Basketball at Midnight

Indeed, if surviving Cat 5 hurricanes is this easy, I should just follow them around…

Seriously though, I´m on the pacific side, and yesterday alternated between pouring rain and overcast pauses, with today alternating between downpours and sun. Aside from the overcast hours destroying the vistas, it hasn´t been too bad. I am trying to find out how Jinotega and the mountains have handled it as it was going to be our next destination, but this information isn´t very easy to discover. The northeast Carribean coast was quite bad, I gather, and the newspaper reads ´Disastre!´ (I bought one but haven´t finished going through it yet).

I am presently in Leon, in the northwest corner, an old colonial city and home to the largest university. In more antique times, this was the home to the liberals, and Granada (prev. visited), the Conservatives. There was some wicked political deal that has debilitated the Liberal party, and the Conservatives died out when a previous dictator held them at bay with bribes.

So, we´re considering various possibilties for the future: the coast with a wicked undertow, crocadiles, pelicans, and monkeys; a much calmer volcano-crater lake (apoyo), and other vocano hikes.

We were at the volcano island of Ometepe before here, although we cut that stay short. It was very beautiful, but the water of the immense lake a bit murký- we considered a hike up one of the two volcanoes, but the skies were overcast and threatening from the hurricane, the trail promised to be muddy and difficult, and the clouds shed doubts on a good view.

Well, that´s the pause for the moment.

K