Nuts for Maya (and La Poderosa gets a new clutch)

Yup, we're so nuts for little newborn Maya that we drove an hour each way on roads so rough they destroyed our car, just to find out a little something about the nut which is named after her (though in Nicaragua it's called ojoche).

Actually it was for Amy's PhD research that we went in search of the elusive Maya nut. A contact of her PhD advisor's had worked with these nuts and gave Amy the phone number of Petronila, the woman who coordinates the Maya nut project in Chinandega, which is an easy 45-minute drive from Leon.

Unfortunately her contact failed to inform her that Petronila is not actually located in Chinandega, but rather way, way, waaaaaaaaay off-road.

When we got to Km 118 on the road to Chinandega, we pulled over to ask where the turn-off was to get to Apastepe and then Versalle Arriba. A kid on a bike responded with surprise, saying "Ooooooh, that is super-far!" We laughed and thought maybe he was exaggerating, and that it was just super-far for him on his bike.

Little did we know.

The road to Apastepe seemed fine. It wasn't paved, but it was wide and flat and La Poderosa had no trouble with it. We still had no idea what we were in for; we just imagined it might be a long drive since someone had mentioned the community was at the foot of the volcano which looked to be still quite far away.

But then we got to the turn-off to Versalle Arriba. We stopped the car and looked down the path which curved around and into the woods. I did some scouting around the bend to see if it looked passable. It did, though not easy. We had our doubts, but all the folks gathered around at the turn-off seemed confident that we could make it.

So we went for it.

La Poderosa put her all into it. There were several points where we doubted whether we would make it as La Poderosa pulled herself slowly up over a hump and scraped the bottom against a rock, moving from one ditch to another. But she pulled through for us, good old girl.

At one point, a young boy of about 7 who was riding horseback and leading another horse behind him, passed us. We asked him if we were close. He said we were about half-way there. Then he went on ahead of us. Hoo boy.

We marveled at the difference between the Nicaraguan countryside - where a child is off on his own bringing two horses on an hour's ride up into the hills - and the American suburbs - where a child left on its own like that would prompt a call to Social Services for neglect.

Finally, we made it to Petronila's. We asked about the Maya nut. She showed us some and explained her work with other women in collecting this nutritious resource, organizing and training other communities on how to work with it.

Unfortunately, none of this information was useful to Amy and her PhD. Thanks for nothing, advisor! Ah well... at least we got a good adventure, story and blog post out of it, right?

But when we finally got La Poderosa back onto normal roads again, Elder noticed that she was not reacting like normal when he changed gears and tried to accelerate. Later, when I drove her, I could feel what he meant. It was clear something was wrong, and so we cancelled our plans to hit Granada with Amy B. and instead took the pobrecita Poderosa to the shop.

There, the mechanic confirmed what we thought. We needed to replace the clutch. He had actually warned us of this on our last check-up, saying that the clutch was getting old and would need to be replaced soon. Apparently our visit to Petronila sealed the deal!

Here are the old, worn-out parts which got replaced:
One positive outcome of our Maya nut misadventure was that on our way back down the hill, we spotted the lovely guardabarranco, national bird of Nicaragua, with its long turquoise tail. Beautiful!