Nicas and Casas

Our first week back in Las Vegas since our Nica Vacation has been eventful; here is the news with us....
Foremost, Nicaragua was fantastic, equally as interesting and culturally stimulating as our previous voyage out of Honduras into Guatemala. As Crystal demonstrated with her earlier posts, we started in Leon, which is the educational and artistic heart of Nicaragua. Leon is known for its famous poets like Ruben Dario, its murals of national heroes and civil wars, and as the socialist center which spawned the plan to assassinate Somoza and gave rise to Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (The Sandinistas of the Iran Contra fiasco). We then traveled to Granada: early Spanish colonial settlement, one time Nicaraguan capital, and long time rival of Leon for the rest of Semana Santa. Semana Santa means ¨holy week¨and is the principle vacation season in Latin America, as many cities have traditional processionals, drape their streets in colored sawdust carpets, and of celebrate late into the night. It is said that Semana Santa separates the population of Latin America into two groups, those that go to church to commemorate Easter, and those who go to the beach to soak some rays. Granada’s large fresco cathedrals, ancient architecture, friendly residents and international cuisine make it a great place to visit in an unassuming country like Nicaragua. We found the Nicas (as they call themselves) extremely passionate and proud of their history, which was a breath of fresh air from the usually apathetic attitude towards history and politics found in Honduras. We have some more pics from our trip which we will get up on the blog shortly... The year before we came down to Honduras, Crystal and I had changed our residence some six or seven times, changing states, staying with each of our parents, essentially living a transient lifestyle. During the constant packing and unpacking, I remember anticipating the stability that moving to Honduras would provide, surely we would be forced to stay put for two years, and put the constant motion behind us. That being said, we are now making arrangements to move into our fourth different house and to rent from our fifth different landlord since we moved to Las Vegas, a period of about a year and a half. So much for expectations... To recap: The first house we left because it was half constructed when we moved in and remained so for six months, the second we vacated after it was burglarized while our friend Ben was visiting from the states, and now we are being expelled from our third and current house. What happened is that our landlord started showing people the house, but assured us that he wouldn’t sell it until after we left. Then about a month ago, he appeared with the apparently new owner, who basically demanded our absence. We tried to work it out with her and bought ourselves another month, but last night push came to shove as she demanded an arbitrary increase in our rent to 125% of what we normally pay. We smiled politely, told her that she was trying to take advantage of us, and then told her that we are moving out. What she didn’t know is that we had an ace up our collective sleeves. The previous day, sensing that a showdown was eminent, we checked out coolest house in all of Las Vegas. It’s twice as big as our current house, has a beautiful view of the mountain, and is the same price. Today we locked up the deal, and will be moving in May.

I guess it just goes to show that expectations can be dangerous, and that perhaps we are not so good about setting down roots. One of the most frustrating aspects is that we have to tell our friends in town that we have a new house, yet again, and people that are looking for us will have a harder time figuring out where we live, and we now have a whole new neighborhood of curious people who will come over just to examine our ¨gringo treasures¨. The offer still stands for people to come down and visit us, just make sure not to ask anyone in town where our house is, you might get a couple of different answers.