Chele Mono

I decided to take another trip up to Matagalpa to see if the allergy problem was a one time thing. It is so beautiful up there that I figured it deserved another shot. Plus, this time I planned on staying the whole weekend and visiting La Selva Negra, so I was psyched.

This time I took some advise and paid a bit more C$50 to ride the express bus out to Matagalpa. Actually I took the express bus to Jinotega, but it dropped me off next to Matagalpa on its way. The trip was a bit quicker and I had more leg room, so that was good.

Whatever plants were flowering pink the last time were no longer flowering this time; I was kind of looking forward to seeing them again. We took a different route as well. We ended up approaching Matagalpa from the west instead of from the south. The road sucked from the west too though, some I´m not real sure why.

Upon entering the city I walked down to a cuban restaurant in between the main street and the bank street for lunch. They served me a dish of pork, cuban guillo pinto (made with black beens instead of red and mint leaves for some reason), steamed yucca topped with garlic, and a green salad. There was a lot of food, but I was hungry so I ate it all.

After lunch I walked up to the english academy to hang out with my friend Yoseling until that evening. We had plans to visit the Feria de Maiz "Corn Fair". I got to meet a new teacher and another friend of Yoseling´s from Spain. As I sat there talking to them I started nodding off. After eating several pounds of starch heavy cuban food I assumed this was normal so I just excused myself and layed my head againt a wall.

As the afternoon wore on I just got more and more wasted, but it still didn´t occur to me that I was sick until Yoseling and I left to go to the corn fair. Walking down to the fair I felt like I was going to faint, that was my first clue.

The corn fair was just as comical as the name suggests. Every conceivable corn product (exept corn bread for some reason) was on display in the central park. We also found a dense crowd of people standing around next to a raised stage and some roped off plastic seats. They were planning on holding a "Miss Corn Fair" pageant as the highlight of the evening.

After wandering around the shops for a bit (I was with a girl so a bit of shopping was unavoidable) I asked her if we could get some seats for the pageant. It turns out that her academy was a patron of the fair so we were able to sit down before I fell over. Once seated I felt a bit better; still, I´m sure had it not been for the loud-speakers I probably could have fallen asleep in that chair.

After my experience in Granada I realized that events rarely begin when they say they will in Nicaragua, so I was unsurprised that the pageant didn´t start until several hours after the appointed time. Up until it began however the audience wasn´t left to amuse itself, no no. Instead a couple of long winded and impossibly boreing polititians rambled on in pinched monotone about all things corn until the pageant began.

I was unable to resist the urge, and so a couple of times during their speaches I would wait for a pause and then yell, "WOOOO, CORN!". I also amused myself by making faces to a baby girl laying over her mother´s shoulder in front of me. Her mother would turn around and look at me once in awhile, presumable to find out why her baby daughter was belly laughing so much. Every time she would turn around I would don a serious face and pretend like I had no idea why the baby was laughing.

During the hours that we sat there waiting for the pageant to begin fireworks were released directly over our heads every half hour or so. The person sitting to my left was hit in the shoulder by the burnt out remains of one of the fireworks and we saw people scatter in the crowd to avoid other falling projectiles. Of course everything about this situation struck me as funny. I´m pretty sure that only my weak and sickened state kept me from laughing myself silly.

We got to watch the introduction of the pageant´s participants and one dance before Yoseling forced us to leave. It seems that she has two fears: Claustophobia and a fear of crowds. Also, she gets headaches with lots of noise, so this wasn´t a good environment for her. I was a little disappoint not to be able to see who won. Still, I´m sure that regardless of which girl took home the crown, corn was the real winner that evening.

I spent that night in the house of two old ladies. They looked to be 60ish and 90ish. I found out later that they are mother and daughter. They had a spare bed and were good friends of Yoseling so. . .

I was so tired I was sure I would have no trouble faling asleep; I was wrong. I also had a fever so I wasn´t able to fall asleep for hours. When I finally did it was after I ended up sweating so much that when I woke up for a moment I thought I might have wet the bed. I´m sure that I only managed to sleep a couple hours that night at best. However, come morning I did feel a bit better. At least I didn´t feel dizzy and didn´t have a fever anymore.

The women I stayed with are 7th day adventists and I woke up late on a Saturday, so they were off at church when I left. I found a stray cat in their house when I walked out of the room I had slept in. I´m not sure how it got into the house but it obviously didn´t belong there. I walked towards it, and it freaked out.

It started streaking from one side of the front room to the other looking for a way to escape. It even rammed into the glass of a window trying to get away. After it brained itself I decided to back off so that it could get out without breaking glass of dying.

We had taken a taxi to the far north end of Matagalpa up on a steep hill the previous evening so I had a ways to walk even to get down to steet where I could flag down a taxi. The street was so steep and paved that I was afraid I would slip as I made my way down to the bottom. Luckily the taxis in Matagalpa allways charge the same fair no matter where you are going in the city even without deciding on a price with the driver (unlike Managua).

I believe I was charge C$7 to get back to the academy. Once there Yoseling and I went next door to get something to drink because I told her I wasn´t up for any food just yet. I bought a couple cans of fruit drink.

After "breakfast" we went back to the academy for a bit because our reservation in La Selva Negra wasn´t for about an hour. The academy has classes on Saturday too, so I sat in the foyer resting and waiting. About an hour later as Yoseling was looking for a Taxi to take us up there I started feeling uncontrollably woozy.

I fought back against this feeling for as long as I could because I detest vomiting. The last time I vomited was over 10 years ago, in Nicaragua incidently, when I had dengue. Eventually I couldn´t resist anymore and I headed through a occupied classroom to the bathroom with a mouth full of vomit.

As luck would have it there wasn´t any electricity just then and the bathroom had no windows so it was pitch black. Normally I would have gone for the toilet in a case like this but my mouth was alllready full and I could feel another wave coming so I used the only thing I could find in the dark: the sink.

I couldn´t see anything but I´m pretty sure this counts as projectile vomiting as I could feel it bouching back out off the sink and showing all over the bathroom. It lasted until I had absolutely nothing left in my stomach. Luckily, I hadn´t eaten anything in about 24 hours so all that came up was the fruit drinks and the Gatoraid that I had consumed over the last 12 hours.

While I was still waiting for my head to stop spinning the lights came back on. I looked around the bathroom and only saw clear liquid splattered everywhere. I cleaned up things as best as I could with TP and then headed back out to go to La Selva Negra. As we road up there I felt lightheaded but strangely releaved.

I decided that I must had gotten my hands on a bad can of juice though as I drank a couple of bottles of gatoraid on our way there without any renewed feelings of nausia. I had been to the Black Jungle once before about 7 years ago with my friend Tim and his cousin Shawn, so I was excited for the chance to walk down memory lane. I also really wanted to see the Congo monkies that live there. For some reason the last time we didn´t get to see them.

We ended up just hanging around our cabin and around the restaurant and the lake next to it that first day. I still wasn´t 100%, plus Yosleing had pulled a muscle in her back while exercising that morning. Neither of us were up for a hike. Later that evening my fever returned even stronger than before. It was so bad that I was having a hard time thinking clearly.

Yoseling really saved me; she got some facecloths and some warm water from the office and then applied them to my face for what seemed like hours to bring my fever down. Once she did I broke into another intense sweat and then managed to get a good night´s sleep. She went out early to jog or something and when she got back told me that she had seen some of those Congo monkies.

This news energized me and I felt well enough to hike so we hiked all but the highest trail in La Selva Negra that morning. The hike was awsome. We found a trail called the romantic or romance trail that was slick and muddy. She complained about the irony and I explained that maybe the people who named it thought mud was romantic. The only down side to the hike was that I didn´t get to see any Congo monkies, again.

We heard them towards the end of our hike on the far west end of the jungle. They sounded realy close and I hurried down the dead end trail to try to catch a glimpse, but once I got close enough the stopped howling alltogether and hid from me.

I found this to be extremely unfair. Everyone who visits to Black Jungle gets to see them exept me. They aren´t shy, exept around me. . . The best explaination that I couple come up with is that they saw me as a great white ape (chele mono) and ran in fear.

When we got back I started to feel worn down again so we rested up a bit and then got lunch. The food there was exellent, especially the hot chocolate; I had two cups.

We headed back to Matagalpa around 3:00 that afternoon, and I bought a ticket for the last express bus back to Managua; after my trip up there I was sold on the express buses. That was wasn´t scedualed to leave for a couple of hours so we wandered back up to the corn fair and then ate at a restaurant belonging to one of her friends before I had to head back.

The bus ride back was awfull. If anyone plans of paying extra for an express bus so that it doesn´t stop as often as so you get more room, just make sure you don´t take the last bus from someplace. When it´s the last bus it stops for everyone because it´s their last chance. Also, they overfill it like any normal bus, because it´s their last chance. I ended up having an extra long, exremely crowded trip back to Managua, even more so than the normal buses that I had taken on my last trip.

Once I got to Managua I had a fever again. That plus the heavy rain forced me to accept a higher than usually cab fare to get back to my apartment. However, the buses had stopped running at the hour and there weren´t any other taxis in sight, so it was probably a bargain all things considered.

The fevers continued for almost a week until I finally saw a doctor and got some anti-fever and antibiotic medication to combat what turned out to be a stomach flu. I´m not sure why but Matagalpa and sickness seem inseparably connected for me. The next time up there I´ll avoid cuban restaurants to see if I can´t break the pattern.

Saludos!