Today is Blog Action Day 2008 and this year’s focus is on poverty. Poverty can be defined as lack of the common necessities that determine quality of life – lack of safe food, shelter, and clothing, lack of opportunities presented by education, health care, and community.

As many of you know I travel extensively in Central America and while I really enjoy the weather, the people and the relative cheapness of living there, there is another side to ‘paradise’.

What most people don’t see or see and ignore is the level of poverty in places like Nicaragua. Think about how your life would change if you were forced to live on twenty dollars per day. How could you pay rent, food, heat, hydro, cable, internet, clothes, gas for your car etc for just $600 per month? Impossible you say. Now imagine living on just $2 per day. That is what the majority of rural Nicaraguans live on. That $60 pays for everything the family needs for the month!

Poverty in Nicaragua is all consuming. It impacts every single decision people make from the obvious of what to eat and what to wear each day to the less obvious such as will your child ever go to school. While schooling is free to all in Nicaragua, the cost of supplies makes the opportunity unobtainable for a large percentage of the population. Only 9 percent of children in rural areas who start first grade will finish primary school because the family needs that kid to work to make enough money to feed the family. Hard to argue that schooling is important when you don’t have enough money to eat.

Now add the fact that the majority of the popluation is under 25 years of age and you can imagine the problems that Nicaragua will face in 15 years. The workforce will not have the education to compete in the world market place and never have the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty.

There are plenty of organizations that address poverty in Nicaragua. One of my favorites is Kiva.org. They provide a way for you to directly impact the live of families in Nicaragua (and the rest of world) by loaning $25 to a business of your choice. Check them out and donate today.

Also see: 88 Ways to DO Something About Poverty Right Now

I am in the process of uploading photos to my photo gallery located here. There is a total of 380 or so photos that I have taken this trip so far and the uploading script is telling me that it will take about 21 hours to get them all uploaded. Due to this time delay, it may take me a bit of time to get descriptions to go with these photos but please bear with me while I suffer with slow internet speeds.

Today was my first full day in Nicaragua. It felt really good. I had a great sleep and felt quite relaxed and well rested despite waking up with many mosquito bites (screens and windows never seem to go together in Central America).

The plan for today is for Isabel and Rico to go and visit a family that I met during my previous trips. They have no idea that I am in Nicaragua and until the phone call this morning they didn’t know that Isabel was here either although Isabel had told them that she might come to Nicaragua to see them when she was in El Salvador.

The plan is for Isabel and Rico to drive down to Granada (about 40 minutes away) and meet the eldest son in the central park and then go out to their house in one of the poorer barrios (neighborhoods) to visit with the whole family.

I was planning on spending the day just getting acclimatized to the weather here (about a 40 degree change in 24 hours) and getting some shopping done.

About 4:40 PM Isabel and Rico returned to the hostel and proceeded to tell me the days events. As neither Isabel or the oldest son Gerardo had ever met, I imagined a bit of a problem getting them to find each other in the park but it went amazingly smoothly. They had drinks at one of the local stands in the park and then went back to the house. The Mother (Maria) was excited to finally met Isabel as they had been talking on the phone for about 5 months and her arrival was a big event. They spent the entire afternoon talking about life, plans for the future and showing off some of the items that they had bought with the money that I have been sending every month.

They also made plans for a trip to the ocean for Saturday for the whole family (Maria, Gerardo and the eldest daughter Vanessa, the youngest son was staying with relatives and wouldn’t be making the trip). It meant that Isabel would drive back to Granada the following morning and pick them up at the house. Little did they know that I was also in Nicaragua and would surprise them. Saturday was also Gerardo’s 14th birthday and I had planned the trip as a surprise birthday present for him and the family.

We spent the night shopping for helium filled birthday balloons, making plans on how I was going to appear out of thin air and having dinner.

Saturday morning we all drove down to Granada and out to the house. It was decided that I would stay back a few meters to prepare the family for my arrival (by that, I mean have them turn their backs and cover their eyes until I was actually there) and then have them turn and look. The look of surprise was priceless! None of them expected to see me and and fury of greetings and hugs followed complete with questions coming at a mile a minute. I was surprised that I was able to understand most of it so my Spanish must be improving!

After getting the house all locked up and the helium balloons put away, we all got in the truck and headed on the journey to Leon. Leon is one of the two oldest Colonial cities in Nicaragua and has lots of great Colonial architecture. Depending on who you ask either Granada or Leon has the best examples but both cities are amazing and filled with lots of history.

About 2 hours later we arrived in Leon and found a hotel. The Hotel Austria is located just blocks from the central park in the center of Leon and is a beautiful hotel. After getting checked in and the kids checking out the rooms and making good use of the cold drink machine, we headed for the beach. One of the main problems with travel in Nicaragua is the lack of roads. Well, roads by North American standards. The trip to beach was 45 minutes of absolute torture in back of the pick up. The road was better described as a cattle trail with the occasional spots of flat ground. Mainly pot holes and craters.

By the time we arrived at the ocean, the kids and myself were exhausted (and a bit sore) from the trip but spirits quickly rose when the ocean was spotted. None of the family had seen the ocean before and were a bit awe-struck by the size and the beauty of the it. By the time we had the truck unpacked and found a table and some chairs at one of the local beach front establishments the kids were already in the water.

The day was spent swimming in the ocean, eating some of the locally prepared food at the ocean side restaurant and generally having a great time. When it was time to leave Maria unexpectedly announced that she didn’t want to stay overnight in Leon and wanted to go back home. The first idea that we had was to get to the bus depot in Leon and have her catch a bus back to Managua and then to Granada but the bus drivers were staging a protest and all bus traffic was at a stand still. OK, so we then decided the only way to do this was to drive all the way back to Managua (one and half hours) and get her to the bus there. Needless to say I wasn’t very pleased and neither was Isabel and that would add 3 hours minimum onto our day and driving in Nicaragua is not a pleasant activity at the best of times never mind in the dark.

We got Maria dropped off and returned to Leon and the hotel. By that time the kids were exhausted, (as were Isabel and myself) and after showers and dinner it was off to bed.

All in all a very successful and fun day that I am sure will be remembered by all for a very long time.

As usual the trip from Sarnia to Toronto is more of a pain than the actual flight from Toronto to Managua. Now that RobertQ does only 2 trips a day from Sarnia to Toronto I had to leave at 1:45 PM to catch my 8:30 AM flight the next day.

At least they dropped me at the hotel and saved me a bit of time and frustration by going to Pearson International and then catching the hotel shuttle bus.

Due to my work schedule combined with airport check-in times being 3 hours before flight time I ended up with about 3 hour sleep and was not in the mood for any delays or stupid airport security personnel. Luckily, check-in went smoothly as did the security check. God only knows why they even bother because these guys missed a pocket knife that I had in my carry-on and even though the metal detector kept going off they waved me through.

As usual, the flight on TACA was a charm. Good service, friendly flight attendants (if that is current politically correct term) and reasonable food for an airplane.

We landed in San Salvador right on time and then I had an hour stop over for my flight to Managua. I had it all planned in my head, get off the plane, hit the duty free and then an airport bar that allowed smoking. Well, as of 1 Jan 2008, there is no more smoking in the airport but I did manage to get stocked up on lots of little goodies at the duty free.

The flight to Managua was on a little turbo-prop aircraft that had maybe 6 passengers. That flight was also uneventful (once we got off the ground). Just a word of advice here, you don’t want to get stuck on the tarmac of San Salvador airport in a turbo-prop with no engines running for 30 minutes because it is damn hot and very sticky.

The flight Managua was good and the immigration was a breeze. Just pretend that you know no Spanish and give the guy the $5 entry fee and you are good to go in about 45 seconds.

Baggage was there within 5 minutes and the customs guy at the exit had absolutely no interest at all in me or anyone else for that matter. Got out into the terminal in no time and there was my driver waiting. A quick smoke then off to the Managua BackPackers Inn for the night.

The owner, Gregory was professional and pleasant and provided me good directions to the local restaurants and grocery stores etc. I knew a bit of the area due to my previous trips. The hostel is clean and pleasant but they have a problem providing wireless to Mac users for some reason. I could connect but then the router licked everyone else off. We rebooted but then I couldn’t connect.

Normally this would have been a problem but due to my previous planning I was prepared. Pulled out my IronKey and plugged it into the Windows XP machine that is provided for guest use. Problem solved. Gotta love USB keys!

The plan had been for me to get a new cellphone when I arrived so off to MetroCentro and the local Movistar dealer (a subsidiary of Telefonicia). In and out with a cellphone in less than 10 minutes activated with 10 free minutes of calling time. I was quite pleased with myself as that was my first transaction completed entirely in Spanish and I even had the guy change the menu to English for me.

After a quick pizza at Mona Lisa in the food court, I was back to the hostel to relax and get ready for the night. I was expecting Isabel and her son Rico the following day so when Gregory came to my door and told me that my friends had arrived I was a bit confused. It seems that they didn’t know what problems they might experience driving from El Salvador to Nicaragua so they left that day and other than bad roads and lots of police spot checks the trip went very smoothly.

They got all checked in and settled then we went out for dinner at a little restaurant around the corner that is actually someone’s house (very common here) and had a great dinner for the three of us for less than $20 (including beers).

It was then back to the hostel and a good night’s sleep as we all had a busy day ahead.

I am off again to Nicaragua. This will make for the third trip in 14 months to this very beautiful (but misunderstood) country.

While most people that I tell that I am going to Nicaragua stare at me in disbelief. Some say something along the lines of “isn’t it dangerous”, “why would you want to go to Africa” and the standard “oh that sounds nice”.

I must admit that when I first started researching for somewhere to travel to that is off the beaten track, I knew nothing about Nicaragua except for Ollie North and the Contras from the 1980s. Images of guerrilla warfare and starving people living in ruins from the war and the 1970s earthquake that flattened a good portion of Managua, Nicaragua’s capital.

My research told me that while Nicaragua was the 2nd poorest country in the western hemisphere (behind Haiti), it was also a very safe and interesting place that had yet to the discovered (ruined – look at Costa Rica for example) by the majority of the traveling public. There are lots of backpackers that come here for the surf, the great weather and cheap prices.

You may have read my other blog entries on previous trips or scanned thru my photo albums of previous trips but this series will be a bit different. I don’t really feel like a tourist per se, as I know a bit of the language (enough to get by) and how the majority of things work here (grocery shopping, getting a cell phone, how to use the country’s bus system, taxis etc) to feel comfortable and at ease.

One of the major differences between this trip and previous ones is that I have no idea where I will be staying while there. Well, not entirely. I have a room booked for 2 nights at the Managua Back Packers Inn. I will be met by my Spanish teacher (Isabel and her son, Rico) for the second night and then we are off to see Leon and swim in the Pacific. I will also be going to El Salvador for a few days to see bits of that country with Isabel acting as my personal tour guide.

<shamless plug> If you are looking for a native speaking Spanish teacher in the Sarnia Ontario area you can’t get any better than Isabel. She has been very patient with me and my slow learning but it has been well worth it. I feel much more comfortable with the language and I know that a large part of my confidence comes from her teaching abilities. If you want to contact her, please let me know and I will pass along your email to her.</shameless plug>

Ok, this is it for this post. While this is more of a set up post for the trip, the next posts will cover my actual journeys and there will also be photos uploaded to the albums. If you should have any questions, please feel free to post a comment below and I will do my best to answer.