The rain season starts here in Nicaragua in May. I knew that but I didn’t suspect that it would be that it would be this abruptly. On the 30th of April it suddenly was cloudy (I’d barely seen any clouds here in 3 months) and in then it started raining, thundering and lightning all night long. During day it’s still nice and sunny but now in the evening it’s again storming. The ditch is overflowing and in the main room the water comes down the wall at one place. It’s not very extreme but imagining that this is nothing here and it gets way way worse is crazy.

It has been a while again since my last story. I’m keeping myself very busy. The guy from the print shop asked my why I’m always in a hurry; I said it must be my culture. My time in here is almost at its end. In about two weeks I will already leave Nicaragua and start travelling. My time here is even shorter now because last night we got the news that my grandmother has died.. My parents already spoke to me at the beginning of the week that she wasn’t doing well and that I had to be prepared for the worst. So now I’ll go from Sunday until Saturday back to Holland to go to the funeral and be with my family. It’s a sad reason to come back for but now the plan is made I’m also kind of looking forward to see some people again, in the end it already has been almost 4 months since I’m gone.

The last couple of weeks I did a lot of nice short trips and have just been living my life here in Granada and working at the project. The last weeks of teaching on my own to the girls went very good. They seem to like my classes and I like teaching them. By now I also used quite a bit of the money we all collected together. They could use a computer, a mixer, an iron and a radio. These things I’ve already bought and they were very happy with it. Tomorrow I’m gonna look for a printer and internet connection so they have the opportunity to keep improving their English on their own after I leave. I will also have a look coming week back home for cd-roms for learning English. The rest of the money I will use for some basic stuff: clothes, toiletries, diapers, towels etc.

The week after Semana Santa and my trip to volcano Telica we went with a whole group to Playa Gigante. There we had a nice and relaxed weekend with just sunbathing, walking around a bit and having some rum and Toña during the evenings.

The weekend after that we went to Canyon Somoto. This was a beautiful rural area just about 3 kilometers from the border with Honduras. It’s exactly the kind of thing I like: nature, rocks, water! First day we did a sunset-horse riding trip in the mountains with great views of the canyon. The next day we went on a six-hour hike through the canyon, including a nice but scary 7-meter jump. Believe it or not but I was actually quite terrified when I was standing up there. I had more troubles with this than with the bungee jump in Costa Rica. Only thing that wasn’t that nice about this trip is that I’ve dropped Daniela’s glasses in the canyon. I was supposed to hold them for a minute but they slipped away and sank into the 20 meter deep canyon. But besides that it was a very cool trip!

Last week we went up north again to National Park Padre Ramos (the biggest mangrove forest in Central America. We had a nice hostel at the beach and went into the mangroves with a local guide in his boat. I expected to see a bit more wildlife but it was still a nice trip. Especially climbing up a hill and having an amazing view of the whole area. I wanted to eat fish and our hostel served only vegetarian food so the guy who was our guide at the boat trip went in the afternoon looking for fish. We ate in his house and he had found huge red snappers and prepared them deliciously in his little house (cabin).

Further we’ve been one morning to the Mombacho cigar factory in Granada. This was very interesting to hear and learn more about this process, we’ve even made our own cigar which is harder then you would think.

At the moment I’m just having two relaxed days in Granada waiting for my flight back home. So yeah don’t be surprised if you see me walking around in Appie again next week but don’t worry I won’t stay long. Still too much to see and to do!

Xxxxx

* While writing this story the rain got quite a bit worse. The whole electricity just broke down so I’m now walking around with a flashlight, which I luckily have because without you can’t see a thing. The water is now really flowing into all the rooms and I just found out that also the toilet and the toilet paper are soaking wet. I’ll put this story online as soon as we have electricity again and now I’m going to sleep, not that much else to do at the moment. Luckily with the rain also the temperature got down a bit because sleeping without a van is normally impossible. Good night