¡Ven arriba!

Hello dear readers! I am back again from my mountain adventures, the last leg of my trip...so bittersweet.
Monica´s and my last day in Granada was spent going to the Masaya marketplace, the lookout at Catarina, and drinks with conversation in town followed by a lovely dinner of watermelon and coleslaw.
And then I waved good-bye to Granada on a train of long bus rides far North to coffee country. Stop number one is Matagalpa, home to guirilas (tasty, thick, steaming corn tortillas filled with cuajada queso) and some sort of thick corn and cream pudding-thing that comes with them. The city itself is just a nice place to walk, with rolling San Francisco-like hills and a pristinely white castle of a main cathedral. I stopped several times for coffee, some of the best cups I´ve had in a while, and read Alice in Wonderland while sipping my treat. Though it was lovely people-watching with overflowing baskets of produce seeming to seep from the corners, the tours into Cerro Negro and coffee plantations were expensive, so it was time to move on.
And so I moved East to Estelí, home of Hospitaje Luna to which I was highly recommended by travel-buddy Brodie. There, I booked my stay at La Perla in the Miraflor reservation further North and bought lots of goods made by the Women´s Group of Estelí. They make their own fair-trade soap, paper, and jewelry, and the woman I stayed with in La Perla, Maribel, is part of the cooperative. But before leaving, I spent an improv-day with Dan from England who I met in Catarina and Margaret the ESL teacher. We rode (and walked for big hills...) to a waterfall in a nearby reservation, and lolled in the freezing water underneath the mists all morning, then got a big lunch and read all afternoon. I moved onto Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I never seem to be able to get into his books. But I regress, we spent the night searching for Nacatamales and pizza, and had wonderful conversation with a Dutch couple about veganism and McDonald´s.
The next morning I awoke to my singing wristwatch at 5am, at which time I hitched a 10 córdoba cab to the bus station for a rather bumpy and upward (which afforded some of the best views in Nicaragua of bearded trees encased by endless ridges of jungled mountains) ride to Puertas Azules. Maribel, my care-taker, had a daughter who was on the same bus, and we walked together to Posada La Perla. We were greeted with a big pancake breakfast and café con leche from Maribel. Since it was Sunday, everyone was just sitting around and talking with family all day. I don´t think my Spanish has ever been so challenged, but Maribel was a great teacher...she helped correct my awful grammar and fed me the right words when I described them. We sat in the kitchen talking about ourselves, our families, organic farming, Nicaraguan life and American life, and even Nicaraguan government and immigration problems in the US. I made oatmeal-raisin cookies for everyone in the afternoon (massively improved by freshly crushed cinnamon, note) and wrote down the recipe and a banana-bread recipe for the family. I hope they make it and remember me :)
On Monday I witnessed tortilla-making from start to finish. They ground the fresh corn, added some water, ground it again, and patted the dough on plastic into perfect patties. They dropped them on a tortilla pan over a fogon (fire-oven) and took them off when there was little black spots and they puffed up with steam. I got to make a couple, but I definitely slowed down the process so I didn´t do too many. Then I got to help milk a cow (again, I was really slow), which was subsequently transformed into my café con leche (if you never experienced this, you must put it on your bucket list). Then I practiced English the daughter, Joli, and Maribel took me to plant some cucumber and chayote seeds. She mixed ash into the soil and planted three in a plot, then showed me how she made hills in the garden to divert the rain. I expressed to her how sad it was that I was just coming to her now, since our project could certainly use her lifelong expertise, but I suppose that´s what the future is for.
I had to hurry off just before noon for 6 hours of bus rides back to Granada so I could make it back to Playa Gigante for last good-byes. Now I enter my final days in Nicaragua.