¿Qué tal? This is Hershey’s chocolate-eating champion and Foo Fighters wannabe Joshua Lloyd with my last update from La Ciudad de Flores in Costa Rica. In nine days’ time, we’ll be flying out of Juan Santamaría International Airport and heading home for the holidays, wherever that may be. We’ve made lifelong friends, seen some unforgettable sights and eaten all kinds of fantastic food, but we’re coming up on 100 days and homesickness is setting in.
That doesn’t mean we haven’t made the most of what time we have left, though. In November, I spent a weekend in Guanacaste Province, famous for its stunning, wide-open Pacific coastline. Sámara Beach was exactly that, a huge spread of white sand with an endless horizon before me. Guanacaste draws all kinds of adventurers and beach rats from around the world; in the span of two days I met travelers from Spain, France and Scotland, plus one guy selling ice cream who was originally from Holland.
We celebrated Thanksgiving Day with a ten-hour bus ride from Heredia to Granada, a lively colonial city deep in the heart of Nicaragua. La Calzada, Granada’s version of a main street, is jammed with restaurants that cater to tourists from every corner of the planet. The City Market is only a few blocks away, a chaotic maze of wooden stalls and tables lined with pretty much every vendible thing imaginable. It was easy to get lost among the mounds of fruit, fish, spices, plastic toys and prescription drugs, but the Market is the cornerstone for all of Granada. The market is always the heart of the city, our directors told us, and the local culture beats strong in Nicaragua.
Speaking of culture, Nicaragua has a good many indigenous groups residing within its borders. Several members of the Nahua (who speak Nahuatl) run a ceramics workshop not far from Granada, a school of sorts where they practice the ancient art of pottery with all-natural materials and colors. One single bowl, plate, cup or figure takes sixteen days to make, and they try to fill a quota of 550 pieces per month. Needless to say, we spent a few córdobas to take some of the handmade treasures home.
Nicaragua’s wilds are just as epic as Costa Rica’s. La Laguna de Apoyo is one of two huge lakes on the country’s western side, and we passed a whole day soaking up its fierce beauty (which, in my case, meant taking three hours to kayak to the opposite shore and back – wouldn’t recommend it).
After a boat tour on Lake Nicaragua the following morning (nineteenth-largest lake in the world, by the way), we dragged our tired selves all the way back to Heredia. Soon it was time to get cookin’ on our Thanksgiving dinner dishes, since we’d be serving them to our host moms for a massive American-style meal at the end of the month. We all brought our culinary A-games and made it a Thanksgiving dinner to remember (I was mainly thankful I didn’t burn the two apple pies I whipped up five hours beforehand).
Just one week of classes to go in the fourth module (my group’s been hitting the books in Latin American Literature) before we wrap up the program with another celebratory dinner on Dec. 15. We’ll come home with sunburns, opened minds and a thirst for future adventures. Joshua Lloyd, signing off. Hasta pronto, y una vez más, ¡pura vida!