Paul Alton MBA

After breakfast at the Hotel La Posada del Doctor we loaded up and drove to Esteli where we met with pastors from there and north of there. The meeting was in a hotel on the Pan-American highway on the outskirts of Esteli. After the meeting we turned back the direction we had come and headed south without actually entering the city of Esteli.

We carried on south on the Pan-American past the point where we entered on the “highway” from Leon. I use the term highway advisedly. At one spot we stopped and tipped a couple of fellows filling in a potholes with gravel. A Nicaraguan form of freelance highway maintenance.

We arrived in the market town of Sebaco. The Pan-American highway from Esteli and points north continues to Managua and points south from here. This is where we leave to take the highway up into the mountains and the city of Matagalpa. Before we depart we wait a bit until Indy’s father arrives. While we wait we can admire the colourful fruits and vegetables for sale and buy camera batteries and snacks.

Along side of the highway to Matagalpa we pass rice fields and fields with coffee beans laid out in the sun to dry. Coffee is grown higher up, but things dry quicker down here in the lowlands. In Matagalpa we meet up with pastors for planning meetings.

In the evening we go out to dinner with Indy’s family and stay overnight in a hotel just outside Matagalpa.

Indy, Luke and Ben are up at 3:30 to take Luke to the Managua airport using Gilbert’s car. The rest of us arise at a more civilized hour and travel to Boaco. Boaco is a town on two levels with a lot of steep streets and stairs between the two. We meet with pastors at a church off a side street in the lower level. We are rejoined there by Ben and Indy.

After the meeting we travel to Juigalpa and eat lunch there. As you enter Juigalpa from the north the highway descends and you look across the gulch at the colourful crypts in a cemetery that seems endless.

We drove around checking out various hotels before meeting with pastors for more planning. Later at the hotel we have a bit of time to our selves and then dinner. I am not sharing a room with Luke anymore and catch up on my laundry, making good use of the room fan. That polyester short-sleeved dress shirt I bought at Walmart sure dries quickly.

After breakfast we drove around the base of the volcano to hook up with the Pan-American highway as it got closer to exiting Nicaragua. We met in Rivas with pastors in the backyard of a pastor’s house. The mangoes are approaching ripeness and would drop off the tree onto the tin roof and then roll off the roof to join the meetings.

Further down the Pan-American highway we stopped at a resort on the shores of Lake Nicaragua to check it out as potential accommodation for short-term missionary teams. It had a spectacular view across to Ometepe Island with its twin volcano peaks. At the swimming pool Indy pointed out a sign pointing to the showers, Las Duchas. That is the word for showers in Nicaragua. In Mexico it has another, more private, meaning in Mexican Spanish and she had received a bit of negative feedback for using the word around Mexican staff members.

As we left the resort property we came across a smoking VW van on the side of the highway across from the resort entrance. A Saskatchewan couple was on their way to Costa Rica to leave the country for a few days to re-initiate their Nicaragua visitors’ visa. It is only good for so many days before you have to leave the country for at least twenty-four hours. Not enough days on a visa to stay the whole winter without a short trip to Costa Rica or Honduras.

We returned to Granada with Gilbert and Terry and overnighted again in the Hotel Granada.

Not much to say about today.

We drove to Managua and checked out a facility that could be used for the Pastors’ Conference. It had lots of potential with accommodations for hundreds and cooking facilities and meeting areas.

After that we drove back to Granada and spent the night. I succumbed to the entreaties of a street kid and bought a couple of grasshoppers he had woven out of strips of palm frond.

We were up early. I hadn’t slept well. I was sharing a room. My room mate likes the A/C set on max. I was so cold I couldn’t sleep. I dug in my survival section and got out a space blanket. Warmer then, but noisy. Every move I made the space blanket crackled. I made so much noise I don’t think my room mate slept much. What is that they say about company being misery?

Oh well, the misery didn’t last long for either of us. Get up time was 3 a.m. The cold and the early hour didn’t deter the mosquito I killed in our room. Amazing amount of human blood squished out of such a small insect.

We travelled to the airport in Managua and flew to Houston. On the plane I visited a bit with a perso returning from volunteering in Nicaragua. In Houston we went through customs and security and found the gate for our plane to San Antonio. Once we boarded that we sat there on the tarmac while they checked it out and maintenance fiddled with things until the pilot was happy. They we left.

We drove to Harlingen from San Antonio and Juanita had arrived in time to greet me back.