La Finca

La Finca  01/26/2016

The Lord has provided many doors to open while we are here.  First, we have started giving English classes in our house with about 4 girls.  One of the girls that comes to our class has a Aunt that has a farm close to the lake and volcano.  She invited us to go visit the Finca(farm).   Her name is Paolo, Paola was a good friend of Kristine when she was here for three months.  

A finca is a farm/estate, but it’s more than just a farm with animals it also has a lot of crops.  This finca has about  100 acres of land and  is very close to the volcano.  Some of the crops you would find on this finca are banana trees guava, corn and many other, it also had horses, chickens, ducks, turkey, cows dogs, cats and indoor birds.  What was a little strange about this finca was that the owner allowed her chickens and birds in the house, but the dogs were not permitted there.  This finca is about five miles outside of the town of Nagarote and has no running water or electricity.  The road to the finca is a bumpy dirt road and a little dangerous for a car or moto taxi.

 

We were told it can be dangerous because it is so isolated from the main town we live in.  We were also told not to bring our backpacks, phones or money.  If you get robbed, it’s better to just give the small amount of money you are carrying then to give up your whole backpack.   We got a late start that day as most people don’t do things in the middle of the day because it is too hot.  We meet at the house of Paolo’s around 2 o’clock, which is the hottest part of the day.  There was a total of 7 of us, The two of us, Paolo, Paolo’s mom and 3 other young girls that we teach English to.  

 

The town of Nagarote is very nice, it has water, electricity and sanitation.  The houses are simple but all have cement walls.  Everyone in town seems to have what we would call normal lives, eat plenty, work a lot and they hang out.  Once you leave the main part of the towns this is where you begin to you see the poverty.   Most of the houses are simply put together with aluminum or cardboard and most have dirt floors.  There is garbage everywhere because they do not get the services of the city.  This is where you see the people that slip through the cracks and there is no safety net for them.

 

After walking a mile we were exhausted from the heat.  We were not even close to the farm at this point, we basically were at the edge of the community.  We could see in the distance a moto taxi(see photo below).  A moto taxi would normally costs 10 cordabas per person(which in dollars is .40,  but because it was a long distance he charged us 150 cordabas total for 7 of us.  $5 is no big deal, but since we only brought 200 cordbabas we only had enough for trip there.  We fit 9 people into this moto taxi, the 7 of us, the driver and the driver’s young daughter.  A moto taxi is made for at the most 3 people on normal roads.  Every quarter of a mile we had to all get out and walk, while the moto taxi went over sand or big holes.  It was quite the experience, but we got there.

 

The Finca was on a huge lake overlooking an active volcano, called mombotombo.  It is always smoking and actually erupted for the first time in 100 years last month.  It was rustic and absolutely beautiful.  We all  went swimming with the girls, and we had a great time.  Someone told us that  there were a lot of alligators in the lake, other people said it was made up.  Not really sure, but we didn’t get bit.  They gave us a tour of the finca which was amazing; pure rustic beauty and then we just hung out in the open house and drank coffee and talked.  We then had a long nice walk back; it was evening and it was a lot cooler.

 

It was a great experience to see how many people live in the countryside here.  These pictures are a little fuzzy, because I brought my cheap Nicaragua phone, and not my IPhone in case we got robbed.