NORWAY

I'm home,
I've met my new nephew Andreas (bottom) and danced with my niece Dina. I've met pretty much the entire family on my dad's side, and gone to town and met my friends. I'm a little behind on everything that has to do with computers and communications that way, but it's coming along.

Travel

Waves in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, Christmas 2012

(could also be El Bluff, Bluefields or San Juan del Sur or Port Limón, Costa Rica (every place but San Juan is the Atlantic))

According to plan, I should now be somewhere in the air over this same sea. All fingers crossed for no delayed flights out of the four I'll be taking: 

• Managua-Panama
• Panama-Amsterdam
• Amsterdam-Oslo
• Oslo-Tromsø
  
  

Om nom

Just about to leave this

but I'm going home to a much healthier food culture in general, and a healthier style of living, with less deep-fried everything, less starchy starch foods and fewer oh-but-you-must-finish-your-plate meals.

I wish I could go and stay at the same time, why can't I? 

All my clothes

My grand amount of clothes in San Juan del Sur, June 3rd

is now greatly diminished

as I've left pieces here and there

Costa Rica

 Look, I'm in England!

 OH WAIT I just went to the Caribbean

Where I had a smoothie, that's all

After San Juan del Sur, I took the bus to San José in Costa Rica. There, I stayed with Gaby and her family, people I'd never met before, but who took very good care of me. It was almost English/Norwegian temperatures there, I got lulled into the safe family setting, and did almost nothing the first six days I was there. Oh, I had cake and tea and met family members and had ice cream and played Rummikub and tried to learn Gin Rummy and failed, but it wasn't quite what I'd imagined when I went to Costa Rica.

I also did manage to get a cold due the climate change, and am now dreading to go home to Tromsø. Last Sunday I'd decided it was enough, and I took a bus down to Port Limón on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, and languished there three days, sleeping twelve hours a night, drinking six liters of water altogether and waking in the night from my cough. I also had at least one smoothie daily, looked at beaches, had coconut water, coconut bread, and talked to random people I met.

After the Caribbean had cured my cold (well, almost. Kind of) I went back to my new family in San José, spent too much time inside, editing photos and watching Spanish-dubbed films, went to a brilliant museum and watched a play of Pinocchio with Gaby, before I ran back to Nicaragua, and am now in Granada. 

Bosawas/Musawas

And then, more about this place I mentioned weeks ago.

One Sunday in May, after the longest bus ride in history, one night of sleeping in a parking lot, one night of sleeping three in one bed, and plenty of long meetings, we walked three hours into the woods and up the mountains in this beautiful natural reserve of Bosawás, to the village of Musawas, where the indigenous Mayangna live. We were supposed to have a meeting with the village, or with one board, or with another, and we spent two hours listening to them discussing in Mayangna about whether we were allowed to have a meeting, and with whom, and why we were even there.

They said they are now sceptical of people coming from outside to "help", because they have several experiences with those who come, appropriate their culture, and run back home to earn money off what they've learnt.

We ended up taking the meeting outside, because apparently our previous agreement wasn't official enough to have a village meeting in the village hall. We split into two groups: one sat around members from the Territorial government, the other around those from the local council (unless I am confusing all these councils again). I was with the territorial government.

Both groups could tell us that yes, they had problems. Mestizoes from the west and south were moving into the reserve, cutting down far too much wood, working for profit rather than survival, and not respecting that it was a reserve, that the indigenous people had the right to use the forest as they had traditionally, but noone else should come and ruin nature. The territorial government people were quick to point out though, that they had done something to prevent it. That the state was completely on their side, all they needed was a little time and these migrants would be kicked out. No problems here. - "But we heard there was an assassination of the past president for the territorial government?" - "NO. Accident. Accident, it was."

Certainly. The people in the other group said clearly that the former president had been killed. Two very different versions. They were also clear about the fact that they do actually have problems, people are still cutting down rain forest, and it's not going to go away just like that. I'm sadly going to believe the most pessimistic view of this last group, which some of the girls got to hear while the rest of us were sat discussing problems with people who claimed not to have any.

Taking the bus from Port Limón to San José

upstairs in a double-decker bus

I saw a sign, and thought "what? I'm in a national park? We're driving through a national park? That's cool. I like being surrounded by trees, they're nice things to be surrounded by" and then thought "we're driving through a national park". For miles and miles, with heavy transport ahead and behind us.

Costa Rica is seen as a very environmentally forward country. At least 25 % of its area is protected land. The greenest country in the world.

And I realised I had to update my knowledge about the term national park. Even so, this definition seems to suggest that you shouldn't make one of the main roads between the coast and the capital straight through a national park:

"In 1969 the IUCN declared a national park to be a relatively large area the following defining characteristics:

One or several ecosystems not materially altered by human exploitation and occupation, where plant and animal species, geomorphological sites and habitats are of special scientific, educative, and recreative interest or which contain a natural landscape of great beauty;

Highest competent authority of the country has taken steps to prevent or eliminate exploitation or occupation as soon as possible in the whole area and to effectively enforce the respect of ecological, geomorphological, or aesthetic features which have led to its establishment;

and Visitors are allowed to enter, under special conditions, for inspirational, educative, cultural, and recreative purposes."  Wikipedia (my friend)

But then again, there are so many different guidelines and terms and different levels of protection and what not, so I'm not sure. I'm still learning a lot about reserves and the like - such as how a preservation act can harm the lives of the people living there, more often than not indigenous groups who just want to chop their firewood and build their houses in the areas.

This is what I look like when I pretend like I don't have a cold

for those who wondered

and I haven't taken the bother to edit photos for you - Costa Rica is nice and green, but I am lazy and sick, so, well. Sorry. Will come after a while though!

In one week I will hopefully be on my way, at least I will be at the airport right about now.

Let's see if this works

I've been a bit ill the past week, it appears the "cold" and "dry" weather of Costa Rica (or at least San José) has defeated me - it is after all only 24-25 degrees here, and the air is a lot drier than at the Caribbean coast. I haven't been able to do all I wanted to do, and I miss home more and more every day, as I'm making plans to have coffee and cakes with my family, meet my new nephew Andreas, and eat all the Norwegian food I can manage.

So here's a video I took with my rubbish phone camera in January, where I'm trying to convince Dina to show me how tall she is.

Costa Rica

*this might be from the Spanish School in Matagalpa, but at least it's green

I'm here, I'm here. I'm in another country. I'm staying in San José, the capital, as of now, with Gaby, a friend of my friend Juan, who studied with her here, and now studies in Tromsø. I'd never met Gaby before yesterday. She is lovely, her family is lovely, and when they all speak Costa Rican Spanish rapidly with each other, I can't understand a thing. All my plans are slightly vague, but I'm certain that I will Do Stuff and Meet People and See Things. More to come!

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

is where I've been staying the past week,
staying with a family in a homestay,
taking three hours of Spanish five of these days,
reading the nine hundred pages of Shantaram,
going to at least one beach daily,
swimming several days,
going out with my new, maybe temporary, friends, three nights,
taking one photo each day,

and hardly looking at a computer, not having wifi, and only borrowing the school computer or paying 20 cordobas per hour at an internet cafe to write messages to my family and friends.

Tomorrow, Monday, I have a bus ticket for San José, Costa Rica, and then we will see.

All the parties

 Started last Saturday, 24th May, with a parade in Bluefields

 With old misses

 young misses

 young gentlemen

and old ladies, all dancing through the streets

We took breaks from working (and we worked hard) with the information work we'll be doing, writing articles and publishing stories from our experiences, by going out in the streets to watch parades and meet people. We met friends of friends, were invited to concerts, saw Miss Bluefields in the park, made rondon (local dish) and had another concert with our new friends, had a goodbye dinner and went out to see another parade and went to another concert and went out dancing again, then went home to sleep two or three hours before catching the morning panga on Saturday. We left Bluefields. We left Rama. We left RAAS, the region. We arrived in Managua, and left that too. Now we've been one day in Granada, seeing things and jumping off boats, and tomorrow I'm going to San Juan del Sur, all on my own, leaving the other girls completely behind for the first time since January 2013.

Adventure. And stuff.