Buen Provecho!

Well, after a bit of deliberation and reader input I have decided to indeed continue the blog. It seems as though many family members and friends are enjoying it, and it is also a great way to share my life and happenings here with all those amazing people that I have met abroad this past year! What more, I think that I will periodically attempt to write in Spanish or German, just for practice and so that some of my friends might be able to read in their own language (however horribly broken and grammatically slaughtered it may be). I would like to make this short entry about food here.

After 11 months abroad, with a couple 2 week stints at home, I am back to life here at the University of New Mexico, and to a proper New Mexican diet. "What is a proper New Mexican diet?" you might be asking yourself, and the correct answer would be green chile. However, there is much more to the New Mexican diet than green chile, there is also red chile. These two chiles are used to smother burritos, to put on burgers, to insert in quesadillas, and, really, to make just about any sort of food a little better before putting it into your mouth. In all honesty, the traditional food of New Mexico is quite diverse and there is a very proud and intricate culture surrounding it, as it is really to a certain extent a blending of 3 different cultures: anglo, latino, and native American.

It is extremely important not to get "chile" mixed up with "chili", while they are pronounced the same and are even sometimes used interchangably by some. For a true New Mexican, "chile" means a sauce made with peppers that you smother over various food items, whereas "chili" means something that is more like a stew, almost always carries beans, and goes very well with cornbread. In all honesty, "chili" is simply the anglisized form of "chile" (both in spelling as well as character, I would argue)...but here in New Mexico you will only ever find chile!

Last little note before I show you a few pictures of the various wonderful marriages of chile and your favorite food: the difference between green chile and red chile is very important, and almost impossible to explain. Generally red chile has more of an earthy taste (as if you could taste the ground red chiles) and is much more finely blended of a sauce, while green chile is slightly more stewy and you might find chunks of chile or meat in it (also slightly sweeter). However, in the end, each type of chile will depend on who has made it and what their own family/personal recipe entails. The myth that red is usually hotter than green, however, is completely false, best to simply ask the 'house hotness levels' of the two before eating!

Green chile smothered burrito at the Frontier (one of the most delicious, famous, and iconic restourants of Albuquerque), found across the street from UMN

Green chile cheese fries...mmm! NOTE: These look much different than chili cheese fries!

Green chile stew

Enchiladas

Red chile stew

Red chile and cheese smothered tomales

Veni, Vidi, Vici

Well, amazingly enough this is the absolute last night of my almost year long adventure. Tomorrow morning I will be waking up at around 3:30, will get a ride to the airport in Managua at 4:30, and will arrive in Albuquerque, New Mexico at 20:00. The last couple weeks here have been extremely busy training the new intern here and getting all my last Nicaraguan foods in, cramming in last visits with friends, and preparing to leave. Over the last 5 months, I have made the most amazing Nicaraguan family here and will miss them all with my whole heart, it will be them that make it hard to leave! There is not much left to say at this point except for thank you to all of you for following me throughout my travels and hopefully you were all able to learn a little bit and keep up to date on my activities, or at the very least hopefully you were able to be entertained by a few pretty pictures! Speaking of which, I will leave you with a few last photos, just to give you an idea of what this late night of packing is like. Also, I am debating whether to continue this blog even after I have arrived home. If I do, my posts will be a little less frequent (I bet you didn't imagine THAT being possible!), at least until I start my next big attack on some part of the world. Shoot me a message at zachpavlik@live.com and let me know what you think...I will keep updating the blog if there is an interest!

The new pet (and hopefully mouse slayer) of Casa Xalteva, PacoLaPaca, has been kind enough to keep me company throughout this packing process

...but will be less than thrilled when I end up having to pack the rest of my clothes.

Slowly but surely...

...I am making my way out of Nicaragua.

Thank you to all once again and see you all soon!

The Three Musketeers

Well, here is the long awaited second installment in the adventures of the Pavlik clan in the southern territories. And yes, the title has been cut down to a three theme, for our fourth rider has fallen. A moment of silence. To be honest, he had not fallen, but had simply failed to associate himself with our possey of hooligans for this second bit. Austin, we missed you. We would like to think it was mutual.

This second chapter in our Nicaraguan experience primarily deals with our excursion to Ometepe, an island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua housing two volcanoes. It is a very surreal experience to be on a small island in the middle of a gigantic lake, and in the shadows of two immense volcanoes. We took the chicken bus down to Rivas, then a taxi over to San Jorge (the port town) and then from there arrived in San Jose del Sur on Ometepe. One of the memorable moments in transportation was when we were searching for a taxi to get from Rivas to San Jorge. What you need to know is that upon exiting the bus here in Nicaragua (possibly especially as a gringo) you are immediately swarmed by a small army of mosquitoes and a slightly larger army of taxi drivers, both of which are out for blood. The taxi drivers are known to 'offer' quite elevated prices to tourists for the most part, so it is always a game of chance and bargain. Our little taxi driver took in to a whole new level in the realm of chance. After a bit of bargaining and arguing and walking away and being persued he said that he would flip a coin: if it landed on heads we pay $100.00 (~$4.00) córdoba in all for the trip, if tails we pay $80.00 (~$3.20). We agreed....he got lucky. Anyway, it must have been some unprecedented and legendary victory on his part to win over a tourist in such a fashion, because on our return trip when we reached to bus station to catch our bus back to Granada we saw every taxi driver in sight flipping coins all over the place for a fare, or simply flipping them to practice while waiting. Our 'amigo' came up to us and reminded us of our defeat a few days ago, introduced a few of his friends to the original suckers, and then offered to flip a coin for a rate back to Granada. We got a huge kick out of the whole thing, chatted a bit, and then safely boarded the bus back to Granada.

But without further ado, to the pictures!

Gives you a little idea of where we were and our travel route

The ferry

Our first sight of Ometepe...Conception Volcano on the left, Maderas volcano on the right

From the moment we saw Conception, we knew that was the one that we wanted to try to summit

 

Conception with an interesting cloud formation going on by it

The door to paradise... just waiting for us to exit our hostel room

Our first night we stayed at a place called Playa Martha in San Jose del Sur. It was dark when we arrived on the island and it was quite an adventure trying to find this place

Conception...always a presence, always within sight

Our lodging that first night

Preparing ourselves for a day of fun

...and off we go!

In case of volcanic eruption...

Breakfast in Moyagalpa at La Esquinita Caliente. San Jose del Sur was extremely small and there was nothing there, so we took a bus to Moyagalpa, which was much larger and gave us many more possibilities. The bus was remarkably packed

The activity we decided on was to rent scooters for the day and do a little exploring and self-guided touring of the island

This was Saturday, we decided that Sunday we would make our summitting bid

Conception from La Laguna de Charco Verde, a natural reserve that we walked around a bit in

 

Maderas Volcano, visible from the lake side of the reserve. This turned our to be quite the satisfactory swimming site

We were lucky enough to spot some Spider Monkeys in our walk around the lagoon.

We ended up seeing a total of 3 different species of monkey in the wild during our stay in Ometepe. The next day, as we were hiking Conception our guide pointed out a few Howler Monkeys and then later on a Capuchin Monkey

El Ojo de Agua. A natural spring that has been converted into a swimming site

Grabbing a quick dinner at a comedor on Playa Santa Domingo

Maderas with a cool sky en el fondo

Sunday summitting attempt: reached the halfway point of 1,000 meters...the total elevation of the volcano is about 1,610 meters. So technically this was more than halfway, but only in meters we would later figure out

Unfortunately, most of the time the upper bit of Conception is blanketed in clouds

Visibility was an obvious factor

It is required to have a guide in order to summit either volcano. Many tourists have died attempting to do so without one we heard. However, only Germans have ever died on Conception...so that wasn't bad, we felt safe enough. We didn't want to push our luck though, being born in Germany and all.

 We ended up turning around with 300 meters left, due to fatigue induced danger. The last 500 meters consisted of simply hiking up volcanic rock with absolutely no vegetation. Or,more accurately, searching for solidly grounded volcanic rock to step on, as much of it was small or not connected to the ground and extremely slippery. Our guide informed us that we should try not to slip, because if you slip is is very hard to stop sliding and due to the incline and you might just keep going. We took his advice. However, when we reached the point where we had 300 meters left and he said that it got steeper, we realized that we might not have realized what we had got ourselves into, and the best choice would be to turn around. He had told us that only 10% of people hike to the summit and that they are almost all alpiners, but we didn't quite understand what "alpiner" meant until we got up past the 1,000 meter mark a ways. All in all we chalked the experience up as an extremely bittersweet success. We learned a lot and were not necessarily prepared for that caliber of a hike, but we felt defeat as well.

My shoes after the hike. We ended up doing the whole 1,300 meters up and down in a little less than 5 hours

The church we attended in Moyagalpa

Example of the type of bus that "chicken bus" refers to

....we still could not excape the now smirking form of Conception

Chilling out on our ferry back to San Jorge

A last look at Ometepe...

...as we planned a later victory over Conception one day