To all of our friends at the Mariposa school who saw us off yesterday, particularly to Helen and Rodney, who walked us to the bus stop and helped us carry our things, and who witnessed the dramatic swooping u-turn executed by the microbus to UCA, the rapid loading of our family and posessions, and the hasty departure toward Managua, we’d like to say that we’ve made it to Leon. Thank you for your support.

Plenty of space on the Microbus

The travel was actually quite comfortable and efficient. The frist microbus didn’t stop often, but it did roll to an almost stop frequently while the man with the pot-leaf baseball cap whistled and yelled out the window to potential passengers. Even when people were getting on and off, the bus frequently kept its forward progress. We paid of an extra space for our backpacks — and luckIly there was space in this van for us and our stuff. We only had to wait at the bus stop five minutes!

The porter on the bus was effective at drumming up business — there was standing room only for much of the trip — and he was honest and efficient in giving us our change. (I was not entirely sure how this would work out because he waited until almost the end of the trip to collect from us and never actaully told us what the fare was. I noticed that almost everyone else paid with 20-cordova notes and got a pair of one-cordova coins back. We would need seis por diez y ocho. I gave him 150 cordobas and he took pretty great care, given he was half-way hanging out a van door, to get me correct change.

It is also probable that he gave me good directions to the terminal of the Leon bus. A few weeks of practice with our patient teachers La Mariposa did not really prepare me to understand this guy, though. To his great credit, he did give us a few sentences of direction before hoping back on the already-departing microbus. It turned out to be not too hard to get to the Leon bus. (Cost for traveling from San Juan de la Concepcion to Managua – UCA: 108 $C; time of travel, 12:30 pm – 1:25 pm.)*

The Leon bus was palatial in comparison. It was about half again as big as the first microbus, and it had room for luggage. As it happened, we still ended up with backpacks in the aisle because our big bags took up most of the storage space and there were a couple of seemingly European tourists on the bus who had all of their possessions with them as well. All the people on the bus got seats, though, only back packs were in the aisle.

As this bus was a little more comfortable — it had air conditioning! — and the trip was a little longer, the cost was a little higher — 51 $C per person. The best part was the we avoided waiting again. They squeezed our bags in, ushered us to seats, dealt with my ineptitude in with practicing Spanish and math simultaneously (for this bus, you pay before the bus leaves the terminal), and pulled out within 20 minutes of our exit from the Concepcion – Managua bus. We didn’t even have time to takea picture of the terminal, which was a chaotic sprawl of shed-like garages peppered with people trying to sell food to travelers. I don’t think we can hope for such timing for the rest of our bus journeys across Nicaragua. (Cost for travel from Managua to Leon: 51 cordovas times five people 255 $C, plus 20 $C tip; time of travel: 1:40 pm – 4:15 pm.)*

From there it was smooth sailing. Not a lot of stops. Good roads. We were met in the Leon parking lot/ bus depot by a swarm of bike taxis and allowed ourselves and our baggage to be swept up by two of them. It turned out to be a pleasant, if expensive, way to get to our hotel, passing a few open air markets and lot of Leonites. It’s hot here and our bike taxi operators were moving a lot of weight. They probably deserved the 100-cordova tip that they helped themselves to. (Cost of getting from the bus depot to our hotel: 300 $C, including tip; time: 4:20 – 4:30.)*

Our hotel room has a beautiful front window.

Then, there we were, having completed our own multi-stage trip on Nicaraguan public transportation. The hotel is beautiful; the city is vibrant, and almost pretty after dark. We have pounded the pavement in typical Pavlik vacation style (Jen’s fitbit buzzed in the early afternoon today and we still had plenty of walking to go). On advice from a fellow hotel guest who’s been to Leon a few times, we walked for an hour in search of “Pizzaria Lebano.” After much searching and a few inquiries we found “Hotel Lebano” and were told that they got out of the pizza business and into the hotel business about six years ago.

Looking for pizza on the streets of Leon

Jen had read that Leon is a good city for pizza and the kids were excited for the change from beans, rice and beets. Plan B was Hollywood Pizza, just around the corner from our hotel. It is about as American as it gets, with pictures of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe on the wall. But even with the pizza and pictures, it didn’t really feel like home until I visited the bathroom, which is shared by a neighboring cineplex. No matter where I am, the smell of popcorn and artificial butter substitute food product will always bring me back to the USA.

Its so white up there that I had to adjust the camera.

Today we roamed the town some more in the morning, sipping juice in a high-end hotel that used to be a convent and climbing to the top of the Basilica Catedral de la Asuncion. It’s the biggest cathedral in Central America and its roof is amazing to behold.  Unlike other trips up bell towers, the view from this site is a secondary attraction.  The roof itself is very elaborate, and the most striking feature is its utter whiteness.

Thats more like it.

Juices at the hotel/former convent, with thanks to Helen for the suggestion.

Of course, it must be white to reflect the sun and keep the cathedral manageably cool, but the effect is stunning. The paint is pristine and completely devoid of any pigment. To walk on it, you have to take off your shoes (and you really should wear sunglasses). The surface seems much better tended than any other part of the cathedral’s exterior — or any other part of Leon, for that matter. The whitewashing is completely flawless, unlike the nearby Mausoleum of Heroes and Martyrs, which is derelect in comparison to the cathedral roof. It has to be the coolest roof in Central America. Our feet didn’t even get hot when we walked on it. That roof is amazing.

The UV wand got a workout today.

Back on ground level we worked on some school stuff, explored the extensive courtyard encompassed by our hotel, and recreated the famous Roman Lunch from our Italy trip. It is very hot here, and we drank lots of water.  Our life straw water bottle and magic want UV water purifier saw lots of action.  Truthfully, we don’t know if we can drink the water, but we’re trying to be safe.

At the supermarket

We also visited a supermarket and survived an ATM scare that threatened to eat our afternoon with us desperately contacting our debit card company.  It’s ok if only one bank in the country lets us use our ATM card, as long as that bank has plenty of branches. We need you, Bank of Nicaragua.

Historic reenactment of our Roman Lunch, this time in the courtyard

In the evening there was a trip to a museum of folklore that Jen can describe to you if she’d like. I’d much sooner not have to think about that place ever again. I wish I could expunge it completely from this blog and my mind, but this duty requires as many facts as I can muster.  I am hoping there isn’t too much scaring among our younger charges.  On the upside, Nadia found a nail clipper/bottle opener for 60 $C * that fits nicely in her collection.

Another one for the collection

Then, also on a lucky note, dinner was good enough to wipe out most of the evening’s earlier activities. Muchas gracias to the Nicaraguita Cafe. Eat here, everybody, when you’re in Leon. Our kids sure ate plenty.

We meet again, pasta and cheese.

Finally, I haven’t had the time to read Jen’s post about our trip to the volcano earlier this week, but I would like to say that I dedicate my accomplishments on that day to our Mariposa friends Melanie, Seker, and Bob from Wisconsin, who had the misfortune to leave the school before this particular outing took place, and whose self-organized expedition met with failure before the summit due to area wildfires. It was a beautiful trip, guys. Hope you have the chance to make it to the Masaya crater some time.

* Current exchange rate is around 27 cordovas to the dollar.

Here’s what happens when you don’t go on an expedition. Not all of us really needed to be out until 10 pm Thursday. The Spanish classses are fun but mentally taxing, and the need to fit in other academic stuff is pressing. Here is that day’s entry for the girls’ home-school journal:

Thurs., Feb. 19
Zoe: four hours Spanish instruction; daily math homework (percentages); trip to Masaya market
Nadia: four hours Spanish instruction; red math’s mate, math problem of the week, mystery book reading, journal entry on pinatas (started)
Lanie: four hours Spanish instruction; page of homework packet #16; math sheet (addition and subtraction); journal entry on pinatas (started); book group, Vacation Under the Volcano, chapters 1 and 2; violin performance for dinner crowd; journal entry (picture) on La Laguna de Apoyo.

Lanie was particularly busy, considering she also fit in a shower and was the very first person down for dinner (beets featured prominently again; beets are on the list of new Spanish words I’ve learned — remolachas). The girls managed to scrape together enough of a meal and hold on for dessert, which was bread pudding. None of them could get behind the rice pudding they were served the other day, and even the banana cream pie met a mixed reception, but bread pudding was very popular tonight.

Spending the evening at the school also gave us the opportunity to play a round of Horse Show, the card game Nadia got for Christmas. Lanie spent some time on her new hobby, building card castles.  We skyped the Zamanskys around dinner time to preserve some semblance of Potluck. We read a bit of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the girls were in bed by 8. We sleep an awful lot here. I waited up for the other two and thankfully they were not out much past 10. I wrote my Spanish paragraph and reviewed my notes from that day, then got a start on the next few chapters of Vacation Under the Volcano.

Yesterday I was compelled by my grammar teacher to ask a few of the staff members three questions. This being an exercise in using the subjunctive case, and since it was Friday, one of the questions was: “What do you prefer you students do over the weekend?”

The two teachers I asked said their students should take it easy and relax over the weekend, but the head of the school gave me an earnest and in-depth treatise that started with phrases like “have fun” but wound around through hours or study and asking ten questions of any Spanish speaker you can find.

While I appreciate and respect the opinion of Senor Marlin, head of the Mariposa school faculty, I think I kept closer to the advice of the two teachers.

Today we went to La Boquita, a beach about an hour away from the school. We set up camp in one of the restaurants on the beach, then hit the waves. The Pacific was warm and wavy today. We spent hours in the water.

We also ate a lunch so expensive that we had to clean out Lanie’s wallet to help pay for it. Even though $54 is very steep for these parts, even for a family of five, the restaurant did not charge us for access to the beach or for use of the tables and hammocks. So that factors in. The food was good, too, if not exactly what we thought we ordered. (These days the mere presence of meat earns a meal a few extra stars, but Zoe’s bisteca smothered in onions was truly very excellent.)

Jen and Nadia with their carne asada?

Nope, this is the carne asada. The other stuff was the tostones the waiter thought Lanie and I ordered.

And just in case Senor Marlin ever finds our blog, I did converse with several Spanish speakers today, including our waiter, the night watchman at the school, and today’s driver Jose. Thankfully, it’s all about the trying, because I had varying levels of success (take, for example the fact that I thought I was ordering torta con carne and instead Lanie and I got carne and queso con tostones). I did manage to coax Jose into the water — he was on the fence about swimming. Actually, it might have been the five or six international college coeds on our excursion who had more to do with Jose going into the water. He swam more with them than me.

Here is what I learned from talking to Jose:

• Like many people here, he says he would like the experience the cold of a North American winter some day. (Given that he thought the water was cold today, I don’t know how well he’d hold up.)
• He learned to drive when he was 15, and he started with a motor taxi, which is rather like a cross between a moped and a Winnebago, of you can picture that. I’ll try to get a photo of one, but I don’t expect we’ll ride one.
• He has a son and a daughter, aged 2 and 4 months, whom he helps care for when he gets home from work.
• He drives or he used to drive a bus route between La Concepcion and Managua.
• Even though the owner of the Mariposa School says he doesn’t have to, Jose takes great care in cleaning the microbuses. While we were swimming today — except for the time he himself was coxed into the waves — Jose was detailing the bus, inside and out. I shudder to think about all the sand we brought into the van he’d just cleaned.

Frequent readers of our blog may remember that during our equine expedition on Saturday we enjoyed a great view of a smoking volcanic crater from the top of a nearby mountian. This will not be our last mention of volcanoes by a long shot. In fact right before we leave our Spanish school here, we hopefully will undertake a night hike up to that very same smoking crater. Volcanoes on this trip are going to be like caves were on our cross-country drive in the Getaway Van.

Note the characteristically clear February Nicaraguan sky.

But we’re not diving right into volcanoes, we’re wading in slowly. Quite literally. Yesterday we drove to a nearby lake that has formed in a crater of a not-quite extinct volcano. La Laguna de Apoyo is known as the best place to swim in Central America that is not in the ocean. There is some volcanic activity deep down in the caldera here, the water is not very cold, but because there is not much volcanic activity and a lot of water, the water is not very warm either. It’s sort of like lukewarm water.

Coconut ginger (l) and mango (r)

It is also very beautiful and profoundly deep. The bottom of this crater is the lowest point in Central America (if you believe Jen). Something like 130 meters below sea level. The surface of the lake is significanly above sea level, so the lake goes down pretty far. The drop is pretty immediate, too. Five feet from shore and you’re in up to your knees. Fifteen feet from shore and you’re in way over your head.

You can probably see the chocolate on her face if you look closely. No, wait. You don’t even have to look closely.

We were driven inside the crater to a hotel on the water and paid $5 apiece to use the beach facilities, including kayaks and inner tubes. No one was brave enough to take the catamaran out, though there was a nice breeze. As nice as the scenery was, ice cream won the day if we consider the hearts of the girls. Nadia’s mango and Lanie’s chocolate contended for the title. Zoe’s ginger coconut wasn’t bad, either.

Our camera has a panorama feature. There are some Pavliks in the kayak on the left.  It really is a big round lake, although that’s not what this picture conveys.  Think of the milk at the bottom of your cereal bowl — if your cereal bowl were 500 meters deep.

Washing clothes this way was fun, if not completely effective.

It was a quiet day here at La Mariposa.  Lanie did get me up to run around the hotel this morning, but we only mustered two laps.  We all got back into our classes, and two of us — Zoe and I — got a fair bit of homework.  We focused on some homeschooling this afternoon, but the best lesson might have been what I’m calling the “experiential exercise” of washing clothes by hand.

It was not all work, though.  We got in a game of Iota, and girls finally found out that an ice cream cart swings by the front gates most days at about lunch time.

The jig is up. Ice cream can be had for Cordovas in the street.

Final Iota tally: Bob, 123; Jen 148; Zoe 158; Lanie 186.

Are we jumping into this head-first or not? It’s true that the going to the Mariposa School is a good way to ease ourselves into Central America. Most of our needs are taken care here at the school, and the excursions into the countryside are set up for us. There are plenty of people around for support.

Still we found ourselves yesterday, less than 24 hours after landing in the country, standing in the middle of a pineapple farm trying to follow along as Wilmer the campesino described (in Spanish) the ins and outs of the citrus economy of the region.

A little later on we were in a restaurant with a swimming pool, trying to decide whether it costs 200 Cordovas to swim in the pool or if you could swim in the pool if you spent 200 Cordovas on food (we’re pretty sure it was the latter, but the placard on the table was a little opaque). Our tour guide/translator had taken off on his motorbike and our driver stayed in the van. It was up to us to make our way through the dinner. Quite surpising to me, I was the most seasoned Spanish speaker (our group contained three extra adults aside from the five members of our family, but apparently they all took French in high school).

I had to come up with the questions for the waitress and manager, such as:
Can we swim before dinner, or do we have to buy dinner first? (This was largely a moot point because Lanie was 3/4 of the way into the water before most of our group was out of the van.)
Can we pay in US dollars? With credit cards? Separate checks?  Yes, yes, and yes.

Ordering from the menu was fine, except that we all initially failed to translate chicken wings despite the presence of a picture of a chicken wing right there on the page. The food was great — we got a family plate of plenitude; other people got big bowls of meatball and vegetable soup. (More details on the meal to come.)

It was my great pleasure when the manager hailed me as “Jefe” (“Chief” — I was chief among the foreigners this day), even though he continued to address me with a concern. Our driver had departed to run an errand and the manager seemed worried that we were going to stay in the restaurant all night. Indeed, the girls had become quite ensconced on the see-saws in the adjacent playground. On one hand, it was only 5:30 in the afternoon; but on the other, there were only two other customers in the restaurant besides us.  The Thursday evening dinner crowd didn’t seem to be happening, yet with a dynamic chief like me, our party could easily have lingered on well past 7:45, and the girls were going at the see-saws with gusto.

We worked it out. The driver returned, the bills got paid (fyi: in Nicaragua they add a 10-percent “voluntary gratuity” right onto the bill for you), and we were out by 6:15. As we pulled out of the driveway we saw them closing up the restaurant, even though the other two people were still hanging out at their table.

Jen’s classroom today.

Despite the manager’s temporary concern, it’s been pretty relaxed here. None of us panicked when the tour guide departed or when the driver and van took off. Nicaragua seems to value calmness. When someone asks how you are, you say “tranquilo”.

That sounds nice, doesn’t it?
We’re all tranquil down here.

Aside from the dogs, there are chickens here, too, including this one, which lives in the library/gift shop.

Particularly today, our second day at La Mariposa.  Today’s Spanish classes were a little bit easier (despite my teacher’s assertions yesterday that they would be less “suave” after day one). No excursions planned for the afternoon.  We worked on homework and music lessons.

This fellow also lives here, right next to the patio. It’s ok. The spiders here are tranquilo.

We had dinner at one of the big tables downstairs.  We played several rounds of Spot It!. We read a few chapters of The Prison of Azkaban.

Tonight I even took a shower and washed some clothes — at the same time!  Also at the same time I conserved water by letting it fall into a basin by my feet.  We’re supposed to use the water to help flush the toilet.  This would probably feel like a hassle at home, but not here. It’s tranquilo.

We actually did make one small excursion today, a quick walk into San Juan de Concepcion to check out a nature preserve.