Friday, March 30, 2012

Isla Ometepe and the Rio San Juan

The volcanic island Isla Ometepe was the first of my last two stops in Nicaragua. The island, rising impressively out of Lake Nicaragua, takes its name from the Nuhatl words ome, meaning "two," and tepetl, meaning "mountain," and is the largest volcanic island on freshwater in the world.

View of the sunset from the back of the ferry
A ferry carries the entertaining mix of tourists, boat workers, island residents, and every type of cargo from bananas to empty (i think...) coffins on the scenic four-hour ride to Altagracia, the island's main port town.

The crater lake atop Maderas Volcano
Of the many available options for jungle exploring on the Island, climbing one of the two volcanoes is by far the most popular. I decided to hike Maderas, having been told by other travelers that it is the more rugged and least developed of the two. Starting at 7 AM, I followed the trail through a number of coffee and cacao plantations and then slugged the remaining three miles through mud and rocks to reach the crater. By the time I hiked back down it was already almost 5 PM.

View from the base of Volcan Concepción

Horse cooling off in Lake Nicaragua
 After spending a number of days on Ometepe, I took the 12-hour ferry from the Island down south to the Río San Juan. The ferry left Altagracia at 6 PM and arrived at the mouth of the river a bit after 6 AM after a long, cold, and rather sleepless night. Despite my lack of sleep, I decided to bite the bullet and head another hour down the river to make it to Bocas de Sabalo, a sleepy river town where frogs and howler monkeys sing you to sleep and then 8 hours later join in with the countless birds and crickets to compete against the reggatone music starting to play in a strangely calming jungle cacophony.
View across the Río Sábalos, one of the tributaries of the Río San Juan.
Chillin' outside my room.
A day in a canoe is sure to keep the blues away.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

León and Granada

Well, the internship is over and I'm on the road. My most recent stops were Leon and Granada -- both colonial towns with very rich histories.
Leon's cathedral
Believe it or not, this was not my first time to León. As a matter of fact, it was my third. My first visit was early on in my internship when I brought a water sample to the University located in town. That trip ended up with my debit card not working and my having to more or less pawn off my computer at the hostel My second visit was to come back, pay the hostel, and get my computer back. During that trip, however, I discovered that someone had robbed literally all of my money via internet fraud thanks to an insecure connection in one of these internet cafés. The bank recuperated the money, but as you can imagine I left town with pretty bitter (albeit misdirected) feelings toward León. I decided to return early last week and give it one more shot. And I'm glad I did. I spent four days eating, drinking, sleeping and, after months of not being able to enjoy modern amenities like flushing toilets, watching some TV. That doesn't mean spent the entire time in my hostel room, though. I got a pretty good feel for life in León by going to the market, hanging out in the park, and chatting with the kids that frequent the food stands. It's a university town, which gives the place a palpable youth-y vibe. The students are very, very Sandinista (Danielista, that is) -- to the point where they are almost completely blind to the problems that surround them -- and even though their political leanings frustrate me, I can appreciate their energy.

León's history has been long and hard (as has that of all Nicaragua). The castillian colonial buildings themselves practically say everything -- destroyed cathedrals and bullet holes in the walls tell a story of violence and war and a continuing inability to move on and rebuild a united country. If you walk through the central park at night you can see sleeping on benches both a legless war vet and a parentless 10-year-old -- one scarred by a past, the other afraid of the future.

León's liberals and Granada's conservatives fought for a number of years for power -- both wanted to be the capital of Nicaragua. During the revolution in 1979, the Sandinistas (del alma) took over León, but Somoza heartlessly bombed his own people in order to clear the Sandinistas out of the city. The Sandinistas eventually re-took the city and held it until Somoza fell.

Part of Granada's central plaza, the cathedral, and a few colonial buildings
Granada is the first European city in mainland America (founded in 1524) and Nicaragua's best-maintained colonial town -- my friend Eva, who is from Spain and has been traveling with me, says that there are a number of parts of the city that are almost exactly like the Granada in Andalusia, Spain. It was in this city where American (Tennessean, in fact) William Walker took up residence and began his campaign to make himself the ruling monarch of Nicaragua and to make Nicaragua itself a slave state of the United States. Yeah, he was kind of crazy. Upon leaving with his private army, Walker set the city ablaze, leaving much of it destroyed, and left the words "here was Granada" printed in ash. Walker ended up placing himself as the President of Nicaraguan in 1856, but was soon defeated by a coalition of Central American armies and was executed in 1860 in Honduras. Granada rebuilt quickly and managed to avoid damage during the violence in the 1980s.

As with any well-kept colonial city, Granada is pretty touristy, so I only stayed one night and managed to enjoy myself despite the throngs of camera-wielding elderly Germans and hippie backpackers.

Right now I'm on Ometepe Island, a volcanic island on Lake Nicaragua. Post to come.

Monday, March 12, 2012

The Coffee Process

One of my favorite experiences as a part of my internship has been carrying out the entire process of picking, de-pulping, threshing, drying, roasting, and drinking delicious coffee. The whole process takes places onsite at La Biosfera.
This is the Caturra variety of coffee. The other variety planted is Catuai, whose fruit is yellow when ripe. Both varieties from the species C. arabica, the species generally regarded to have to most robust flavor.

The coffee fruit turns a bright red when ripe, and at that point it is picked and soaked in a bucked before being depulped.

Obviously this is usually done on a much larger scale, but since we only have about 30 coffee plants, we use what very well may be the smallest coffee de-pulper on the planet.

After being de-pulped, the beans are allowed to dry out in the sun for a few days.

Once dry, the beans need to be threshed to get rid of the hard shell. This is done very easily by machine, but we wanted to do the whole process artisanally, so I filled a pillow case with the dried beans and whacked it against the floor a few times and ended up with pretty thoroughly threshed beans. 

This is what the beans look like once they have been threshed. Now, its ready to be roasted.

This type of clay dish is what was used to roast coffee before machinery ever existed. The smell of fresh coffee grew stronger and stronger as we roasted them over a bed of coals. 

The final product. Earthy and not too acidic. Yum.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

La Biosfera in a Nutshell

Well, my internship here is wrapping up -- I'm done on Saturday. We've gotten a lot done to improve on the existing permaculture models, add some new ones, completely renovate the water system, and ramp up La Biosfera's publicity. I'm realizing that I still haven't published any pictures of the place itself, so here are some photos of the recycling/permaculture initiatives (specifically for families with very few resources) we have going on:

Bunk beds made out of recycled truck tires. Very, Very comfortable. The wood came from a zapatillo tree that had already fallen on the property.
The posada where guests sleep (and where all the tire trunk bunks are)  was made using earthbag construction -- bags filled with dirt and then stacked like bricks.
This is one of the three gardens on site, this one recently expanded. We've just started planting and some plants are already poking out of the soil.
We still haven't perfected the system, but we're working on  heating our water with compost. It has worked a few times, but not totally consistent.
Compost toilets. Today an unsustainable level water is wasted in human waste management. The recycling of humanure is going to be essential for sustainability. It's not as gross as it sounds -- it doesn't smell and it's placed well out of sight, and it's really easy to do. Most importantly, it's a very effective fertilizer.
Another great building option for people with few resources. We haven't built a full-scale version yet, but this is the doghouse that we use to show how it works. You put all your non-organic trash inside of plastic bottles and they make a very useful building tool. 
Mobile chicken coop. The chickens tear up the dirt, eat the bugs, and fertilize the soil in areas where you are planning to plant a garden. 
Water swale. In one of my previous posts I put up a video explaining how a swale works. Well, here's ours.  I spent most of last week tearing up old cement and resealing it. 

This is the latest addition and in my opinion the best example of a self-incentivizing recycling initiative. A plastic bottle filled with water retracts light at 360 degrees. Very simple to install and provides 50 watts of light. 

So there you have it. La Biosfera in a nutshell. In my next post I'll talk about the coffee we grow, pick, depulp, thresh, toast, and (of course) drink all on site.