Day 7 Morning Nicaragua - El Varillal

Today is our last clinic day. Tomorrow we will be boarding a bus at 5am to begin our travels back to the USA.

This area we are in today is called El Varillal. It rained the entire drive to this church. It was pouring down rain all morning during a clinic so thank goodness this church had a sturdy roof! Here is a few people in our crew getting the clinic set up. 

Here is a little tour of the location…

I have a couple great videos that I will upload next week that I actually show us driving in the rain and you can hear the rain pouring. The last two days it just poured nonstop in Nicaragua.

Even though it was raining really really hard we still had a lot of people that showed up for a clinic. Here’s a whole group of construction workers that all came for consultations.

This is just a shot of the yard outside of where we held our clinic.

Behind the logs below is the location of the bathroom.

Yet another stray dog visiting the clinic.

Here is some people attending the clinic…

One of the translators the mission uses is Blanca. She knew of a woman who had two sick children and no medicine. We made sure to give her medicine and toys to take back with them so the next day she came back and gave us this picture. She said the woman was very grateful for the medicine and the children enjoyed the toys!  Soooo cute!!!!

OK! This horribly frightening creature is called a whip scorpion. Horrifying right???? Apparently they are common in Nicaragua!!! The boys actually found one of these in the restroom by the pool at our hotel. Obviously they screamed pretty hard when they saw it hiding behind the trashcan. The owner of the hotel came and told them it was just a grasshopper. They were terrified but dying laughing when they told me - I’m sorry but it looks nothing like a grasshopper. I completely 100% agree it is not a grasshopper! The kicker is I asked them if they killed it and they said no. So this thing was still roaming around the hotel grounds… ICK and UGG! I am super happy it’s our last day! 

That thing is the thing of nightmares!

Well, sending lots of hugs and I hope everyone is doing fantastic!

Part 2 coming soon!!!!

End of Day 1

Once we arrived in Granada, Nicaragua via bus we checked into our hotel. We are staying at the Boutique Hotel Maharaja on the main street in Granada, Nicaragua. This adorable little cutie will greet you at the front desk. Her name is Gaby. She is named after the owner's assistant who is also amed Gaby. The owner of the hotel is Sr. Gupta and he is an amazing host!! He did everything in his power to make our stay like home and comfortable. 

I think I left this picture out of my last post… It is a picture of the whole group I came with (including my mother) in front of the active volcano here. 

Here are some hotel pics of our room…

This is the view the city from our hotel room. We are literally on the roof and can see up and over the city.

If you’re looking for luxury this is not a hotel for you. If you’re looking for an experience a lifetime this could be the place for you. There is no warm water for showers because everyone here finds it refreshing to take a cold shower. It was easy for me to get used to but my mother did not enjoy this part of our trip. Lol! The rooms here are very small but we are only in the room to sleep so it works well. Here are some pictures of the hallway leading to our room.

This is truly going to be a life experience!!

Hugs to everyone- have a great day - more to come!!!

Day One Nicaragua Part 1

Hi everyone! Just wanted to give you a big update on day one… Get ready for a lot of pics!

Day one on June 9 consisted of a lot of travel! We flew from Pittsburgh to Miami and then from Miami to Liberia Costa Rica.  Here’s a picture of me and my seat mate… Isn’t mom cute?

If you haven’t flown lately they now pipe in sanitized air to the plane. You can see the fog before the plane takes off and after the plane lands. It’s really hard to see in this picture but you can see if you look closely at the ceiling and top of the windows.

After we landed in Liberia Costa Rica we got on a bus that was taking us from Costa Rica to the Nicaraguan border in Peña Blanca‘s. This is a little bit of the view out of the window on the way to the Nicaraguan border.




Everything is so lush and green!

Once we got to the border we had to actually get off of the bus and physically walk across the border with our luggage. This meant checking out of Costa Rica and checking into Nicaragua. It was an interesting process but we finally made it through as you can see in the picture below.

This is a group I went with… Me, my mother, two other students named Jeremy and Shawne and my professor Dennis.  Our professor is one that actually organized the trip. He works with a group called Straight Street Nicaragua to coordinate all the different towns that we would be visiting with our medical supplies. They are based out of Tennessee.

After we finished crossing all the borders and we were in Nicaragua, we got on another bus and we were then driven to Granada Nicaragua where we will be staying for a week.

The bus trip was a little over an hour to get to our hotel and we stopped to get a picture of this amazing active volcano on the way. Nicaragua actually has seven volcanoes that are currently active and others that are not currently active.

We also passed a lot of really beautiful windmills on the way as you can see in the picture above.

Next post coming soon!!!