Whoa, a post? Really?

Yes, I'm actually updating... just before my extended stay in Nicaragua comes to a close. I'm still waiting for word on my application from UA's grad program, but I've been assured I'll be accepted, so I'm trying not to worry too much on that front. I'm not looking forward to the temperature shock upon returning to Pennsylvania, but it will be great to be home for the holidays before (fingers crossed) I head off to Tuscaloosa in January.

Man, I just checked, and my last update was in June. I'm so, so sorry.

Guilt trip aside, the last several months have been what I'd call uneventful. I'm one of those boring folks who feels comfortable in some sort of routine, so I quickly settled into my weekly monitoring procedure. Laguna de Xiloa is generally a very quiet place, so aside from the occasional power outage, nothing very exciting happened... above water, that is.

Well, I did turn 22. There's that, I guess.

Underwater, however, the last month has seen an explosion of activity as most of Xiloa's cichlid species enter their main breeding season. The rocky, sloped areas of lake bottom between 30 and 50 feet deep are so jam-packed with breeding pairs of fish defending their territory from adjacent breeding pairs that I can only describe it as a warzone. Considering that many of these cichlid species come in brilliant gold or orange colorations, it makes for quite a spectacle! (That is, when the visibility is decent. Most of the time you can't see more than 5 feet in front of your face.) As a result of all the activity, I've gotten plenty of chances to practice my fish ID skills. This paid off when, after so many months of diving in Xiloa, I finally sighted a single Archocentrus centrarchus defending its fry. There are plenty of attractive fish in that lake, but these guys have an especially weird breeding coloration.

Not pictured: Laguna de Xiloa. Image yanked against its will from Google Image Search results.

Little buggers do a good job of hiding in holes in the shallow weed beds.

I also had the opportunity to do my first night dive in Xiloa. Most of the cichlid species I've been observing during the day just sit on the bottom asleep. You can swim right up and poke them, which is strange considering how twitchy they are when they're awake. I had heard that Xiloa has herring (alliteration, whoa) that stay out in the middle of the lake during the day, but this night dive gave me a very physical introduction to them. They seem to be quite fond of lights, and, like aquatic moths, they'll senselessly ram themselves into what they perceive to be the light source. Thankfully, they seemed to be feeding very close to the surface, so the barrage of 4 inch fish abated once I got down to 15 feet or so.

Back above water, I did get the chance to visit a couple of tourist destinations near Managua, some of which were part of a brief visit by my mom and sister last week. I've now been to the Masaya volcano twice - great view, but the sulfurous fumes will probably limit your time close to the crater. I also got to visit the fort-slash-prison-turned-national-monument El Coyotepe. It has a fantastic 360-degree view of the surrounding countryside as well as guided tours that explain all of the horrific things the prisoners got to experience. Blood stains on the walls? Check. Electro-shock torture room? Checkaroo. Tiny bats? Check.

And now, a few pictures:

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Photos don't really capture how freakin' deep (and smelly) this thing is.

Sparse local wildlife around the crater

Part of the Coyotepe prison fort

It's been quite a year! There's a decent chance I'll be back in Nicaragua in February or March for research-related stuff, but for now, it's hasta luego, Nicaragua.

San Juan del Sur

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua: surfer's paradise and unsavory tourist trap. Anyway, I got to do 2 shallow dives around some large rock formations there. Despite the visibility being mediocre and the current being fickle and confusing, I saw plenty of interesting things: small, ubiquitous neon blue sponges, incredibly clumsy pufferfish, big, delicious-looking lobsters, and a few moray eels that looked rather grumpy. With the current going every which way, it's a wonder I never bashed my brains out on a rock while staring at something. Oh, I also saved my buddy's tank from escaping its strap. He was thankful because breathing is nice.

The second day at San Juan was spent having a leisurely breakfast and hanging out at the sparsely populated Playa Yankee. No, I am not making that name up. Why was it so sparsely populated, you ask? Apparently somebody was hacked to death with a machete there recently. But hey, is that really going to stop a group of stupid 20-somethings? Of course not. Anyway, here's some photos from the beach.

I love the cacti here.

Typical Nicaraguan bush

That must be the machete killer over there.

Stuck my camera in a tide pool for the hell of it, and somebody got curious.

Finally, a bonus video from the hostel where I stayed. I think they had a nest inside the roof, and they weren't too pleased with our presence.

A Few Unrelated Things of Note

Just a quick update with what I've been up to. For the most part, I've been racking up the dives for my Divemaster certification. There are other requirements to take care of as well, including stamina evaluations, skill demonstrations, a written final, and an underwater mapping project. I've also done enough deep dives (one to 120 ft!) to obtain a Deep Diver specialization. Unfortunately, taking pictures at that depth isn't really feasible. I also got to visit the market in Masaya for the first time - but again, no pictures. Taking something expensive like a camera to the market is asking for it to be stolen. I'll soon be going to the beach town of San Juan del Sur for a couple of days of diving, so I'll see if I can finally provide some pictures as requested. Hopefully the impending rainy season can hold off for a bit.

One other item worth mentioning - there's a decent chance I'll be starting grad school in spring 2012! Dr. Ryan Earley runs an Integrative Animal Behavior lab at UA which does a good bit of work with the cichlids of Nicaraguan crater lakes. I'm not sure on all of the specifics yet, but apparently he needs another grad student for a research assistantship, and my dive skills and familiarity with Xiloa fit the bill quite nicely! I wasn't sure if I wanted to mention this before all the details have been ironed out, but it's just too darn exciting to wait. If this pans out, I'll probably come home to the US for most of August, then return to Nicaragua until near the end of 2011. I don't know what to call this other than luck, so I can't believe my luck!

Post Number Two

Okay, so it's been a few months, and now I'm basically driven by guilt to update this thing. Believe it or not, things have happened since the end of February! I'll try to distill the most interesting parts. First off, I spent the month of March doing some dives and learning how to ID the various cichlid species in Xiloa. It can be tough since you can't always rely on coloration - instead, you have to recognize the general body shape in order to be certain of the species. I also spent some time learning how to use Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro for image and video editing. Honestly, that's the gist of the entire month - nothing really blog-worthy, in my opinion.

Kittens love a warm external hard drive

April was even worse in the blog-worthiness category, since I spent the majority of the month at home in Pennsylvania! Initially, I had planned to be home for a week. Unfortunately, my trusty Dell XPS laptop decided it was tired of having a defective graphics card and gave up the ghost as soon as I returned to the US. I decided to order a new laptop from Dell, which was a bad idea for multiple reasons - first, I had to delay my return flight by 2 weeks to accommodate the delivery date; second, because Dell then decided to delay delivery by another week on the initial delivery date... with no direct notification. Their customer service is incredibly useless, although I suppose that's no secret. During the month of April, I also saw James and Ben Taylor live at Hershey Theatre and got violently ill for several days. I reread the previous sentence and thought the implied causation was funny enough to leave it as-is.

Getting ready to garbage dive

Upon returning to Nicaragua, I only had a few days to get settled in before the big event: a wide-scale community clean-up of Laguna de Xiloa on the weekend of April 30. Along with about 50 other divers, I conducted garbage collection dives to clean up the lake bottom. In the meantime, about 1000 members of the community showed up for terrestrial garbage collection. Even the Nicaraguan army and navy helped out! It was absolutely exhausting, but considering the ridiculous amount of trash that was removed from the area, I'd say it was worth it. The lake is nowhere near being clean, unfortunately, since lakeside bars generate a constant stream of plastic cups and fishermen seem to be very good at losing hundreds of feet of nylon line.

One full bag!

Anyway, through a series of fortunate events, I managed to get my new laptop down here, so I've got all the computing power I need. My next main task is to complete my Rescue Diver certification so I can proceed to the Divemaster course. There's a chance I'll finally get to dive in the ocean (could be Atlantic or Pacific) soon, and hopefully I can provide some photos from that.


No more blog-guilt for now, but I'll keep trying to update more often, I promise.

hello world

Allow me to preface this post by saying that it attempts to sum up an entire month of craziness. Righto, now where to start?

I'd say a run-down of the strange series of events that led to me traveling to Nicaragua is pertinent. Last month, my parents traveled here for a week-long dive trip. In the process, they met Dr. Ken McKaye, who has done approximately a whole freaking lot of pioneering research on cichlid fishes in the lakes of Nicaragua and Malawi. As you are likely aware, parents like to talk about their kids, so at some point my B.S. in Marine Science and lack of employment came up. Apparently these traits make me a resource with potential usefulness around here. Imagine my surprise when I learned I had a week to prepare for an indeterminate number of months in Nicaragua!
 

Laguna de Apoyo from the crater rim

I arrived at my primary "base of operations" at Laguna de Apoyo (a volcanic crater lake) without incident. It's absolutely gorgeous here, and although the beach isn't large, it's close by for easy swimming/kayaking/whatever else access. I also frequently stay at another "base" at Xiloa (another crater lake), which has better access for shore diving and whatnot. I've done two out of five dives toward my Advanced Open Water certification there. On a slightly related note, I caught some nasty respiratory bug a few days after I arrived in Nicaragua, so the incessant coughing kind of inhibited my diving until last week.

Coming to Nicaragua obviously means I have to speak Spanish, so I took lessons for the first two weeks I was here to dust off the grammar (and resume my eternal wrestling match with the subjunctive tenses toward the end). I still have problems with what I'll call "speaker's block," where I can follow conversation pretty well, but the fluency and speed of my responses leaves quite a bit to be desired. But hey, I haven't had to use Spanish for years, and it's only been three weeks, so I figure I'll just keep trying and the problem will resolve itself over time. Right? Man, I hope I'm right.

I have no idea

Okay, this post is getting pretty enormous, so I think I'll wrap things up. I'm not really used to keeping up with a blog (or taking lots of pictures when I travel, for that matter), so my updates are probably going to run on "Nica time," which you can probably infer is this country's equivalent of "island time." Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's a godsend, but you always have to go with the flow - you don't want to be too much of a gringo, after all.