Week Four:
Casa Verde

September 7, 2015

Health:

My health is surprisingly much better. Whatever nasty bugs were in my digestive tract have not given me any real trouble for quite a while! However, I appear to have swapped out my parasite problem, for a bed bug problem, as I will explain below.

Homestay:

I haven’t really spent much time with my homestay over the last few days! I returned home yesterday morning, and my family has had a fantastic time hearing about my trip. Everyone is particularly interested about my experiences in Colón, both because I ended up getting stuck there for a night, but also because a family member grew up close to the town, so they were already a little familiar with the surrounding area.

Happiness:

I am feeling exceptionally happy, and well rested. My little adventure had its uncomfortable moments to be sure, but it let me explore a beautiful corner of the country that I had no previous familiarity with, and to meet new people. I am particularly happy that I had to make more use of Spanish on my trip. Working with a group of English speaking volunteers all day, and using Spanish in the mornings and evenings with my host family has scrambled up my brain a little bit. Now that I need to speak less English, I can start dusting off my Spanish comprehension, and speaking skills!

This week has been pretty slow so far, so I am going to spend most of this post talking about my trip to San Carlos, and what information my investigation there dug up. After arriving in San Carlos on Thursday afternoon, I spent the rest of the day relaxing, and recharging from the 6 hour boat ride. That night, I found out that I was sharing my bed with some bed bugs, but I still managed to get 12 hours of sleep which was fantastic. I have a few new itchy bites, but other than that, I am okay. I just hope I don’t bring any of them home with me! I ate breakfast at a restaurant called La Fortaleza, after eating at the same place on Thursday; I had begun to develop a relationship with the restaurant’s proprietors.

Once one of the workers there heard that I was in town to investigate the cost of food and housing so that I could bring a group of 20 Nicaraguan students for a vacation in San Carlos later in the month, they not only offered to arrange for our group to have a meal at the restaurant, but even gave me valuable information about nearby businesses I should check out!  I am learning more and more in planning for this trip that business in Nicaragua happens on a first name basis. The easiest way to find what you need for the best price is through developing personal and financial connections with the right people.  Once you have that connection, you can gain limited access to your new contact’s expansive social network, and find what you need more easily through that network. Despite having an extremely “weak” economy by Western standards, my work has shown me that the Nicaraguan economy is far from simple, and that most business owners here have an acute knowledge of how to keep themselves afloat. Negotiating with the proprietors of restaurants, and hotels requires me to use some of the same skills that I have needed for my job as a student caller in the Cornell College Alumni Center. In both cases one must learn to pay close attention to the concerns of the other party, and make your own requests based off of these concerns.

I spent the rest of Friday, and most of Saturday morning gathering information, and mulling over how best to make use of what I had learned. My search was a little more fun on Saturday because I got to take a boat ride down the San Juan River to the town of El Castillo, which offers more tourist attractions than the largely residential town of San Carlos. El Castillo’s main attraction for visitors is the giant colonial era fort that overlooks the town. The Spanish built the fort in the early 16^th century to defend Lake Nicaragua from pirate raids, and English privateers! What’s more, student groups can visit the site for free!! The fort sounds like a fantastic place to visit in an off campus class! Maybe the class could be on Nicaraguan/Latin American Colonial history??

My investigation in El Castillo showed me that for the most part, three options for housing a group exist there. The first, and cheapest of these options is to buy rooms at a budget hostel, where rooms cost up to USD $4.00, and patrons sleep on rough beds with cockroaches, and bed bugs. Swanky hotels that charge $13.00-$15.00 per person make up the second option. They provide all the luxury that patrons could ask for, but with less than $100.000 in my budget for the trip, and with 22 people or more coming along, I had to rule out this option. The third option I have is to buy rooms at hostels that can’t house 22 people, but charge roughly $7.00 per person. Naturally, I would prefer to house my group in a hostel like that, but that means splitting the group up, and I am hesitant to do this, and worry about gathering everyone up again the next day. I spent the rest of the day traveling back to San Carlos, and packing up to leave the next day for Limόn. The next day, I took an 8 hour bus ride to Rivas, and learned that I had missed the last bus to Limόn so I spent the night in another messy hostel, and arrived home yesterday. Despite the chaos and confusion I went through in getting there, my trip to San Carlos was extremely productive. Not only am I familiar with some of the costs of traveling and living in the Rio San Juan area, I also have developed some personal connections with local business owners which I can rely on at a later date. I hope this has been fun to read!! Sorry it is so long!