Family Alive

This is just a quick post with a very quick summary of our trip so far. We flew into Managua on Monday, met Jane, Andrew, Anna, and Emily at the airport, rented a car, and drove through Managua making a quick stop at a grocery store and then dinner overlooking Laguna de Masaya – the southern end of a large active volcano. Then we made it down to Laguna de Apoyo where we spent the first two nights hanging out and catching up with Jane and Andrew.

Yesterday, we returned our rental car (quite an adventure) and met our taxi driver, Enrique, that Jane arranged for us to take us from Managua to Leon. We had a great drive and talk with Enrique who was in one of the villages affected by Hurricane Mitch – his whole village was wiped out during the hurricane but amazingly everyone in his family survived. When Kristine was first here in 1998, she worked in medical clinics assisting people from the very same villages – possibly even Enrique or his family!

Arriving in Leon we made it to our hotel – Hotel San Juan (see my previous post), got settled into our place, found out the wireless internet wasn’t working, wandered down to the Big Foot hostel with free wireless, and then got ready for the amazing fiesta that is New Year’s Eve in Nicaragua. Fireworks, food, and dancing done – we made it back to our hotel and a good (albeit short) night’s sleep later marked the end of our first day in Leon.

Tomorrow we head to the village of El Ojochal near San Jacinto high up on Vulcan (Volcano) Telica. We may need to hike about 2km to make it there. I’ll update later with pictures!