Siuna

Although the very back seat of the school bus was the coveted location of the cool kids in elementary school, it's not the best for a trip across Nicaragua. The overnight trip to Siuna took 8 hours and the pavement turned to gravel halfway through. My butt and back felt every bump! We arrived at 4am and went straight to the house where all the doctors live right next door to the health center.

In the morning Eduardo showed me around the city. It reminded me of being in the Wild West... lots of horses, houses made of wood planks like Little House on the Prairie and set up on stilts that prevent flooding during the rainy season. There are more horses than cars, and pigs roam around the streets (there was a pig hanging out eating garbage behind the health center... see picture). We saw the old gold mine which is full of water now(see picture) and ate at a little eatery across from the airport (which is pretty much just a strip where the 15-seater airplanes land.)

On Saturday afternoon we went to a birthday party with Eduardo's doctor friends and then to the disco, which is the best disco I've been to yet in Nicaragua! They played socca, palo de mayo, merengue and reggaeton... so mostly music from the Atlantic Coast, which has significant African influence (now you see why I liked it!). There was also an act by a guy imitating a famous gay Mexican ranchera singer which was hilarious. The next morning we walked 4 km through greenery and farmland to a river where we went swimming (although most of the community uses it to wash clothes by scrubbing them on the rocks).

I wanted to go all the way to the coast, but the trip to Puerto Cabezas is another 14 hours away by bus... My body was not up for that ride!