t have to.
I decided to spent my second week of Nicaragua in the mountains becuase I was just plain fed up with feeling hot. So sick of sweating all the time, so sick of always having to wear my hair up, sick of constantly swatting mosquitoes, and INCREDIBLY sick of not being able to sleep well at night because of overheating. I had simply had enough, and Matagalpa was the refreshing little pueblo that I had been itching for.
Matagalpa, and to a lesser extent Esteli, are gringo free. For those four days that I spent alone I could easily count the number of foreigners I saw on one hand. This was great, once I became familiar again with the initial apprehension of forcibly being alone. I just reminded myself that I did 3 months in the middle east and the 6 weeks in brazil mostly alone. So what did I do first to ease myself into it? Shopping. Straight away. How could I resist? there were opshops all around and I had some GREAT finds, the best of which was easily my new 100% italian leather knee high riding boots for $10 USD!! I immediately felt better. Retail therapy does wonders, people.
Nicaraguans are also a relatively friendly people, i´m happy to report. Nobody really went out of their way to befriend me, but the ones I did have a chat with were very jolly and curious about where I came from. It never ceases to amaze people that I´m a chinese person born in the US, and no matter how much I insist I´m American they continue to ask me questions about China and what life is like over there. It´s good that I´ve at least been a few times or else I´d be fumbling to tell them anything.
Besides shopping in Matagalpa I ventured out on a little walk in the cloudforest nearby. even though this cloudforest covers a large portion of the surrounding land, a lot of it is privately owned by coffee farms, etc. so walking routes are rare apparently. I had to take a chicken bus (american schoolbuses repainted and spruced up for public transport in c. america) towards Jinotega and asked the driver to drop me to get to the Black Forest.
The moment I stepped out I was faced with an old, rusty tank and a sign indicating a path towards a hotel. Unsure of if this was the right way I simply decided to hoof it a few km and see how it went. Luckily this walk was extremely pleasant with really lush greenery about and offshooting paths onto private coffee farms so I could get an upclose look. There was something very magical and charming about the cloudforest there. It was something about the combination of a mountainly breeze with the fluttering sounds and glimpses of hummingbirds...I just felt very content. After my walk I turned around and headed back to the main road and ended up waiting at least an hour or more for a bus that wasn´t totally full. I nearly decided to hitch a ride back again, but reminded myself it wasn´t the middle east. So instead I waited patiently with an elderly Nicaraguan woman thinking to myself "it´s okay, we´re in this together!" only to watch her half an hour later try to catch a ride in a truck and pretty much jumped into the back of the car without a word to me to come along. We were no longer friends after that.
This was the first time I have been alone in MONTHS, literally. In fact the last time I remember being alone was for a day or two in Bogota, in between dropping Julien at the airport and meeting up with Sarah in Medellin. It was rather disconcerting and sort of a hard adjustment at first, but I slipped back into it quickly and rediscovered my original joy of traveling alone. Most obviously I noticed I just had a lot more TIME on my hands to do things like go on the internet, read my books, and talk with locals. I´ve spoken more spanish in the past week or so than the entire month and a half with Sarah. Not that I blame sarah, but it just seems to be one of those natural things where if you HAVE somebody to speak to in english, you won´t bother trying to speak in your second language if you don´t have to.
I decided to spent my second week of Nicaragua in the mountains becuase I was just plain fed up with feeling hot. So sick of sweating all the time, so sick of always having to wear my hair up, sick of constantly swatting mosquitoes, and INCREDIBLY sick of not being able to sleep well at night because of overheating. I had simply had enough, and Matagalpa was the refreshing little pueblo that I had been itching for.
Matagalpa, and to a lesser extent Esteli, are gringo free. For those four days that I spent alone I could easily count the number of foreigners I saw on one hand. This was great, once I became familiar again with the initial apprehension of forcibly being alone. I just reminded myself that I did 3 months in the middle east and the 6 weeks in brazil mostly alone. So what did I do first to ease myself into it? Shopping. Straight away. How could I resist? there were opshops all around and I had some GREAT finds, the best of which was easily my new 100% italian leather knee high riding boots for $10 USD!! I immediately felt better. Retail therapy does wonders, people.
Nicaraguans are also a relatively friendly people, i´m happy to report. Nobody really went out of their way to befriend me, but the ones I did have a chat with were very jolly and curious about where I came from. It never ceases to amaze people that I´m a chinese person born in the US, and no matter how much I insist I´m American they continue to ask me questions about China and what life is like over there. It´s good that I´ve at least been a few times or else I´d be fumbling to tell them anything.
Besides shopping in Matagalpa I ventured out on a little walk in the cloudforest nearby. even though this cloudforest covers a large portion of the surrounding land, a lot of it is privately owned by coffee farms, etc. so walking routes are rare apparently. I had to take a chicken bus (american schoolbuses repainted and spruced up for public transport in c. america) towards Jinotega and asked the driver to drop me to get to the Black Forest.
The moment I stepped out I was faced with an old, rusty tank and a sign indicating a path towards a hotel. Unsure of if this was the right way I simply decided to hoof it a few km and see how it went. Luckily this walk was extremely pleasant with really lush greenery about and offshooting paths onto private coffee farms so I could get an upclose look. There was something very magical and charming about the cloudforest there. It was something about the combination of a mountainly breeze with the fluttering sounds and glimpses of hummingbirds...I just felt very content. After my walk I turned around and headed back to the main road and ended up waiting at least an hour or more for a bus that wasn´t totally full. I nearly decided to hitch a ride back again, but reminded myself it wasn´t the middle east. So instead I waited patiently with an elderly Nicaraguan woman thinking to myself "it´s okay, we´re in this together!" only to watch her half an hour later try to catch a ride in a truck and pretty much jumped into the back of the car without a word to me to come along. We were no longer friends after that.
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