Christmas Day

It was a lie-in for us on Christmas Day. We opened a few presents from our family, including chocolate and toffee, which we got stuck straight into, before getting up and eating delicious papaya, the rest of the hen from the night before and a ginger pudding with rum custard, which we had made in Leon and brought with us. Diosmara and Carolina trying the pudding

A couple of hours later we set off with most of the kids from the village to a big pool in the river. It was the most refreshing swim we are ever likely to have on Christmas Day and great fun playing frisbee and leaping off rocks with the kids. On our return, we chopped up and scoffed an enormous watermelon.

We set off back to Leon after sunset, singing a few Christmas carols in the truck to relate to our UK Christmas. 'In the Bleak Midwinter' and 'Once in Royal David's City' seemed a little odd in context with the rest of the day.

Christmas Eve

The night of Christmas Eve is the big Christmas celebration in Nicaragua. We spent it in a remote community at Melania's house with Nick and Rachel. We headed up into the hills in a pick-up truck full of presents for all the kids in the village. They all had a little bag stuffed full of things like water pistols, marbles, glowing sweets, rattles, imitation barbies, toy cars, headbands with feathers and balloons. The night before, there was a bag-stuffing party at Nick's to get it all sorted. It's a fairly poor village so the kids wouldn't really get much else apart from this.

We arrived in time to witness the stuffing of the hens, which we were to eat at midnight. American Rachel took on the task of stuffing them which proved to be pretty tricky. Melania had removed all the meat and bones from the plucked hen but left the skin intact with just a slit down its breast. The meat was cooked and then mixed up with oiled, uncooked rice, vegetables, a version of Worcestershire sauce and tomato ketchup. The whole lot was then stuffed back into the hen's skin and sewn up. After four hours in a big outdoor clay oven, the rice had expanded and the hen emerged looking like a plump roast chicken. We had to wait until midnight to get stuck in to platefuls of tasty hen and rice.

The early evening's entertainment got all the kids and women in the village involved in singing, pinatas and water balloon throwing. Simon controlling the pinata string while the little lad tries to whack the star with a stick and make sweets fall out.

The water balloon game

Unfortunately, most of the men and older teenage lads were already drunk by this point having spent most of the day gambling on the cock fight being held in the village.

As the sun went down, a lovely old man with a crinkly face and a twinkly smile donned a flashing Santa's hat, seated himself under a tree in the dusty main street under a lone light bulb powered by a little battery, and proceeded to give out around 100 presents. After this, it was time for the disco, and the drunken lads and men swayed in to partner up with the ladies for a mixture of raggaeton, salsa and hopelessly slow ballads.

At midnight, we set off fireworks and distributed sparklers before retiring to Melania's house to finally tuck in to the hen.

Learning to kill a hen

We enjoy eating hen and vegetable soup regularly in Sontule. The hens are killed on the same morning they are served up for lunch. They spend their lives before this pecking and scratching at the ground around the house eating a diet of mainly corn and grubs. We hope to be getting involved in farming when we get back to the UK, so we were happy to have the opportunity to learn to kill a chicken and prepare it under the expert guidance of Lucia.

Firstly, the chicken is tied up by its legs to a branch and the wings are folded over themselves twice to prevent flapping. The hen is soon surprisingly calm.

The next part can be a bit tricky for an amateur: cut the skin on its neck, locate the major blood vessel, and sever it with the knife. Unfortunately, on my first attempt I chopped the windpipe. Not only that, but after I had cut the correct vessel and the blood started to flow out of the hen's body, it gave a last mighty flap. I had only crossed the wings over once, rather than twice, and Lucia and I were splattered with dark, sticky blood. The hen dies within seconds but continues to twitch for a while. It's left to hang for a good half hour to drain all the blood.

The next stage is to pluck it. To do this easily, the hen is submerged in a big pan of boiling water for a few seconds and then it's no problem to pull out the feathers.
Feather-plucking

There are still a few remaining bits of feather so the next step is to char the skin well over a flame. Next the chicken is scrubbed with soap and then rinsed thoroughly.

All that's left to do then is to cut the carcass into pieces. We were impressed by how efficiently and quickly Lucia did this, extracted the windpipe and the few bits that really are inedible (although the cat was happy to give them a go). The organs were kept, as was an egg, still in the hen, and a few developing eggs.

This hen (gallina) had clearly led a long and active life, as the meat was a little on the tough side, but it did taste good and for us it was important to know what goes into the process of killing, preparing and eating a bird.

Costa Rica visa run

We went to Costa Rica for a few days to renew our visas after nearly 6 months in Nicaragua. We only got as far as the northern town of Liberia where we spent an afternoon and evening wandering around before heading to the beach. The main square in Liberia, full of families wandering around and sitting on benches in the evening.

By night, the stalls lining the square opened up to reveal an enormous amount of Christmas tat, of the like we haven't seen in a good while - there's not much of it in Nicaragua.

We had taken a tent with us and planned to camp in a national park but it all seemed a bit ambitious when we were informed that the well had dried up in the campsite and the only option would be to trek for 20 kilometres with all the water and food we needed for several days. Instead, we found an air-conditioned apartment in the very touristy Playa Coco. We went to a couple of other beaches around the headland, saw monkeys swinging in trees, ate pizza, saw lots of Americans and had a very relaxing few days.

Playa Hermosa

Playa Ocotal

We liked what we saw of Costa Rica although we prefer Nicaragua!

Animal babies

A month or so ago quite a few of the animals in Sontule started popping out babies. Two pigs gave birth and no matter how hard-hearted a campesino, you can't help but smile at the sight of 21 piglets scampering around. Young piglets suckling an hour after being born.

The less cute side to it. The exhausted mother and the pile of afterbirth. Evidence of the fact that the last piglet had only popped out twenty minutes before this photo was taken.

Traviesa, meaning 'naughty', also had a litter of 5 pups. She hasn't been the greatest of mums as she ate some toads, got very sick, and ignored them for several days. Things were starting to look bleak but luckily she got her appetite for tortillas and bones back and started feeding them again. The puppies are now doing well and making a nuisance of themselves by licking our toes as we try to shower or drinking soapy water as we wash our clothes.

The piglets four weeks on. They tear after their mother if they think there is a chance of milk. The rest of the time, they could be anywhere around the garden, the fields or the road.

Last day at school

One of the highlights of my time in Sontule has been teaching at the local primary school. I mostly taught Spanish to the first grade, 6 and 7 year-olds, and maths to the second grade, 7 and 8 year-olds. I got to know the kids really well and we had a great time. This was the thing that got me known around the community as the whole school knew who I was and so all their families did too. Playtimes last a good hour and mainly involve the boys playing baseball or pretending to shoot one another, while the girls organise themselves into friendly team games. The views never got boring.

It was quite a change to teaching in England. Not only was I teaching in Spanish, but my only resources were a board, a pen and some paper. I soon adapted and definitely learnt as much myself as the children did.

Climbing on a ruined wall by the outdoor school kitchen. You would never get away with this as a teacher in the UK.

Loud speaker advertising

This is a fine example of why we so often have to ask people to repeat themselves when we are talking to them on skype. The pink building is Cafe Luz, the only cafe in Esteli with wifi and where we can often be found on our days in town.

There are all sorts of vehicles touring the streets with a variety of loud speaker systems strapped to the roof. They blare out advertising jingles at ear-busting levels for anything from pharmacies, to nappies, to events, to where you can get your tyres changed. It's a charmingly simple form of advertising if a little invasive at times, but nobody here seems to mind that.

Very small bananas

We've blogged once before about the huge variety of bananas available in Latin America, and Nicaragua is no different. Last week in Sontule we encountered what was definitely the tiniest to date. The one pictured was pretty much the same size as all the bananas in the bunch. That's just the way they are. They were very sweet but a bit hard in the middle, which made them just right for adding to our hot milk and oats each morning.

Baking day

Baking day is quite an undertaking at Lucia and Rogelio's in Sontule. We're not just talking about knocking up a quick victoria sponge or a batch of flapjack, there's a bit more to it than that. A large, igloo-shaped clay oven, a good two metres across, occupies part of the yard near to the kitchen. The oven is made from bricks and clay and requires a red hot pile of firewood inside to get the whole thing baking hot. The embers are then pushed out of one side and the baking is ready to be popped in the other side. The oven spends most of its time redundant, except for occasionally housing a laying hen, so baking day makes for a good spectacle.
Rosquillas were the main item for the oven, in their hundreds. These are small biscuits made from cooked and ground corn, cuajada cheese and a bit of margarine. Some are savoury and shaped like a little hoop, others are round and sweet, filled with an unrefined dark sugar and called hojaldras. There are always people selling them on buses and they're available in cafes and corner shops, but their quality varies greatly. They are definitely at their best when they're warm, but Lucia's rosquillas were particularly impressive and kept us coming back for more for a good few days. They go down especially well with a coffee.All the members of the house got stuck in to the baking process. Lucia and Endira did the preparations and Rogelio was in charge of the oven. Jackson did a bit of fetching and carrying, while we were taking photos and employed to clear the trays of cooked rosquillas and place them in a bucket. This involved plenty of sampling.

From one side of the oven to the other. It doesn't look hot in there, but it's baking biscuits in 15 minutes.
We took a photo of ourselves nibbling rosquillas in Esteli, which for some strange reason turned out like a promotional shot for a rosquilla company.

'Mmm...rosquillas'

Old Man's Beard

An old man and his beard.The forests of Miraflor are beautiful and on many of the trees grows this wispy plant, called Barba de Viejo, or Old Man's Beard, which gives an eery edge to foggy mornings and a touch more shade when the sun's out. It looks spiky until you touch it and realise it's very soft. Local uses for the plant, known in some Engish speaking parts as Spanish Moss, include mulch for plants and a natural, luxurious toilet roll. We are yet to test either claim.