Holy Week

Holy week, the week of Easter, is a big holiday week here in Nicaragua. In fact, many stores and businesses are closed for part of some or all of the week. For the time off people seek out water (beaches, rivers, lakes, pools, and even inflatable kiddy pools). This is a hotter time of the year, so it makes sense finding places to cool off. During the week people also spend time making baked goods, deserts and special dishes.

We spent the beginnig of the week with Ricardo and his family to celebrate Ricardo's birthday. We had a nice dinner at their house and spent time talking.
Later in the week we returned to Asiento Viejo to visit the Reyes. Santo taught me how to make a typical Holy Week desert called Amebar. Seth spent time with Ricardo and his sons building a house. Their eldest son, Ricardito, and his wife are building a house on his dad's land, so they have a home of their own as well as to keep a better eye on the land. Unfortunately, a week ago someone had gone on to their land at night and cut down all of their papaya and banana trees. Making Amebar is made from green papayas, green jocotes and non-ripe mangoes. The fruits are cooked with sugar, sugar cane, cinnamon, and cloves until the consistency is sticky like syrup. It is good, but very sweet.
Later in the week we were supposed to meet up with some friends at a river to go swimming. They were walking from their community and we drove in to the spot on our motorcycle. When we arrived at the spot there were so many people we were not able to find them, so we ended up finding a place to swim further down stream. The place we found was nice and we were the only ones there at the beginning. After spending some time in the water, Yeri, a young girl who lived nearby came up to us and asked us if we would like some arroz con leche (rice pudding). We said yes (it is very common for people in the country side to offer strangers food) and then enjoyed time talking and swimming with her. We found a place we will return to several times before leaving Nicargua.