Esteli

Dan and Rebecca confused Ralph at the Honduras/Nicaragua border with their Australian passports and English accents so despite having been incensed over the past few months by all Americans calling us Australian, Ralph made exactly the same mistake with them...doh.  We shared a bus and a taxi from the border to Esteli a town in northern Nicaragua.  Dan and Ralph spoke to Lester the taxi driver in the universal language - football.  On the bus it was packed full people sitting three to a seat and the aisle filled with people standing.  Then it stopped again to squeeze more people on and someone transporting a couple of 20ft drainage pipes shoved them along the floor of the aisle so everyone had to stand perching on top of them the rest of the way!

Horses carrying logs on street in Esteli

Cathedral

On Sundays the plaza is filled with families and the children can pay to ride around in these cars

These ceramic animals were great, but too big to lug about in our bags.  The chap had made them and was sitting around the corner at the end of the line painting them.

The buses were always packed and blasted out music at high volume, probably to drown out the engine noise.  We took a bus from Esteli up to El Coyalito a community near to Miraflor Nature Reserve.  It was the bumpiest bus ride yet, full of farmers with huge cowboy hats.  We were on our way to stay with a local family and have a guided bird walk around the reserve.

Clifford, our hosts dog

The hosts sisters pet parakeet

Taking a guided tour of the Miraflor reserve with Rudolfo

lizard

This insect was amazing and a bit creepy the sting on it moved entirely independently of the rest of it

butterfly

Waterfall

Poroporo or buttercup tree flowers

Quick dip in the waterfall on our bird walk

A lot of Miraflor was farmland, the local communities grow coffee, maize and graze cattle.

Dancing lady orchid

We stayed with a lovely family, this is me and Antonia.  She made delicious food and told us how it was during the 10 years of civil war in Nicaragua from when she was 3 to 13 years old, she's the same age as me. It was really interesting.  Also her mum is Honduran and her Dad from El Salvador.  In 1969 they were living in Honduras when the 'Football War' began.  Relations between El Salvador and Honduras were already strained due to immigration of El Salvadoreans into Honduras then during a qualifying round of 1970 FIFA world cup riots began and Salvadorean army invaded Honduras.  It was at this time when her parents were afraid to stay in Honduras or go to El Salvador that they fled to Nicaragua where Antonia was then born.

Antonias kitchen and cooker, we made tortillas on it.  The cat loved lying under it in the warm.

Ralph became an expert tortilla maker.  We had to break off a chunk of dough, roll it into a ball, pat it flat for ages going round in a circle, peel it off the plastic disc onto the cooker.

Antonia showed us how many she had already made that morning before the lazy gringos had even got up  (at 6.30am).

Our host told us of a mysterious farm animal that was neither goat or sheep but something entirely different, we were led down the hill by her daughter to find the mystery animal. It turned out to be a.....................

sheep, although it did have a special cumbersome wooden collar to stop it escaping through the fence.