Hikes!

First a few things I forgot last time
-The police in La Concha don´t have a vehicle, so Paulette from La Mariposa lends them her van. This has led to some funny instances of police wearing riot gear riding in a van painted with flowers and butterflies (which connote homosexuality here)
-I´m reading ¨Open Veins of Latin America¨ by Eduardo Galeano. Chavez gave it to Obama who apparently read it. Good enough for me.
-I have a shitty Claro phone that eats minutes like a hungry dog. If you want to call me on it, the number is 011 505 86167150. Still no internet at the house but I´m getting good at threats in Spanish so hopefully they will come to fix it soon.
-I have been covered in bug bites since I got here. It´s a constant rotation of new bites appearing while others calm. I´m hoping this builds character.

Friday night I cooked dinner for Blanca and chatted with Chamba the night guard who is apparently a baseball star and almost got killed guarding tropical birds. Saturday morning I got some good practice being alone, made chicken soup and brought it to Claudia, my neighbor who works at the house on weekday mornings. We sat and talked about her 3 daughters for a bit. In the late afternoon I met up with Sally´s friend Kevin and a group of about 30 expats and Nicaraguans on a long hike which finished along the top of a ridge overlooking the local lakes and volcanoes. I met the EU ambassador to Nicaragua who told me about a local group of Jews, and a couple who used to live in Philadelphia and work in community development. The hike ended at someone´s house with a small party. Sunday Blanca and I went to Mombacho, Nicaragua´s 5th largest volcano, which is covered in cloud forest. You can see steam coming out of the ground and smell the sulfur in certain parts. We took a long hike with a guide and a french couple, and we could see the city of Granada and several lakes and other volcanoes. This week I´m hoping to get a good start on my projects with the library and spend my first night at the farm house on Tuesday. I hope your weeks are off to a productive start as well!