When Last We Saw Our Traveling Trio...

Hello my poppets, I'm back again with a wee update from the land of volcanoes. When last you read this blog the political situation was a bit fraught, but I'm here to tell you that it looks like things are going to calm down. Amazingly, the Liberal party (who are, funnily enough, conservative) looks like it's going to just lie down and take it from the Sandinistas, who just perpetrated an amazingly brash election fraud. Really, it's hard to blame them; if somebody used the kinds of violence and intimidation tactics on me that the FSLN has brought out against the Liberals, I'd probably put my hands in my pockets, stare at the sky, and whistle aimlessly, too. It's either that or civil war, and I guess they're reluctant to do that. We might see a few more marches, maybe a riotous celebration from the Sandinistas, but for the most part, I predict a coming calm.

So on that note, let me share some more pictures from the Amazing Vacation of Varunski, Moxita the Fifi Poodle, and Cheastypants. When last we saw our traveling trio, we had just left the fabled and fabulous Island of Ometepe and were on our way up to the mountains, to a town called Estelí. It took us a while to get going. First, Varunski had to flirt with every fine lady he met.



Not to be outdone, Moxita and I practiced our best moves of seduction such as The Batting of the Eyelashes, The Dainty Fingertips On the Collarbone, The Touching the Man's Forearm Casually, and, of course, our most successful patented flirting move, The Glance of Unadulterated Seduction:



Sexy, no? Yes, I know. Don't get too distracted, however, I'm still telling a story here. Where was I? Oh yes, we were preparing to depart on our voyage to the mountains. Of course, it was going to be a long bus ride, and we needed drinking water for fortification. It took us a while to find a bottle of water with just the right level of STDs. Not too much, not too little, turns out that 400 parts per million is juuuuuust right.



Ah yes. Now we're ready.



In Estelí we did all sorts of things that I couldn't do the first time I went there on account of how everything was closed. This time I cleverly planned the trip not to coincide with any national holidays or patron saint days, and WA-LA! Everything was open. We went to a cigar factory where they roll those famous puros of Nicaragua.

This excursion was actually way more fun than I thought it would be. They do everything there from sorting to soaking to curing to rolling the tobacco, and except for the rolling part, the jobs are extremely gender-segregated. The women sit in one room around a table where they sort and stack and tear and de-vein, and the men work in curing and building the cigar boxes by hand. The women chatter and gossip in their well-lit room, while the men sit around in dark rooms and stare at a pin-up pictures of very naked hairless women in various compromising positions. Ooh, la la. Most interesting of all, however, was this: my personal lion fetish was never more happily satisfied than on this day.



Also, this was on the wall. Can I just say, on behalf of all deer everywhere, WHAT THE F&CK.



We also did all sorts of fun-to-do-but-boring-to-read-about touristy things, and met lots of fun people, including a fantastic Greek couple that we promptly fell in love with and kidnapped. We took them with us the next day when we rented a car and headed up the mountain to Tisey, where we went to go see the cliff carving artist I wrote about in that earlier post. Oh, it was wonderful, even the second time, especially since this time we got a personal guided tour by the artist himself, who'd been away from home on my first trip. He climbed trees, picked us oranges, and recited his poetry at length while staring out onto the vast expanse of the Nicaraguan wilderness from his cliff-top carving paradise.



Oh, it was grand, just grand. How grand, you ask? This grand:



More photos later of our Leap-A-Palooza throughout the Nicaraguan highlands. Coming soon on this website: The Greatest Yogurt Ever Made In the History Of the Universe. I promise, you won't want to miss this.