One of the delights of La Mariposa was the animals - including this toucan. The staff were really great, very helpful - and this is Gonzalo, who drove me to various clinics during the week - qué hombre!
Last week was difficult for others besides me - 1 of Paulette's dogs died & 1 disappeared - they think it was taken by a large boa that slithers around the next-door land. Others were ill, including Martin, a Swiss student from Oxford University studying tarantulas! I saw a large male on the wall so he captured it - when he leaves he'll take his bag of tarantulas up to Léon University, where they will be catalogued before they get flown to Oxford!
Joel, the Nicaraguan that I know in Bristol is one of a family of 10 - 8 brothers & 2 sisters! Nowadays 1 is in Germany & 2 are in the USA, including the 1 who has been in Los Angeles for 25 years and doesn't speak English! I'm staying with Isabel, who lives in Diriamba, which luckily was only half an hour away from La Mariposa, for a couple of nights before I go up to Managua for the flight to Cuba.
This is the most southerly point I have ever been in life - Trondheim the furthest north, San Francisco the furthest west and Delhi the furthest east.
Thus my Spanish conversation classes carry on, in the notable absence of a television. The story that Joel told me about his sister, in her youth a Sandinista gueriila in the jungle, later a human rights lawyer sent by the government to Cuba & Europe, is expanded upon. She was in Costa Rica for a conference on the development of clean water when she gets a phone call. Ortega's wife is ringing to ask her why she went to the conference without asking her permission. Having no need to prove herself, she gives Ortega's wife a mouthful, and on return gives in the governmental car and her well-paid job and goes private. I remember Joel's comment 'we are Sandinistas, but not Danielistas'.
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