Where Is Ron?
Mexico and Central America: October 2006-February 2007
Ron and Ellen at Agua Azul, Mexico, November 2006
Report from Roatan, Honduras, and Leon, Nicaragua
December, 2006
19 December 2006
Afton, Virginia, USADear Family and Friends,
Ron is now in Leon, Nicaragua, where he has met up with our friend Chris; the two of them will now do some traveling together. Ron had finished reading all the books he was carrying, and lightened his pack by passing them on to Chris. He now has only the book he is currently reading, and is looking for a bookstore that has books in English. If it were me, and I had only the book I was reading, I would be in a complete panic! Choosing the books to take with me on a trip is the very first thing I do, before I start thinking about clothes and other things to pack (which have to fit in the space left after packing the books), and I'm always worried about running out. In fact, I often start planning the books to take on the next trip even before we've decided where the next trip is going to be!
Love to all,
Ellen
Roatan, Honduras to Leon, Nicaragua - different worlds
To see photos of Roatan, Honduras, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of Leon, Nicaragua, click on the thumbnail at the left.
19 December 2006
Leon, NicaraguaHello my dear -
If we ever consider taking diving lessons, perhaps we should return to Roatan Island, or better yet, go to Utila, which is smaller and more laid back (so I hear). And I have heard that this is the cheapest place in the world to get certified.
Or perhaps we should stick to snorkeling.
Wanting to see Roatan and to find some people to talk to, I chose to go, and enjoyed my days there, meeting lots of interesting folks.
A French guy opened a Vietnamese restaurant and he is planning on going to Vietnam next fall. Of course he enjoyed my many stories that shared some of my secrets of traveling in Vietnam. Maybe next year I will hear his.
And a guy from Costa Rica invited me to visit and helped me plan part of my trip down the Caribbean coast to Panama. Yes, I have expanded the trip to another country. [Note from ELlen: Ron had not planned to go to Panama on this trip -- but plans change.]
But the most fascinating, and perhaps the most adventurous person I have ever met, was a lady in her late 20s who is leading adventure travel tours to places and countries she has never been to before. What a way to travel! I try to imagine me leading a group of less adventurous backpackers on a trip to a country I have never been to, and I just can't believe I could ever pull it off. She has extensive notes from her company and from other guides that have gone before her, but still.... She has been traveling for years. I was trying to walk down the beach from West End Village to West Bay, but when the beach stopped and became a series of rock ledges, I stopped and met her coming back. She had gotten further than I, but also turned back. I mentioned that I tried to take a boat taxi but there were no other takers, and they needed three. She said she would be the second, so we walked back and took the boat taxi and shared the afternoon on the beautiful West Bay beach.
While the food on Roatan was much more expensive than the mainland, it was still cheap compared to our prices back home, and I enjoyed a lobster dinner for around $15, which is the same price I paid for a small cabin with a fan, water cooler, mosquito net, and private bath. The ferry and taxis at both ends cost me around $66 round trip. (information for other interested travelers).
Going from Roatan Island in Honduras to Leon in Nicaragua took me parts of four days, seven different buses, and four taxis. As an experienced traveler I get an "F" for not figuring how to make this trip better. Sleeping too late in the morning, having breakfast instead of catching the earlier bus, just missing connections, etc. But the last day I got up at 6 am in order to get to Leon in time for the baseball game on Sunday morning at 11 am.
The night before getting to Leon I had to stay in a small town called San Isidro because the last bus to Leon left at 5:30 pm and I missed it by about 45 min. But San Isidro was one of my best experiences. Let me explain. I found a nice hotel next to the bus station, had dinner across the street, and then just took a walk across a residential section of town. The weather was great, like a cool summer night, and everyone was sitting on their front porch or on the sidewalk talking with their neighbors. My impression of Latin towns is a series of walls surrounding blocks, and when you can get inside the wall, places are beautiful and nice. But mostly streets are just dull walls, window shutters and closed doors. But here every door and window was wide open and I could see deep into the homes and observe all the Christmas decorations.
And then I found the San Isidro 2006 Rockfest concert involving five different rock bands and more large outside speakers than would be needed for a town several times bigger. Even when I returned to my hotel at least 15 blocks away out of town and on the highway, I could still hear the last session of the last band.
I need Sleeve, my son, to help me understand what I watched. Much of the music was heavy, very heavy drums and electric guitars. Many of the songs were in English, but still not easy to understand. Most, but not all, folks were wearing black, at least black tops, many with paintings that reminded me of Dungeons and Dragons. It made me think of the Goth concert I ran into near the baseball stadium in Boston when I was walking around one night. But here there was no black makeup and no black scarves or veils.
The guys, young, would get right up in front of the stage and jump up and down with their arms in the air. Some of them would climb up on the stage and sing and jump off into the crowd. A few even dived off the stage and were caught by the others. There was a lot of shoving and pushing, in a friendly but tough manner. Some of the guys, 5 or 6, would form a line with their arms around each others shoulders and then would turn fast until the last guy was thrown off, and continue faster until a couple of more were thrown off and down on the ground. Then there was a lot of beer thrown up in the air coming down all over them. Every now and then I saw a woman in with the crowd of guys, but mostly the women were in the back watching.
All of this was outside in a fenced-in field with about a dozen policemen with rifles watching.
The best description I can give is a rock-n-roll punk goth rave. What do you think Sleeve?
When I got into Leon, I checked into Chris' hotel but I couldn't find him, and went directly to the baseball game. A guy on the bus with a national newspaper helped me figure out the schedule and I realized this would be the only game in Leon during the time I would be here. For less than $2 I enjoyed a good fast-paced game with a front seat directly in line with third base and home plate.
And later in the day I joined Chris to go to a private home, actually a compound surrounded by a wall containing a series of homes where an extended family lived. They also had a private arboretum of about 10 acres, which was very beautiful. And our host was raising guinea pigs to sell as pets and which produced good fertilizer for his plants.
And we have been invited back for dinner on Christmas Eve so this story will be continued.
So far, in two days, I know I am going to love Nicaragua and find it very different from the rest of Central America.
Wish you could be here with Chris and me to enjoy the experiences. Love and miss you. Merry Christmas to all.
Ron
26 December 2006
Afton, Virginia, USADear Family and Friends,
I hope all of you are having a lovely Christmas season. I spent Christmas Eve with our daughter and son-in-law, Sharon and Derrick, and our grandsons Leo and Simon. They live in Charlottesville, about 25 minutes away from our house. On Christmas I had a leisurely day reading by the wood stove (while it poured rain outside), and then in the evening had dinner at the nearby home of long-time friends. Ron told me, "I wish I were home to enjoy the dinners, parties, and festive activities, but as you know, I also enjoy the adventure of travel." I love being here for the holidays and spending time with friends and family, and thus am very happy to be at home rather than on the road.
Happy New Year to all,
Ellen
Christmas in Leon, Nicaragua
To see photos of the trip to Jinotega and San Revelle, Nicaragua, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see more photos of Leon, Nicaragua, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of the Christmas Eve luncheon, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of Granada, Nicaragua, click on the thumbnail at the left.
26 December 2006
Granada, NicaraguaMerry Christmas, my dear -
Chris and I celebrated Christmas with a local extended family in Leon and it was an interesting and pleasant experience, quite unlike any I can remember.
Back many years ago a 36 year old medical doctor working for the railroad married a 17 year old local beauty queen, named Rosibel and over the years they had six children. He acquired 10 hectares and built a family compound, later surrounded by a wall. Behind the homes is a large arboretum covering the rest of the 10 hectares which his son, Jose Benito, and his daughter, Martha Veronica, hope to develop into a place that people will come to for vacations and where students will come to learn about plants. They also would like to develop a nursery to produce plants for others to make more reserves like theirs, which is completely surrounded by the city of Leon. We enjoyed walking on the trails through their woods and seeing many of the plants labeled for identification.
Chris hired a translator when he arrived, Reinerio, who is also an English teacher who has taught many of the people living in Leon; Benito, Rosibel's son born in 1960, is currently one of his students. Benito invited us all to lunch for Christmas Eve. Chris and I brought ice cream, sodas and hard cider, arrived about noon and stayed until about 5 pm.
Rosibel, the matriarch of the family (her husband, the doctor, is dead), provided some wonderful soup with yucca, potatoes, bananas, beef or pork, and some other vegetables which I was not familiar with, along with tortillas and cheese. Later we had ice cream and some very interesting candied squash. Veronica made some very good organic coffee.
Some of the family joined us for lunch and then left while Benito, George, Veronica and Rosibel, as well as two of Veronica´s three children, Jose Enrique, aged 10 and Maria Adriana, aged 8, were with us all afternoon, along with Reinerio, his wife Isabel and his son Engleburt.
The conversation was wide-ranging and interesting, covering politics, grants, Chris' idea for a school, and family history, with Rosibel showing me her family picture album and me showing my set of travel pictures of our family, home and garden.
Later Christmas Eve, Chris went to bed early and I went walking in the center of town, which was packed with people around the central plaza. There was a Santa Claus dressed in the traditional red suit with children taking turns sitting on his lap and I suppose telling him what they wanted for Christmas. Coming through the crowds was a group of small boys beating very fast on their loud drums along with a 12 foot high Lady which would dance around if someone contributed a coin. They would march right through the crowd with everyone, including me, trying to get out of the way. I found many of these groups all over town.
In the residential section everybody was sitting in front of their homes or entertaining visitors and family inside, with all the doors and windows wide open. I enjoyed walking around and looking inside all the homes lit up with Christmas trees and decorations.
I found an outside disco with a live band, and there must have been several hundred people, all ages from young kids to older folks, dancing and sitting around drinking and talking.
Before Christmas, Chris and I made a trip to Matagalpa and Jinotega, where it was much cooler and the mountainous terrain was much different. While Chris took an afternoon nap, I caught a local bus from Jinotega to the small town of San Revelle about a half an hour north. The countryside was some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. An American guy that had been living in Matagalpa told us about the church in this town and it was very beautiful and unusual. I hitchhiked a ride back.
While in Matagalpa we also made an afternoon trip by bus to Selva Negra, a estate build by a German family of wealth that now has a hotel and "Bavarian-style" cottages for rent. I took a walk through the dry rain forest but the trail finally got so muddy that I turned back. This is the dry season and there is no rain but everything is green and the horses turn the trails to mud. I don't understand where the water comes from.
Christmas day we caught a micro bus to Managua and then another to Granada, where we are now. We will stay a couple of days and then go visit my friend Peter at Abundance Farm in the southwest. But this will be the next chapter.
Merry Christmas to all of our friends around the world who will read this message. I am blessed to know all of you and to have these experiences to share.
Love and miss you,
Ron
5 January 2007
Afton, Virginia, USADear Family and Friends,
Happy New Year to all of you! We pray for peace in the world, and we hope that you and all those you love are blessed with peace and joy in the coming year.
In his message about the "rock-n-roll punk goth rave," Ron asked our son Steven (aka DJ Sleeve) for comments. Steven/Sleeve says Goth is really big in Mexico, and that based on what Ron described, there was also an element of heavy metal in the concert as well as the punk-Goth. Steven said he put Ron's description out for comment on one of the music threads he follows, and people didn't provide any more info, but said they really liked the way Ron wrote, and one person said he sounded like an eastern European professor! As for terms, the leaping off the stage is called stage diving, the mass of shoving people is the mosh pit (those two terms I knew), and the jumping up and down in place is called pogoing, something which developed as a way to dance in packed clubs. A bit of education for the older (Ron's and my!) generation!
I've had a number of short messages from Ron reporting briefly on where he is, but no long report. So I've put together some of the short messages to give everyone an idea of what he is doing. In his last report, on 26 December, Ron said, "Christmas day we caught a micro bus to Managua and then another to Granada, where we are now. We will stay a couple of days and then go visit my friend Peter at Abundance Farm in the southwest. But this will be the next chapter."
As usual, the next chapter wasn't quite as planned. Ron wrote on 30 December from Managua, after Peter had met him and Chris in Granada, saying, "Chris and Peter are meeting again later and going somewhere north of Leon to visit another project that they both have interest in. I will not be going to Abundance Farm. Enjoyed meeting Peter after all these years. Chris and I are going to meet again on Isla de Ometepe in a few days since he had no interest in the big city. Perhaps I should have gone with him to the beach, but I wanted to experience the city, being a country boy. And I think there will be beaches in my future along the east coast of Costa Rica and Panama."
On 31 December he said, "I have had enough of the big city already, but will stay through New Year's and hopefully then meet Chris on the island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua."
I teased him abandoning his original plans, which had included spending as much as a month in Managua. His response was, "Like all plans, they are subject to change. Not being a fast efficient traveler, but one that tends to linger in a place for at least three days, my progress getting here to Managua took a lot longer than I thought, and I have added additional places as the route to the Caribbean and Panama. So I guess I will move on. It would take a long time to really get to know Managua and I guess I don't really have it."
On 1 January he sent a brief email saying he was heading for Moyogapa on Isla de Ometepe in the middle of the lake, 10 hours by boat from Rivas. On 2 January he was on the island, planning to leave on 4 January by boat to San Carlos at the southern end of the lake, but hadn't heard from Chris. He did eventually hear from Chris that he would not make it to the island before Ron left, so was heading back to Leon.
Ron went on to say, "Last night I had dinner with two Russians. Well, they were both Americans: he was born in Russian and moved to the US in 1980 when he was eight, and she moved to the US with her family about six years ago. He is 34 and has been to more places than I, is here for maybe a month but planning a three year trip next year. A lawyer, when he works in New York. When I leave here by boat I am not sure about internet access for a few days. So don't worry. Somewhere in Costa Rica I will find an internet cafe again if there is not one in San Carlos."
On 3 January, a brief email said, "very brief... I have only 5 min on the computer. Now on the strip of land called Santo Domingo between the two volcanos on Isla de Ometepe. Beautiful. Full moon rose right in front after dark. Tomorrow catching the boat to San Carlos, on the southern tip of Lake Nicaragua, where the River San Juan flows to the Caribbean. I will take the river to Trinidad where I will catch a bus to Costa Rica. [Ellen's note: Trinidad is on the southern side of the river, in Costa Rica, so I'm not sure where the bus would be going.] Maybe I will find a terminal tomorrow, maybe not. I am traveling with the Russian guy who is a lawyer from New York and has traveled much more extensively than I. His family came to the US around 1980 when we was around 8. Healthy, happy, and having fun. Miss you and will try to catch up with the news as soon as I can."
Last, a message today saying, "Now in San Carlos after a long uncomfortable overnight 11 hour boat ride. Jam packed for the holidays. Still trying to figure out transportation from here and running out of time. [He has a few days less than 5 weeks left before his flight home from San Jose, Costa Rica on 8 February.] Haven't been able to even read all my email let alone write anything. Perhaps tomorrow evening. I am well, happy and having fun. Hot and humid with a lot of rain this morning and afternoon."
So that should catch everyone up on Ron's slow progress from Managua to the southern edge of Lake Nicaragua. From Granada he sent more photos of Leon, of the trip to San Revelle, of the Christmas Eve luncheon, and a few of Granada. I've posted those, and they are linked from the 26 December message just above.
Love to all,
Ellen (and Ron)
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Last updated: 5 January 2007
