"La gringa que corre", aka the American who runs, is quite literally how I am know to my community, or at least the taxi drivers, who routinely see me running along the road. Every taxi driver I've ridden with in the past week has asked me to clarify which gringa I am based on this information (There's another really awesome PCV gringa in town, my 'sitemate" Christina, who works in the Small Business program). This seems like a pretty good thing to be known for, rather than other possibilities....
El Oasis de Paz (Peaceful Oasis) is the nickname of the Island of Ometepe.
=================================================================
After my first week of classes (stories to come later), I went to compete in the Fuego and Agua Ultramarathon event on the island of Ometepe this weekend. Because I am only slightly insane, I didn't actually attempt to run an (ultra)marathon, but rather stuck with the more manageable 25k, about a 15 mile race.
It was truly epic and personal record breaking on two counts:
-Most forms of public transportation used in a day: 7
In an 11 hour journey basically across Nicaragua: bus, taxi, school bus, boat, school bus, bicycle and car
During the 12 hour return journey: school bus, boat, bus, taxi, bus, bus and taxi
PCV Runners show off their race swag...
Volcan Concepcion just after sunset
I am fairly obsessed with islands, especially in Latin America (some readers may remember my obsession with Chiloe, an island off the Southern Chilean coast). Ometepe, formed by two volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, was stunning. Even though I can see the volcanoes from San Miguelito at a distance on clear days, I was literally floored at how gorgeous the twin cones of the volcanoes that form the island looked when I arrived at San Jorge, where the ferries to the island depart from, green bases rising up from the bluest of water, to a foreboding grey peak on the taller volcano.
Ometepe is touristy, but it's just starting to take off as a destination, and it's still rough around the edges and sort of remote, which adds to the appeal in my opinion. I didn't actually go to the part of the island where most of the tourist hotels and beaches are (Volcan Maderas), but rather stayed on the more populated towns around Concepcion, the taller and "active" of the two volcanoes, where my PCV friend Laura lives and teaches. Beautiful sandy unpaved roads abounded, cows wandered untethered through pastures and into the roads, people ambled on bicycles past tiny towns with colorful houses and even more colorful flowers, bourganvilla spilling over walls...All with the giant cone of Concepcion majestically looming overhead. Fabulous sunsets, and beaches and phenomenal view of the stars at night. And a calm, laid back island feel washing over it all.
After taking a crowded 5am public bus to Moyogalpa, the main city on Concepcion to go to the start of the race, Laura and I discovered that we looked a little bit out of place, particularly in terms of our running gear, but also in terms of visible musculature...People were decked out in some fachenta spandex and we were wearing some slightly scruffier duds. I wasn't even wearing socks, because they bother me when I run and I wanted to be my best. I sought solace in the fact that we have little control over our diet, don't have access to a gym, and have to deal with mild sexual harassment while running...not challenges that I assume are generally faced by the average North American runner or wealthy Managuan/Costa Rican, who were the majority of the people running, besides the other volunteers. Luckily, my mother's saying "You've got to look good to be good" doesn't hold true for running. We ran down those spandex clad fancy people. Well, some of them.
Play by play:
First hour and a half: The race started at 7, and it was cool with a fabulous island breeze. We ran past cow pastures, occasional settlements where people started to watch, along sandy but fairly flat paths. After the first aid station though, the soils got rockier, more volcanic and the incline steeper. Finally, we reached a point where it was not advancing our cause to run anymore and switched into hiking.
Hour after that: Climbed the volcano. Some wicked amazing endorphins grabbed me and pulled me up that mountain like a crazy person. It was cold, jungle-y and awesome. Also there were howler monkeys at one point. The summit of the trail was gorgeous- it was incredibly windy, but you could see up to the peak of the volcano, and down to everything around for miles. Also, there were high altitude gigantic aloe plants that were the coolest ever.
Next hour: Getting down off the volcano was not as easy as we had thought it would be. Steep terrain with slippery volcanic soil in full sun with dusty gusts made for slow going. The view was awesome though- we looked out over the bluest blue of the lake, across to grass growing on what looked like the cracked earth of an old lava flow and up a beautiful sweep of green with a few trees leading up to the top of the peak. Also, there were some random cows.
Final leg: Finally were able to run again, but were exhausted and hot, as the midday sun was starting to come out in full force. Laura got me through a lot, especially this one part where I almost decided to call it quits. She is the sweetest person ever in addition to being an formidable and multi-talented athlete. For instance, she introduced Nicaraguan teens to ultimate frisbee during ACCESS Camp.
Post race, we celebrated with pizza, a trip to her awesome host family's beach farm on the lake side of the island for dinner and a whole lot of "lying flat."
It was such a beautiful time: friendship, physical activity, and exploring. It's been very much against my vaga nature to be as settled down as I have in the last few months, and truth be told, with camps and meetings and things I haven't even been in San Miguelito all that much. So it was good to get some travel time, even if it was solo. But I read a book (El Pais Bajo mi Piel/The Country Under my Skin, a memoir by Nicaraguan poet Giaconda Belli) and National Geographic in Spanish (appropriately the 125th Anniversary edition about human desire to explore) and had some interesting conversations with strangers, so it wasn't that bad, even with the mega-amounts of time. But it does feel good to be "home" now, too. Off to teach about 400 kids some English this week!
Hey! I raised you on 'pretty is as pretty does'! We didn't start with 'It's not how good you are, it's how good you look' until you were a tween. And 'It's better to look good than to be good' came way, way, later, like maybe after you left for Tufts. Congrats on a great race! Love you lots!
ReplyDelete