Farewell to Ometepe

Nanette and Eileen:

The day has finally arrived! We must leave the island if we want to stop in Granada and Masaya. 
Lots of little last minute things to get done... shopping,  checking the progress on the earthbag house, packing, saying good-bye.  Gee we might just have to stay a while longer to get all that in!

Things are going quite well at Wilbur's place.  A couple more rows of bags are up and the door is in place, although the one volunteer who is a contractor in real life noticed that there will be a problem with the door as they continue to make the dome.  Don't know if they got it figured out but will check with somebody in a few days to find out and to maybe get pictures of the finished product.

Each row has to be tamped down and levelled

Barbed wire between layers are necessary to hold it all together

Christopher is back in town from the monestary. He and Nate are leaving today for Costa Rica where Chris's mom has a house.  He begged us to go shopping with him to help him choose some clothes.  Did we ever mention that Chris had everything but his passport stolen just before we arrived on the island?  He's been making do with very little but feels he needs something decent to travel in.  We had fun checking out his choices and stopped in at the "Divine Baby Jesus Variety Store" (I kid you not!) to see what was available. Nate loves this storename and it's been  invaluable to us as we found Alejandro's soother there as well as the 4 baseballs we purchased to leave on the island with Juan (our hotel receptionist). He met us with a request on this last morning from adult unemployed male friends who had noticed we 'gringas' visiting at his home. They have put together a team they want to have compete with other pueblos but are short of equipment ie.baseballs, to practice and play with. Juan wouldn't have asked for himself but saw this as an outlet to channel some positive energies for these guys. We were happy to acquiesce, especially as we had witnessed a lively game on our street one evening with adult participants wielding mop sticks and a mostly disintegrated ball in a tiedup plastic bag! (We're already wondering where, and then how, to get gloves and bats to them).
Once we got Chris looked after we headed up to say our good-byes to the family.  They are very sad to see us go. We made no definite promises for a speedy return.

Saying good-bye

 When trying to leave a tip with Juan we were somewhat surprised and impressed with his reluctance to take anything from us. He said he doesn't like to take tips because he doesn't want guests to think that he's helpful and nice just to get something from them.  He is grateful that these friends can make use of his knowledge of the area.

Juan recoiling in refusal of a tip

We know that Mario, his counterpart, is happy to take tips as he always puts a big tip jar out during his shift. He assures us this is a necessity to him as a student. He's been on scholarship for his maximum # of years.

Mario, the other receptionist

 Juan had invited us out to his house earlier in the week, so one morning we found ourselves on the 7:30am bus passing through Los Angeles on our way to Sacremento.  The driver let us out at a dirt road entrance and we walked the couple of kilometres down to the lakeshore then along it till the houses ended. The name he had printed on a card  for us had a neighbor usher us right to his door where we found him sitting with his little daughter and wife.

Our near refusal of food was taken as an insult so we accepted and were served up a huge breakfast of Gallo pinto, fried plantain, and fish.  There was so much food that we didn't eat another thing all day!

Breakfast at Juan's house

Our hosts for breakfast

We left on the 4:00pm ferry and caught the bus to Manaagua.  They were not going by Granada, so we'll leave that for another time.  We were, instead, dropped off at  Masaya, where we had to walk quite far and sometimes in circles (what with getting conflicting directions from different people) trying to find a  hostel. Finally found a place and settled in for a couple of nights.