Out and about San Carlos

After my little coffee baptism I felt sufficiently stimulated to go for a run down the dirt road leading from San Carlos out to the airfield. I had hoped there wouldn´t be many people out and about as I always feel strange exercising in public, but I was to be disappointed...and got some pretty strange looks from people no doubt wondering why anyone would voluntarily exert themselves in the 11 AM heat. Nicaraguans take staying in the shade very seriously. Riding the local bus, people will just flag the bus down from the side of the road to get on...no bus stops really. This makes sense to me...where it´s sparsely populated. But when the get off, they´ll treat the bus like a taxi. One person will get off in front of their home...and then 15 meters further another person will get off...10 meters further another person. I´m not sure if this is to stay out of the sun or out of laziness, but if you can get away with it why not? I should also mention that 11 AM here is really midday or so because the sun comes up incredibly early in Central America. We´re east of much of the Eastern Time Zone in the US and yet here we´re on the same time as Denver right now.

Managed to get out to the airfield without passing out. Had read that the town had it´s own airstrip with two flights a day going out to Granada so wanted to check it out. And it was, not surprisingly, a dirt airstrip. I´ve never taken off from one of those before. San Carlos would, fortunately, not be the first dirt runway for me as I managed to get on the ferry later that day. Had I missed it for whatever reason I would have had to wait for the next one three days later or take my chances with the flight.