Monday--Uneventful travel UNTIL....

volcano

We met at the airport by 6am to catch our flight to Houston at 7:20-- checked bags and enjoyed a good trip, we made good connections in Houston and flew to Managua.  So far very ordinary, and unexciting.   We met our partners from Virginia in Managua (Bill and Steve) who were carrying the parts of the filtration system (first mistake, we should have each been carrying part of the system).  In previous trips, we have had NO problem with customs other than paying a very high duty fee (30% of the value of the items)

This time was different.
1. The personnel working in customs were new and inexperienced,
2. They did not understand the purpose of many of the items being brought in (the parts of the filtration system), so they tried to look up the value of each elbow and piece of PVC on the computer.

3.  They read our invoices together rather than separately (2 people with different items) and declared that we were bringing in more than the $2000 value they were authorized to approve.

They eventually told us that they/we would have to speak to a supervisor to approve our equipment which they guessed would take about a week..  All the above was happening in Spanish and luckily we had 2 Spanish speaking Nicaraguans with us to assist.  Fernando had been hired to drive us across the country tomorrow to Pearle Lagoon.  He knew some people to talk to and we began finding people in authority to help. His help was ultimately INVALUABLE.  Yovett is our eastern Nica co-ordinator and altho' she knows few people in authority in Mananga, she helped greatly in getting us across the country. We finally (after several days) joined up with a Nicaraguan non-profit who wrote us a letter of donation.  We went thru Plan B-E trying to figure our how to get our equipment released as soon as possible.

The Texas folks decided we needed to go ahead and travel into eastern Nica so we could begin Health and Hygiene classes and prepare the site for when the equipment was released.  We were already a day behind having waitted thru Tuesday to see if we could get our stuff. Put that on hold for a minute and let me talk about getting into Managua at the airport.

All foreigners must pay $10 US to enter the country (visa fee) and it must be a crisp new looking bill.  The man ahead of me at the inspection station handed the official a ratty looking worn bill and it wasn't accepted-- he tried again with a better one and was denied again, he finally came up with a new looking one and he was approved to enter the country.   I was about to offer him one of my crisp tens but he came up with a good one.

One of the lovely plants around the hotel

We checked into our Best Western Hotel across the street from the airport and waited for news from our Virginia partners and the customs problems.   The airport  has lovely grounds and is swept hourly.

 At supper,we brainstormed how to proceed with our trip.  Do we turn around and go home, do we (Texans) go ahead and prepare for the others' arrival?  When will the system parts be released?  We went to bed with lots of questions and few answers.