One of my previous posts concerned going to Panama to renew my visa (90 day limit on the tourist visa when visiting Costa Rica). Since we will be here for the Global Health semester for longer than 90 days, a trip to Nicaragua was incorporated into our schedule to allow us to renew our visas while also seeing the healthcare system in Nicaragua for comparison with the Costa Rican system ( I realize that I am terribly behind on describing what I’ve been learning in the Global Health semester, but I will post on everything shortly.)
We left San Jose at 4 am. Early, yes, but we had plenty of time on the 6 hour ride to catch up on sleep. It was necessary to leave early not only to be sure that we made it through the border, but also because we had an appointment with one of the health care facilities. We traveled through the Central Valley from San Jose to Guanacaste. Guanacaste is much flatter than San Jose, and the large pastures and distant hills remind me of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Guanacaste
Guanacaste was where I was last year for the course in Tropical Ecology that Wilkes offers. It was nice to return and see a few familiar sites.
When we reached the border, the procedure was similar to that that I described for Panama. Passports were stamped by Costa Rican officials, we re boarded the bus, drove across the border, got out passports stamped by the Nicaraguan officials, and then we were officially in Nicaragua!
Nicaraguan border
We drove through Nicaragua for a few hours, passing windmills (not sure how they compare with the Waymart Wind Farm, however…)
Nicaraguan windmills
A map of Nicaragua (which is North of Costa Rica)…we entered on the West side of the large Lake (Lake Nicaragua, or en Español–Lago de Nicaragua). Fast fact from the CIA World Handbook: Nicaragua is the largest Central American country, slightly smaller than New York State.
CIA Nicaragua map
We made it to the first town we were to visit, Rivas, where we visited two of the health care centers.
Here’s one of the physician offices and patient rooms:
Nicaraguan physician office
More about health care coming up in a another post….eventually.
We then made our way to the hotel in Grenada, which was super nice (sorry I don’t have a picture). After being piano-less for over 4 months, entering the lobby and seeing a piano made my day! I spent a few hours sitting at the piano 🙂
The next day, we went to Managua, the capital, to visit the Ministry of Health and hear about the labs and the health system in Nicaragua.
Managua
On the way back, we stopped in Masaya at the artisan’s fair and had a chance to look at a variety of local crafts, including: clay pots, clay whistles (in the shapes of animals, and painted beautifully), hammocks, clothing, jewelry, and food. No picture, sorry!
More about Nicaragua in the next post!
RCCostaRica 
January 20, 2010 at 3:41 am |
Your posts have been an interesting read.
The problem with plastic accumulating in the ocean reminded me of the PSAs from my youth (and the parody of same via Wayne’s World):
I liked your posts on food items and the hidden aspects of our global economy (not really new news in the New World).
I was also puzzled by the picture of the munching monkey – spider and Capuchin monkeys were familiar to me . . . but munching?
January 23, 2010 at 4:05 pm |
Neat link, hadn’t seen that before.
Learning about crop production in relation to health care issues (and environmental issues, too!) has definitely been interesting.
I meant that the monkey was munching on an apple. 🙂
March 13, 2015 at 8:05 am |
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