Hi all! Maya and Shane here, recapping on this past week. As we write this, we are sitting in the common area at Project Bona Fide, a farm dedicated to the diversification and availability of plant species in Nicaragua. The common area is completely open, and overlooks the lush jungle/farm, as well as the lake that could most certainly be mistaken for the ocean due to its endless horizon. We will be here at Bona Fide until November 9th, and it is our longest stay of the trip. Before we get into what we do here , we’ll talk about the final days in Matagalpa as well as our journey here, to Ometepe Island.
We ended our time at Colibri Spanish School by sharing a presentation with our teachers. They performed a traditional Nicaraguan dance, wearing lovely colorful skirts. We started our presentation by playing a goofy game called ” Bunny Bunny” which elicited much laughter from the group. We ended the presentation with Brent and Shane’s acrobatics performance. Saturday was our final day in Matagalpa and started off with a trip to a waterfall. We swam, walked behind it and Ricky made friends with a lizard! Saturday was also Quintin’s birthday and we celebrated by going out tonan Italian restaurant and presenting him with a custom skittles cake!
Sunday morning we departed Matagalpa, heading to Ometepe Island. It was an all day car trip, followed by a delayed ferry ride, followed again by another car ride. Sunday was also the day the group discovered the Carpe Diem Plague! While we had been in Matagalpa, both Katie and Ricky were hit with a mystery 24 hour bug. This seemed like an isolated incident until both Ellen and Quintin were taken down on the Sunday journey! Lizza also caught the bug on Tuesday,but don’t be worried friends and family! All are well…for now!
Now at Bona Fide, on Ometepe Island, we are settled into various rustic cabanas. For the most part, these consisit of wall-less rooms, mattresses with bug nets and dirt floors, compete with all sorts of massive creepy crawlers! ( found a tarantula in the girls room last night!) Our days begin at 6:45 when we start working on various parts of the farm, sualeing, digging ditches,using machetes, and chopping down trees. Bona Fide is great, full of friendly volunteers and real, hands-on work, which is (surprisingly) a nice change of pace for the group! We have Spanish classes in the afternoon, as well as various other workshops, including basket weaving, dance, and chocolate making. We celebrated Sophia’s 19th birthday yesterday with a plate of coconut dusted papaya. The real celebration will be tomorrow though, when we will combine her party with our Halloween!
We send our love to all of you back home, and can’t believe our time away has passed so quickly. Due to slow Internet, we can’t attach photos to this blog, but will include them ASAP! Happy Halloween from all of us!