Nicaragua H3 #417

After several days of sightseeing, and climbing volcanos, it was time to get down to the facts of the matter . . . time to HASH. Start time was 0930 (that's AM for all you sleepy heads), and google said it was a 50 min drive, so just to be sure, we left at 0800. Worked out fine, we got there in time to find our way through the small town of Granada, on Lake Managua, and then out to Isletas de Granada, and finally down the dirt road to Rayito de Sol. From there we parked the car, and jumped into the hares truck for the final 2 kms out to the run site (and home of the hares). It was a beautiful setting on Lake Managua, as you can see from the pictures.

As often can be the case, just finding the start can be half the challenge in hashing, and this was the case for some today. Fortunately we made it to the site without issue, but some of the locals did have some problems, and start was delayed about an hour until they arrived (we heard some hashers actually got frustrated and went home . . . hope that was only a rumor). We did have over 30 hashers on hand when we were sent off on trail.

Chalk talk was all in Spanish, and my interpreter did a wonderful job of explaining to me what was going on . . . except I had to ask about some of the trail markings, and something was lost in translation. All I got was “there will be lots of arrows and plops” . . . so asked if an X was a false or intersection? It’s a false, so then asked if a circle was a check, and yes . . . but it was not, it was also a false (well, it was actually a circle with an X in it, but yes, also a false, as I would find out on trail after running down some arbitrary paths only to be called back. True trail was about 3 miles, so we ran it twice to get a good sweat on, before taking on some of the local cervezas. It was an awesome shiggy trail, on dirt paths, and roads.

Circle soon followed, and it was all in Spanish or course. Very fun, I could make out about every 5th word, and others would throw in a few more at times. They called in the visitors, and then asked us to entertain them . . . so sang them a couple clean but fun songs. Then they served up a nice lunch of local flare. We chatted for another hour, and soon it was time to make the hour drive back to town. What a great adventure, on a great trail, and making many new friends. Many thanks to the hashers in Nicaragua for such a fun day.Read more