Day 28 - Tips on Flying With La Costena Airlines

First of all, For those who don't know, La Costena is the only domestic airline in Nicaragua.

• You are required to check at the Bluefields airport, size about the same as a four-bedroom apartment in San Francisco, at least 1.5 hours in advance or else your ticket will be sold to another person. 
• "Obviously," if they don't sell enough ticket for the date/time you are planning to fly, they will decide to cancel the flight even after the expected departure time.
• La Costena Airline plane so small that they need to weigh you before you get on. 
• Going through security at the Bluefields airport means them unpacking your bags and repacking all over again.
  
  

  

  Man in blue standing on the scale with all his bags. The ticketer in orange is also the airplane ground controller.

  
  

Day 25 - Nicaraguan "No Child Left Behind"

• Few years ago, Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, passed a law to require all kids to finish school or, specifically, a law to require school to pass all students, even if they don’t show up in class. 

Day 24 - Unless You're a Reporter, Don't Expect Anything

• May 25th is a big day for Palo de Mayo. Not only is there a parade of barrios (neighborhoods), there is a beauty pageant for girls age between 14 and 18 for Miss Mayo. 

After a series of dancing and Palo de Mayo quiz, Miss Mayo was finally chosen. When they crowned the 2013 Miss Mayo on stage, a swarm of photographers rushed to the front of the scene to take the best picture. I guess we'll just have to see what the award ceremony looks like on the paper the next morning, even though I was right there.

what you see from the crowd during the ceremony - photographers, photographers, photographers...

Day 24 - Drumline Services

• The best place to be a drummer is in Bluefields. Don't we all want a caddy in a "marching band?"

Day 23 - Turtles are Gems

• Everything is edible in a sea turtle, except for it's shell, which can be made into jewelries.

Day 22 - Chinese People

• It was the Chinese people who brought commerce into Bluefields. Before the Chinese came, Bluefields was trading under barter system.

Day 22 - Post-Hurricane Recontruction

• Before Hurricane Joan came and destroyed everything in the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua in 1988, there was one cinema in Bluefields. Today, after 25 years of rebuilt, there is still no cinema because people "can just watch movies on the internet."

Even with the rebuilding, a lot of houses still look like what it did pre-hurricane, but wrecked.

Day 21 - Bluefields's Got Priorities

• Building a freeway to connect Bluefield to Managua, so they will have to cut off the electricity three days a week for the past two weeks. The entire city does not have electricity, except for blueEnergy with back up battery system in the house. The entire city has to be shut down three days a week for two days.

Day 21 Natural Water Treatment System

• While the most basic municipal infrastructures around the world is water treatment system, Bluefields has an electricity grid, but no water treatment system. Everything goes straight into the lagoon.

If you cannot tell, these are latrines

Day 20 - Taxis Everywhere

• 99% of cars in Bluefields are taxi cabs and they are either Kia or Hyundai

Day 19 - Special Beer Service

• This is how your beer is served. pretty much the only guarantee way to get napkins in a restaurant or bar.

Day 18 - Shake That, Young Ones!

• Ass shaking is such an important deal here that girls start to learn it when they are 4

Day 18 - No Meds in the Hospital

• Most of the time when you go to the hospital, you would need to swing by the pharmacy to get some drugs because they don't have it in the hospital.

Day 16 - Party in Bluefields...

• Palo de Mayo (aka Maypole) is the Bluefields carnival, celebrating spring and rain after months of dry season. FERTILITY! We have parties in different neighborhood every weekend. Sometimes it could be over-the-top fun. Today, we went to Santa Rosa neighborhood for the party. When we got there at 10pm, there are four half naked women dancing on stage, totally unsynchronized.

 

... while the kids runs around and play in front of the stage.   

The little playground slowly turned into a soccer field. The boys were using crushed beer cans and coke bottles as their ball. Soon after, an old lady with a potato bags full of aluminum cans came and started fighting with the kids for the can. She won.

When the women were dancing, the kids seem to be more interested than anyone else there.

 Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of people there. They were just standing there, doing nothing, as if they were waiting for something to happen.

At one point, for some reason, the women decided to stop dancing, while the music continues to play. The entire party proceed to be a mass of crowd standing around staring at the stage while the kid play soccer with beer cans. These women would be standing on the stage, obviously bored. The girl standing right next to the DJ would sometimes stick her hands in her bra to wipe off her boob sweat and sniff it. All this time, the MC standing on the far left of the picture would be randomly broadcasting the party, singing along the songs randomly, while facing to the side of the stage like this the whole time.

When Ludacris's "Move Bitch" started playing, he would sing, "lean back, lean back, lean back."

A few songs after "Move Bitch," the party ended, and everyone went home.

Day 16 - 5-Hour Schooldays

• The space in schools here is so limited that kids only go to school 5 hours a day. There are morning session, afternoon session, and evening session. Your pick. Same with teachers.

Day 15 - Makes a Man Fall for Another Man

• In Pearl Lagoon, people believe that real men eat fish; chicken (and beef) makes a man fall for another man.

Day 14 - Smartphone in My Dumbphone?!

• Apps on dumbphone (never in my life would I expect to be able to watch How I Met Your Mother or go on Facebook on my dumbphone)
  
  
  

Day 13 - Tortuga! Tortuga!

• Every morning, you hear on the street, "Tortuga! Tortuga!" Come eat some sea turtles fresh off the boat from the Caribbean Sea! 

Day 12 - Jump Right to Computer

• Technology here is so behind that they practically almost skipped the "typewriter-era" and jumped straight from hand-writing to computer. Developing world rocks. Leap frog rocks.

Day 11 - Self-Help Men

• You always see motor vehicles opened up on the street, in the shop, or in the yard. There is no "auto shop" in Bluefields. All men are expert mechanics in this magical land. 

Day 10 - Foreigners vs. Locals

• Only foreigners dance in groups. freak and grind if you're a true Nica!

Day 9 - Genius Traps

• SuperSMART Mosquito-trap. Apparently, mosquitoes are attracted to dark things. Put a piece of black garbage bag behind the fan, where mosquitoes get sucked into the fan and trapped.

all trapped and dead

Day 8 - Danger in the Night

• Turns out walking on the street late-night in Bluefields is VERY DANGEROUS, not because of crime, but because of the dogs. The later the night gets, the more they want to rip you in half, especially if you show any sign of fear.

Day 8 - How Not to Get a Heartattack

• DO NOT open the fridge immediately after you iron your clothes. The temperature difference can cause heart-attack. Everyone here has a friend-of-friend-of-friend who know someone who died from heart-attack like this.

Day 7 - Pets in the House

• Today, I went to see how blueEnergy installs water filtration system in 3 different families.The second family lives in a house that literally looks like something I expected the second pig from Three Little Pigs built, which is somewhat expected... until I saw this at the front window.

Thank goodness this is not a norm. However, people here love this so much that when they "pet" these squirrels, they, literally, grab them with both hands and shove them into their own face to make these squirrels "kiss" them.

 As we proceeded to walk into the house, this is the next thing greeting us.

Now this is normal (though I hope the way they tie them down is not normal... something I never want to find out. At least the owner loves them a lot: She likes to grab them with both hands and shove them into their own face to make these parrots "kiss" them).

Long story short, this "infrastructure" houses 2 squirrels, 2 parrots, 1 turtle, at least 5 chickens, at least 2 dogs, and, according to the head of the house, "approximately 10 children under 14."

Day 7 - Behind the Wooden Door

• Today, I went to see how blueEnergy installs water filtration system in 3 different families. In the first family of two, we were in a house about 12'x12' with living room, dining room, and kitchen with a room attached to it on the side like an annex. We need the water filter to be indoor and under the shade, but there was obviously no space in the house, so we asked where we can put the water filter. The woman closed the back door and started moving the boxes behind it. After she was done moving a pile of what seemed like "recycled cardboard boxes," there revealed a hen hatching eggs in the corner. She picked up the hen-in-the-box and moved it to the backyard, while the hen just sits there, chillin'. 

Here's the installed water filter behind the back door with the box full of eggs that the hen took a break from.

Day 6 - Pleasureful Relations

• si se puede!

Day 5 - Americans Are Bad

• People here thinks Americans, in general, are hippies and don't take care of their parents

Day 4 - La-La

• the owner of my favorite place is this black guy called La-La. He has four brothers. They are named, La-La, La-La, La-La, and La-La. They call each other by the way they look, so there are Big-Lala, Small-Lala, Black-Lala, and White-Lala (not sure what the fifth one is called).

Day 4 - Kamikaze

• My new favorite place la-la is apparently at "Pear Harbour." Obviously, when we talk about Pearl Harbor, we cannot miss the Kamikaze
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Day 4 - Black-People Music

• two most popular genre of music are reggae and country, both of which most people believe are "black-people music"

Day 4 - Water Help From the Firefighters

• The brown water I took the bucket shower with on my day 1 was apparently from a week ago when they ran out of water so badly that they had the fire department came and fill the water tank with water from unknown source (likely from the atrocious algae-booming lagoon)

Day 4 - La Mona

• They are truly terrified of la mona, a witch that turns into a monkey and eat little children. so much that they actually have news reports and police preparation for la mona.

Day 3 - Let's Eat a Bag of Chips!

• Snack-pack "dortitos" contains, literally, six pieces of chips and lots of air

Day 3 - Value of USD

• Anything that costs >$50 in Nicaragua is labeled in USD. because Nica Cordoba is pegged to USD by %, it's safer to keep money in USD.

Day 2 - Party in the Cabs

• Taxi drivers LOVE blasting music at night. The police officers cracked it down by pulling over every single cabs that were blasting music and ripped their sound system out on-site. Don't be surprised to see officers standing in the corner of the streets with piles of stereos next to them

Day 2 - What Not to Leave Out Overnight

• Outdoor chair theft is a big issue here

Day 2 - Daggering

• Daggering is real

I always thought Major Lazer made this up...

Pon De Floor by Major Lazer

Day 2 - One Highway

• There is actually one road that connects Bluefields to the outside world, except most of the time it is so muddy that it is unusable, unknown as "the Liquid Highway."

Day 1 - Ride-Share Taxi

• cabs in Bluefields are all ride share. expect to cram in a cab with four other people.

Day 1 - Fourth World Economics

• The Rama people on the island of Rama Cay uses altruistic giving as a form of economic

Day 1 - How Much Does It Cost for a Taxi?

• C$12 (60 US cents)/person flat-rate cab rate all over the country

Day 1 - Boarding Pass

• The boarding pass for all domestic flights in Nicaragua is a massive piece of plastic that says your destination

Day 1 - Isolation

• Bluefields, although on the mainland of Nicaragua, is an island city: the only way to reach the city is by boat or by plane

Day 1 - Send Me a Mail, Maybe?

• Don't bother sending me a mail. Postal services is near non-existence.

Day 1 - Addresses

• There is no numbers in the physical address Nicaragua, but simply a point of reference. i.e. my address is, literally, "House of blueEnergy, Across the Street from Dr. Beacon's House, Bluefields, Nicaragua"