July 23, 2009
Hello All,
We all went on vacation in Southern Nicaragua last weekend! First, Maria and I ate lunch at the Papa John´s in Masaya on Friday to fuel up for some power shopping. The town has two markets, the old artisan market in a colonial fort and a new market close to the bus station. The old market had really nice hand-made pottery and hammocks, along with souveneir Che t-shirts and FSLN coffee mugs. We spent awhile there mostly just looking around until the torrential downpour started. From there, we took a taxi to the new market. It was a really fun experience. The market is the size of two city blocks and is compeletely covered. Inside, it´s like a maze, with hammocks and clothing looping down into the skinny walkway like vines in a rainforest. And it was as dense as a rainforest too! We couldn´t ever see the end of an aisle, and the artisan section abruptly became the dry goods section, with huge canvas bags of rice, beans and coffee set up in the walkway. After we extricated ourselves Indiana Jones style, we took a bus to Granada.
In Granada, Maria and I checked into a really really classy hostel called Oasis. It had a pool AND lockers! And in Maria´s guidebook, there´s a section called Fine Dining. We were seriously hungry, so we read through and found a German place outside of town called Charly´s Bar and Restaurant. As it turns out, there really is a Charly from Germany, and he cooks great steak kabobs. Also, the restaurant is in a really sketchy neighborhood and Charly is really nice, so Charly´s best friend drove us back to the hostel when they couldn´t get ahold of a cab.
Saturday, TimandJim, Maria and I walked around touring the three colonial Churches. One thing that is different about the Churches in Nicaragua compared to those in the US is that they all have a Jesus casket. Honestly, there is always a Jesus mannequin inside a glass casket along one of the walls, usually next to the baptismal font. Anyway, the Churches were gorgeous, especially Iglesia Xalteva. It had been ravaged by pirates in 1753 and the outside still looked like it had recently taken a few cannonballs, but inside was painted light green, with all the white marble pillars covered in flawless carvings.
Sunday, all of us went on a zipline canopy tour in a rainforest! It was really cool. There were 14 platforms set up on a coffee plantation on the side of Mombacho Volcano, and we wore harnesses and flew to each platform. The scariest part of the trip was the ride to the tour, through the national park. There were 11 of us in the back of an old Toyota Land Cruiser bouncing up the side of a mountain for an hour. Very exciting.
On Monday, we returned to do some work. But, I have good news… The autoclave design is progressing! Anna brought us some new valves and tubes to make a smaller, more efficient autoclave, and the new insulated parabolic cooker reached 126 celsius on Monday. It was a very big day for another reason too. Three students at the Engineering University of Nicaragua (UNI) are interested in researching the autoclave as their thesis. This would be amazing, since we were so worried about who could carry on the research this fall and winter. Finally, this week I´ll be working on fixing our temperature logger since we couldn´t find a new one in Esteli (another story) and building a second prototype.
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Sweetie,
You sound like you are having a great time!!! I can not wait to see you!!!