A three hour tour...

Yesterday I scraped myself out of bed to meet the 4:00 am bus headed for the atlantic coast. A group of about fifty people from three different groups in the commnuity boarded the big yellow school bus for a five hour trip to La Laguna De Perlas. Stepping off the bus was like stepping into another country. Chontales, the region where Santo Tomas is located, is relatively dry and dusty; yet the atlantic coast is tropical and wet! Most surprisingly the people speak creole along with Spanish. It felt more like Jamaica than Nicaragua and it was surreal translating for our spanish speaking friends in their own cournty. The samll town was filled with umbrellas headed on their way to church and a sense that time ran on a much slower clock. We walked half hour to Awas, an indigenous hamlet on the beach. We swam in the shallow bay where the water was warmer than the rain and flung handfulls of sand at eachother. For lunch we ate fish stew, a speciality of the region. After which we ventured into the village where we were promptly met by Orlando who introduced himself as the head of tourism. The tour itself primarily consisted of turning in a 360 degree cricle and ended with one of the men shimmying up a coconut tree and cracking some open for us to drink. Due to an oncoming storm we had to make a quick dash back to the bus; our arms filled with loaves of freshly made coconut bread. The trip back was long and precarious since the road conditions were poor and the old school bus ailing. Yet with crossed fingers we made it home tired but safe. If I had more time to spend here I would definitely love to go back to the atlantic coast- alas!