Nicaragua 2012 – Arrival

This blog post is part of a sporadic journal I kept on my iPad and uploaded at an Internet cafe on a dirt road a couple minutes walk from Marcela’s family home where we stayed the majority of the time…

2012-01-19
Getting through customs was a breeze in the Nicaragua airport.
Wuilber flew up from Panama and met us just outside. Then pulled up Angel (Marcela’s brother), in an old beat-up Toyota pickup, then her Dad walked up. Tight squeeze I though, as we crammed into the small back seat clutching on to my large camera backpack and laptop case – these are not going in the back, even if Marcela hadn’t been preaching to me for two weeks about the dangers of leaving things unattended. Angel and Wuilber filled the pickup bed with our luggage and I look outside and see, Leihia Marcela’s oldest, …and my niece Alicia. ‘did they drive two vehicles two and a half hours just to greet us, I asked myself? …Remember every time you see a Spanish family with people crammed in the from and riding in the bed of the pickup? – That’s us! – here we go!,
After leaving the airport and riding a little ways through the city, I peer out the small band of visible widow area from the back seat and see cows in the median, colored buses and people everywhere and realize, ‘I need to be in the back!’ … Finally we pulled over, Marcella pulled some suit-cases out, put them in the the cab, we climbed in the back with Wuilber and Mariella and I became ‘part of THE family!’ Camera drawn and inhaling the fumes we continued our journey to Marcela’s home town of Chinandega!
We stopped along the way to eat some authentic Nicaraguan food and try one of the first of many juice drinks this part of the world has to offer. Passed a couple of volcanoes, waved at a lot people, got a little sun-burned and had a good time 🙂
Passed around The edge of Leon, and drove into Chinandega where turned off onto a cobblestone road then pulled into the yard….