From El Alto, Bolivia down to Cobija we drifted downward from the Altiplano like a butterfly, and landed in a new world. 100% humidity, 30 degree celsius temperature: it was like I was back in Nicaragua, but greener and wetter. The earth smelled of wet clay, of vegetation, of burning: the smell of the tropics.
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The Queleas arrived in mid-summer as the temperature in Dakar ramped up. Uninvited but hugely welcome, they have been an entertaining part of my mornings and evenings until the rains came and chased them away.
Chatty little things, several dozen Queleas began setting up shop in the Casuarina trees in our back yard, twisting and weaving bits of grass and needle into bowl-shaped nests that hung from the branches. They were so intensely chirpy that the neighbors complained, but what was not to like about so much energy and activity outside the windows? And their industry and perspicacity were a welcome respite from life in human West Africa.
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Beautiful Lake Apanás, constructed in the '60s by President Somoza and nearly destroyed in the '90s by Hurricane Mitch. It's long and wide and really not all that deep- in some places you can spot cattle way out in the middle grazing in water up to their bellies - but it's the source of half of the nation's hydropower, and it's gorgeous on a cloudy day.
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Ask Valentina and Diego where they want to go on a Saturday morning and they'll have no trouble at all answering: Treasure Island! Smart kids: that's where I want to go, too.
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Above us, the clouds covered the peak of the massive peak that formed the center of the island, obscuring from us the real dimensions of the island. A single road circumnavigated the island's perimeter, beckoning us around the ever-present curve of the island. We set out on foot towards the north, where a little basin and a sandy peninsula pointed us northward toward the next island. The road left the water's edge and ascended the mountain's rocky slope, lined on both sides by wild flowers and tall grasses that plunged off the vertical sides of rock faces towards the sea.
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