Christmas Eve From Gigante

Well it's been almost a full year since I was last in Gigante and it feels great to be back.  I had a pretty good trip down here however my flights were knitted together in a pretty interesting itinerary.  I flew out of Vancouver on Tuesday December 21st at 8:25 so I was up at 4:15 am and got to the airport at around 5:15 am.  I checked in and hopped on my first flight which left on schedule to Dallas Fort-Worth.  I slept pretty much the whole way so I was pretty sore when I got to Dallas, to say the least.

My flight to Dallas was delayed a bit from it's original departure time so we ended up landing in Miami at around 8:40 pm.  By the time I got my bags and grabbed something to eat it was about 10 pm.  I was hoping to check in that night to avoid having to sleep in the ghetto part of the Miami airport however no such luck.  I ended up finding a pretty good little nook that hadn't been taken and I posted up for the evening.  I had all of my bags so I took out my blow up sleeping mat and set it up.  I was in it for the night, I might as well be comfortable.  I managed to get posted up by about mid-night, which left me plenty of time to get some shut eye before my flight at 10:30... theoretically speaking of course.

I had to battle for any time that I got to spend in my unconcious oasis, battle what you ask?  Well first there was the PA system which luckily was able to tell me the time every fifteen minutes throughout the night, just in case I was wondering how much sleep I wasn't getting..  Next was the fire alarm test which consisted of a woman's voice letting us know that they would be doing fire alarm testing in the airport and not to worry if the alarm goes off.  Next was the afformentioned test which consisted of 3 sets of 3 bleeps of the alarm (along with a flashing strobe light), followed by a very informative man explaining  that the fire alarm had been set off and that the proper athorities had been notified, which we already knew to be false since it was just a test.  Luckily the test was pretty quick... un-luckily, the test happened every half an hour all night haha, oh boy.  I had my fair share of people walk by and laugh at the fact that I had straight up set up camp in the Miami airport... my parents would've been so proud.

"But why not just stay in a motel CJAM?",

Ah good question, I'm glad you asked, I'm cheap.. there it is.  The cleaning crew swept through at around 2 am in their squadron of zamboni type machine.  Not so bad, they only did maybe four or five passes right beside where I was laying..

"all right, all right, i can take a hint.. I'll stop trying to sleep".  I finally gave up on the sleeping project at around 3 am and found that a girl had posted up in the uncomfortable airport chairs next to where I was laying.  I sat down next to her and she woke up.  We then got to chatting and she had just come from Nicaragua from a place not 45 minutes north of Gigante.  We had a ridiculous delerious talk with lots of laughing for no reason which was exactly what I needed at that point.  I went for a walk and got a cup of coffee and mosied around the airport until I could check in.  I'm at approximately 2 hours of plane sleep at this point and it's starting to get to me a little bit.

I got on my flight to Managua and passed out before we left the tarmac.  I woke up just as we were landing and had to rush to fill out my customs and immigrations forms.  My cousin and his girlfriend were waiting at the airport for me and we headed out for Gigante immediately.  My cousin ended up stopping and buying a new trailer for his truck which was awesome.  He was on the fence about buying one until the nica man went and fetched a trailer that was almost identical in color with his truck.  Knowing my cousin and how much he likes stuff that looks awesome, I knew he was in.  He saw the trailer and immediately backed his truck up to see how it looked with the potentially new purchase.  Wow, the set up looked like something a boss would drive.  SOLD!


We finally made it home, after filling the trailer with some interesting stuff, including a bamboo hammock, at around 5:30 pm just after dark.  To our surprise, we had no key, so we spent the next hour or so breaking into the house using whatever tools we could find.  After breaking in, we celebrated the journey and went for a miander around Gigante to say hello to the locals.  It was really cool seeing everyone down here again, such an interesting feeling.  It feels as though I was just here.  After the miandering, I came home and passed out.

The next day we went up to the property and all I can say is, WOW.  It's really starting to come together, there is a roof and a floor on it.  A parking spot has been made for the truck and a fence has been put up around the lot.  Everything is looking amazing, I'm really impressed.

I have a bunch of pictures that I will upload when I get to some internet that lasts longer than a couple minutes, but for now it will just be text, sorry, boring I know.

I've just been taking it easy trying to acclimatize to the weather which has been really hot and humid because it's been raining so much.  I've gone for a few jogs and enjoyed some sun sets.  Went out on my surf board yesterday however there wasn't a lot of cooperation from the ocean and the waves, so I just paddled around the ocean for a bit to get some exercise.  Last night we built a nica christmas treepee which I will show a photo of when I get a chance to put some up here.  It's pretty stellar.  Anyways, today is Christmas eve and we are going to a potluck, my cousin and I are in charge of the sweet potatoes.. which will be made out of squash, potatoe and carrot with some brown sugar since they don't have any sweet potatoes down here.

That's all for right now, I will hopefully make another update in a few days to talk about all of the festivities.  Hopefully get some pictures up as well!

From Gigante,

This is CJAM