12/12/11-2/6/12: We are off to Central America

Hi there!

Dear Folks:

I am setting up our trip blog for our 2 month jaunt in Central America beginning in just two days.  I thought I would start with some youtubes about the installation of the solar-powered pump last year in the village where we will be doing a service project in Nicaragua fyi.

You really get a sense of the process and the folks in the village, and how much is done by hand.  I noted how the panels were lifted into place with long branches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBir3W-0UYw&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

This is the one that was shown at Havurah:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9CjeBWLWWM&feature=related

I thought somehow along the way I had also seen one from Green Empowerment that showed all the challenges of installing the system (pipes that didn’t fit, circuits that didn’t work, etc etc) and how each obstacle was overcome but I can no longer find that link

There is also an article in the recent issue of Green Empowerment’s newsletter that explains about the stoves we will be building:

http://www.greenempowerment.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Fall-newsletter-2011.pdf

(on the second page)

We will be landing in Costa Rica.  We are staying at the same place we stayed at the conclusion of our trip last year, a Quaker hostel where the $ goes to peace projects - Casa Ridgeway.  Tues. is dentist day and visiting museums in San Jose.  Wed. Yo has major dental work hopefully in the morning.  If the dentist is okay with it all, we plan to travel to the Nicoya Peninsula to join with my nephew Richard who is surfing for the month.  We will stay there for a long weekend and then return for Yo to get his stitches removed. Then we will head north to Granada and spend the Christmas weekend there, staying at Posadas las Brisas and perhaps studying Spanish a few hours per day. Dec. 26 starts the service project, so we will head up to Managua to join the group for 6-7 days.  After that we will be on our own.  We have some ideas, some couchsurfing contacts, some ideas from Cathy Zheutlin and from Dan & Lyssa - so we shall see.  I have made contact with a couchsurfer in northern Honduras and in San Salvador where we can stay for several days each.  Around January 16th we will land at Elizabeth and Steve's in Guatemala, then travel with one or both of them for a bit, then wind up on our own by Lake Atitlan and perhaps study some more Spanish before heading home on Feb. 6th.

Exciting!