on sunday i rose with the sun, with the rooster and with the dew drops to catch a bus up towards las tres senoritas located a few kilometers outside of ocotal, nicaragua in the misty pine covered mountains. its a time of day in ocotal that i had never seen before, cool and gray, with clouds passing steadily above people had started thier sundays well before i had arrived at the bus stop waiting for alissa. walking across the pan-american alissa had me chuckling with a triangular peice of ´pan dulce´ or sweet bread in her hand, shorts on and an overly large pack for a few hours of hiking. Not to be outdone by alissa´s pan dulce i got my own with little dabs of jelly in the center of a circular sweet cookie. a fabulous and normal breakfast for ocotalenos, if only i had the black, sweet coffee to dip the cookies in. Laughing about being the only gringos up this early in ocotal and certainly the only ones waiting at the grimy metal bus stop on the already dusty smoky panamerican highway across from la shell i relaxed and settled in for a day of conversation and exercise.

But not without its problems, the first bus driver told us that it did not stop there and refused to even answer our queries. at this point we opted for a taxi, the driver knew about the three ladies, but did not know exactly where to let us off the on the highway, we meandered through the windy road and after passing a pair of houses across from each other and above a bus stop we got let off there. the fare? 10 cordobas or 65 cents. we approached the first house and let out a cautious ´Buenas!´ hoping that 615am on a sunday would not be to early and true to most of nica, it wasnt. the family was exceedingly helpful, pointing out the path for us and saying that a cluster of three houses on the path would give us our next set of directions.

heading up the rock, red dirt, and donkey dung path i could feel my legs waking up, my breath shortening, and my smile growing as our day really began. even here at the base of the path you could see parts of ocotal from above and feel the breeze rushing down the mountains, i saw my first cactus tree. the top of which looks and feels(ouch!) like a cactus, but the bottom had hardened and looked exactly like a regular albeit segmented tree trunk. amazing. scattered around our feet were recently fallen leaves, as the dry season is nica´s fall, of deep reds and light browns and dangling on the leaves flanking us were light purple flowers, delicate and dangling from vines that criss crossed the barbwire fence to our left and right.

the paths goes from left to right and directly ahead of us we see our three houses. we stop at the one on the right with a more confident ´Buenas!´ and are again greeted warmly by a family of three who were accompanied by a small farm of pigs, turkeys, dogs, hens, and roosters. they offered us coffe, directions and conversation but we only accepted the latter of the three, knowing that cup of coffee could turn into breakfast and we were still trying to beat the sun to top of the las tres senoritas. ´Go straight, then left, then right, then left again and follow that straight onto all the way and you will find your ladies´ in the lilting, tenor spanish of the mountains outside of ocotal.

dinner waits, more will come later.