Corriendo Cintas

My favorite kind of parties in or around La Ribera have always revolved around the community getting together and showing off horses.  My last weekend, I finally got the chance to see a different kind of event: corriendo cintas.  To compete in this challenge, members of the community attempt to snag tiny metal rings off of a hanging wire as they gallop past at full speed.  Difficult to say the least! This time, I was more than happy to remain a spectator.

I feel like if I attempted this, I would, without fail, stick the tip of my tongue out in kindergartner-style concentration.  I still do it while threading needles....

Visiting Changena

The Chinchilla family is a huge and friendly group, and I got to take advantage of that when I visited my host dad's nephew Oscar at his farm. About two hours south of La Ribera and not too far from the Panama border, it's a very different kind of farm down there - but just as beautiful and inspiring in its own way.  Having a tour guide who was nice enough to take me along for his daily chores (and put up with my picture taking!) didn't hurt:

We fed and herded the cows, searched for carvings left behind by previous indigenous owners, picked avocados, and got absolutely soaked by the faithful afternoon thunderstorm.

Evenings were spent teaching two adorable little siblings American card games, catching up on the latest telenovelas, and watching the mixed flock of {free range woohoo!} turkeys, chickens, and ducks pick their way over the front yard.

One Last Waterfall

I spent, in all, about six months in La Ribera.  But I never stopped discovering new things in and around the area.  Example: the stunning waterfall I visited my last weekend there.  It plummets 125 meters  - way beyond anything I've seen in the States.  And it does so not twenty minutes from the home of a family friend.

View from the tippy top - check out the road below!

All Good Things....

Coming back to Finca Chinchilla before I travelled home was always my plan.  My experience in Costa Rica was shaped more by my family there than by anything else, and I couldn't imagine not ending my trip in their company.


I will say, however, that I ended up making things harder on myself.  As I wrapped up my wandering travels, I had begun to feel a little tired of lugging my backpack around, of the same sort of conversation, of spending money, of any number of things that wear on a traveller.  I had started to think "Well, when I'm home, I can..."


Coming back to the farm erased all that in an afternoon.  Walking back up to my family's home, surrounded by mist and mountains, I felt a sort of sigh of relief - a homecoming.  A beautiful feeling, but one that can be a little bit problematic when you have a flight booked in three weeks. 


Those three weeks passed in less than a heartbeat.  I woke up every morning feeling a bittersweet pressure to soak in every drop of each moment I had left, but still felt that the sun set before I could catch my breath.  I'm can't let this blog go without recounting a few more of these moments...

Back to Ticolandia

For my last stretch of travelling time, I wanted to be on the beach.  I have seen a lot of gorgeous places over the past few months.  Breathtakingly green forests, lush farms, gritty cities, windswept cattle fields.  But I have yet to find a place that duplicates the feeling I get when I am at the beach.  Something about the hugeness of the ocean paired with the great big open sky, epecially when set against almond trees and sturdy palms, just moves me in a way that no other place does.  I couldn't imagine a better spot to spend my last days as an independant traveller.

Since I went to Dominical, I had been hearing from beach bum after beach bum that Santa Teresa was one of their favorite beaches.  So, I set off from Nicaragua toward the sand. More on what I've been up to in the next post, but for now, take a look!

 Lots of driftwood around here for perching and lounging.

 Millions of teeny shells.

The hostel.  They know what they're doing regarding hammocks here - you can never, ever, have too many.  Friends in the background decided that my picture was too boring without them.... acting like they were on a rollercoaster?

Posing with a big thorny tree while on our quad expedition.

Break from exploring the unknown to gaze out at the ocean? Yes please.

:)

And finally, this is how I look when asked to do anything legit with a surfboard. 

Glimpses

Okay, posts have been seriously lacking in pictures lately, and I know that's what you guys really want in the end.  So, here's a look into the places and people I've been blessed by recently:

Fountain in Granada just at the mouth of my favorite walk - the broad mango tree lined path to the lakeside.

Lots of the churches in Granada were sparkling clean
and recently painted. I liked this one which showed its age a little bit more.

This lovely breakfast joint became a running joke between my friends and me here.  While making plans one day, someone suggested we meet at kahtaywafflayy. I thought  - huh? After several minutes of describing the place to me, my friends then had to sit through a fit of giggles as I realized what they were talking about. 

A marching band performs on the main square in Granada -

instead of a flag corps, they have these guys out front playing and dancing.

Pithaya! Or dragon fruit.  For all its crazy appearance, it's actually got a pretty mild taste to it.

 A taste of the political climate in Leon.

Rawr.

A few of the amazing folks I've had the pleasure of spending time with here. From left to right: Aurora, a friend I met while working at the Oasis and then followed to Leon,
Mainor, a veterinarian and class clown, me,
and Alex, a systems engineer student who will graduate this year and a fellow student of Spanish - he's from Nicaragua, but grew up on the Caribbean coast and so spoke only Creole English and Miskito until just a few years ago.

:)

On Being a Macha/Chela Muchacha/Chavala

As a language nerd, I have had a pretty limitless amount of things to observe and think about over the past few months.  I watched my own progress with Spanish with a weird amount of consciousness, tracking the plateaus and leaps with interest.  I often find myself  in excited conversations with people over silly turns of phrase within Spanish or English.  Over the past month, I've gotten to make a new kind of comparison - Spanish with Spanish.

I've mentioned briefly before that there isn't a whole lot of love lost between Nicaraguans and Costa Ricans.  I experienced this in a new way, though, once I started making friends in Granada and  began hearing over and over that I spoke like a Tica (Costa Rican.)  My friends would mimic what I had said, laying on a thick Tico accent the way people might put on a Boston one, laughing the whole time.   I pronounced my "s" to much.  I  was mushmouthed the way Ticos were.  I used the formal form far too often.   And God help me if I attempted to use every Tico's  favorite, pura vida.  Unacceptable.  So, I started to try and adapt. A couple examples of things I picked up:

cool as in chill
Nicaragua: tuani
Costa Rica: tuaniS

cool as in awesome
Nicaragua: diacachimba, salvaje, bestial
Costa Rica: chiva, pura vida, tuanis

cool as in a cool person, or as in "he's good people"
Nicaragua: buena onda
Costa Rica: pura vida, buena gente

something that reminded me of New Orleans, used for checking  to make sure someone is paying attention while you're talking in Nicaragua: oiste? (i.e. you heard me?)

getting someone's attention 
Nicaragua: a quick whistle (ooooOOOO)
Costa Rica: either a nonsense syllable or, if walking up to a home and announcing your presence, an oopeh

girls
Nicaragua: chavalas, chicas
Costa Rica: guilas, muchachas

people with light skin / hair / eyes (usually foreigners, but not always)
Nicaragua: chela, chele
Costa Rica: macha