The Passing of the Children

So, Miraflor was fab-o, as you will see on Facebook hopefully next week. I took 431 pictures and then my memory was full, so it was a hard choice deciding which photos of crazy looking flowers or animals to erase. We stayed at this awesome cabana in the middle of nowhere, and on Saturday swam in a little cascade and climbed inside a hollowed-out 250-year-old tree using its vines. I stayed with 2 women in their sixties, Nancy and Sharon, who were very sweet, but guaranteed entertainment on the bus ride back to Esteli.

To begin with, Sharon bit it butt-first into a creek we were crossing. It was one of those moments where you can´t stop laughing, precisely because you know you shouldn´t be. It didn´t help that she fell in once, then went deeper as she tried to get up. Luckily she had an extra pair of pants with her that she was able to change into in the brush as Nancy, a Nicaraguan teenage boy we met up with on the walk, and I tried not to watch.

Then, the bus shows up (half an hour late, of course/claro) and it is jammed packed. You have probably seen it on the Discovery Channel, or some travel channel--the bus is a recycled US school bus from the 70s, painted in rainbow colors and literally dripping with people. Ours already had about 12 men seated on the top. So, they open up the exit door, but there are already about 10 men crowded behind the seats and they are screaming at us to Dale, dale! Go, go! and Nancy is like oh, hell no, but really there is no choice because this is the last bus of the day, and there are certainly no taxis around.

So, Sharon runs up to the front of the bus to try and cram in there, and Nancy and I are shoved into the back. Nancy is screaming to me thru another guy´s armpits about how she has no place to put her head, and of course I just can´t stop laughing and keep erupting in fits of giggles, which of course makes me look even more strange. Eventually I find a way to perch myself on the side of a seat that already has 2 women and 3 kids in it, and Nancy quiets down. Of course then I have to pee, so everytime we hit a bump I am in agony and then my water bottle that I am gripping up on the top pole starts leaking on the family of 4 to the other side of me, so I have to find a way to shove that in the bag under my feet as well. We load up about 3 more times at different points along the mountainous path, because no one else wants to ride on the roof. Nancy at this point is screaming that there is no space and I want to scream that they don´t understand English and are not going to listen to her anyway, but instead I try and pretend I´m not with her lol. This works until she tries to speak English with the boy we walked the path with who speaks a little English. I am feeling good helping her translate certain words, until she asks me, Amanda, what does hallido mean? And I ask the boy what he is saying and he says, Como estas? And I am like Oh, lord, I have to tell her that he is saying How are you with an accent haha. So that was fun.

We finally make it into the outer limits of Esteli, and this is my favorite part--the passing of the children. When the women have to get off they kind of wiggle their way into the center aisle holding their kids and then the men grab the babies from their arms and start an assembly line to get the children out the back door. It is a very quick process, because the bus will take off in mid-passing if you are not fast enough. So, the men are literally tossing the kids into some other strangers arms below, who then receive the luggage in the same fashion, and, miracurasly, it all works out and the mothers climb down the exit and are reunited with their children and luggage.

If you come visit me in Nicaragua, I will have you ride the city bus with me, so that you, too, may be blessed enough to see the awesomeness that will inevitably ensue.