The first set of photos from Nicaragua

This is a the view from the dining room at the Finca Magdalena, overlooking a garden. The Finca is a coffee cooperative on Isle Ometepe, where about thirty families work together to grow and process coffee. They also harvest their own honey. In the distance, you can see Volcán Concepción, the taller of the two volcanoes on the island. Isle Ometepe is in Lake Cocibolca, the largest of Nicaragua's great lakes, which you can also see off to the right.




I had never seen a coffee plant before, with the exception of the potted one I bought for my desk at work. It died after about a month and never had berries like these. The berries turn red in November and that's when they're harvested. My Spanish wasn't good enough to pinpoint exactly what happens after that, but eventually they get spread out on these huge concrete platforms to dry in the sun. They had special little coffee bean rakes with which to turn and scoop them.




We went for a hike on the finca land. That morning there had been heavy rain (it caused flooding in many parts of the country) and the path was muddy and slick. Jeff quickly hiked ahead. He thinks I'm too slow whenever balance or jumping over rocks is required. I'll admit it, I am slow. However, Faber, our guide, was quite a gentleman and held my hand through almost all of the hike. Normally this attention would have made me blush, but he saved me from landing on my ass at least ten times.




On our hike, we visited a bunch of pre-Columbian petroglyphs. All were on the sides or tops of boulders. The petrogylphs incorporated a lot of different designs, including many spirals and some recognizable animals. My favorite one looked exactly like the Darwin fish (the counterpart to the Jesus fish) that people stick on the back of their cars. It was an outline of a fish with stick legs.




Here, Faber is explaining to Jeff that the legs on the fish are supposed to be flippers, not legs. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to get the concept of "flippers" across without a common language. I'm not sure I buy it, though. I think the pre-Columbian inhabitants of Ometepe could have carved pretty accurate flippers if they had wanted to. These were definitely legs. Perhaps the people of Ometepe were some of the first proponents of the threory of evolution?




The last stop on our hike around the finca was to see some Howler Monkeys hanging out in a big mango tree. You can't really tell from the picture, but the Momma monkey (on the left) has a little baby riding on her back. The male monkey is peeing all over the place and looking grouchy. You may also be able to make out his monkey junk laying on the branch beneath him. Quite impressive for a little monkey!