We were walking from Airbnb towards the livestock barns, and I noticed it wasn’t quite as dark as I thought it would be. As we were driving up the mountain, my fear of encroaching darkness made me feel that it was much later in the day than it actually was. There was still at least an hour of daylight left, which meant we had time to watch cow milking and maybe even do a short hike around the coffee finca.
We could hear the musicians begin to play down at the village, joyful dancing music and I wondered if it was in fact a good idea to go down there and join in the local celebrations.
“We’ve seen and done cow milking before…” I was saying as we were walking up to the cows and a strange sight made me lose track of my thoughts.
Our host and another man were carrying a limp wet animal, upside down by its four legs, struggling to hold it up. The animal’s head swung from side to side, inertly. Was it a large dog? A goat? I couldn’t tell. They put the body down and it lay on the ground, completely lifeless. A large cow following the two men mooed loudly and bent down to sniff the body.
“Don’t look,” Victor said, his voice breaking slightly.
A calf.
A newborn calf. Was it dead? Despite Victor’s warning, I could not look away. The mother cow was steadily licking his little wet body, seemingly unconcerned with his lack of movement. I remembered the day of my high school graduation, our family cat giving birth in our basement, and how each kitten was born limp until the mother licked them awake. Please let it be the same with cows…
Before I could tell Victor that things might not be as grim as they seemed, the calf suddenly jerked, rolled to the side, and lifted his wobbly head. I exhaled loudly, just then realizing that I had been holding my breath. We saw the host laughing and giving us the thumbs up.
“Come closer!” he called out, “No milking now! Baby born! Give him three hours and he’ll be walking around!”
I reached for my camera and found my hands shaking. As I tried to steady myself, the calf already started struggling to get up on his wobbly thin legs. His legs buckled repeatedly, as his mother patiently licked every inch of his body. The host walked up and started explaining something to Victor in Spanish, excitedly. Victor translated that the mother cow had abandoned her placenta for now, because she needed to lick her baby to clean him and promote blood circulation. But she will go back and eat it later, as it’s good for her and provides protein and other nutrients that she needs.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the little calf. A miracle of brand-new life is happening right before my eyes. I felt tears swelling up and swallowed hard to push them back, embarrassed to cry in front of the farmers. Suddenly, the host screamed something and started running. We turned around to see him chase a small dog who was sprinting away, with the cow’s placenta in his mouth. Despite being chased and yelled at, that little dog looked so damn happy. Victor and I both burst out laughing. The host came back and shrugged cheerfully – oh well, that’s how it goes! We all went back to admiring the little calf, who was repeatedly trying to stand up on his own.
Once he got his back legs under control, the calf kept trying to lift himself off the front knees but kept falling back down. His mother patiently followed him around, as he thrashed on the ground, cleaning him until he almost sparkled. It was only thirty minutes later or so and he managed to stand on his shaking legs and immediately tried to reach for his mother’s udders. His first steps were wobbly and unsteady, as he stretched his neck towards the sweet smell of milk, so close, yet so far away.
We noticed other cows coming up on the other side of the fence to get a better look at the baby, one of them a larger bull, maybe even the father. There were other smaller cows in the same area as the mother and the baby, most of them older calves, and they mostly ignored the miracle of birth, more interested in munching on hay and playfully biting each other’s ears.
Victor told me that despite spending his entire childhood in a village with plenty of cows around, this was the first time he had seen a calf being born. We walked away when it looked like the calf was finally able to latch on to the udder and get his first bit of milk. After hiking up a small trail leading deeper into the coffee plantation, we stood silently as the sun set down over the horizon, its golden rays shining across the dense top of trees. It was a gorgeous view, and we could hear the musicians playing down in the village, setting a festive mood for the sunset. Our host had mentioned earlier that it was someone’s birthday party and apparently, this was a popular day for birthdays. The next morning, we were told that two more calves were born that night!
We had already been in Nicaragua for a week by this point, but this was the first day when I realized just how different it was going to be. Up until then, I expected the standard Latin American fare – a bit like Mexico, a lot like Guatemala, and maybe too much like El Salvador. After all, on paper, it was all volcanos and lakes, ocean beaches and coffee fincas, rice and beans, plantains and tortillas, Mayan culture, and Spanish conquistadors, all that we have seen before. But Nicaragua managed to surprise us with every turn and twist of the seemingly impassable road, no matter how steep the path was, the view was always gorgeous and something exciting was just around the corner.
Just as we went to watch the milking of the cows, which we had seen many times before and were not particularly excited about, and instead ended up witnessing a calf being born, in that same way every experience we had planned turned out to be something just a little different, a bit more profound, and often completely unexpected. We had already camped on top of a volcano in El Salvador, so how different could it possibly be in Nicaragua? We have hiked through canyons in Oman, why would a canyon in Nicaragua be so special? Victor has already taken a surfing lesson on the beaches of El Cuco and we have frolicked in the waves of the Pacific Ocean, what would knock us off our feet on the beaches of Las Penitas? We have eaten desayuno typico (the typical breakfast) daily in Guatemala, so why would we be looking forward to every morning meal in Nicaragua?
Stay tuned for all of our Nicaraguan posts and every question will be answered in time!
