Joshua recently spoke with Gadling.com's Erik Olsen regarding the release of Moon Living Abroad In Nicaragua. Here's the mp3 podcast of the conversation, and here is Erik's post about the talk on Gadling.com, a travel blog which celebrates the concept of "engaged travel."

Erik writes, "I've blogged about the Living Abroad series before, and I have to say it is a very handy guide for those who are considering making a move to any of the various countries for which there are books."

Turn up your volume and enjoy. 

I'm happy to announce the very first (non-Amazon) sale of Moon Living Abroad In Nicaragua! The happy customer, Kathleen Moore, is planning a trip south next summer with a group of families and friends. They are "looking for a house to rent in a Spanish-speaking country with beach/natural/outdoor experiences for the kids."

The families, Kathleen writes, are accustomed to various comfort levels of travel. Also, rolling with small children "adds a whole new spin on things." Understatement of the year, I imagine.

Kathleen says her group is considering taking this pilgrimage every year, perhaps to different countries, and she is looking for an appropriate place to begin their tradition. Costa Rica may be "more accommodating" than Nicaragua, as her friends have told her—at least in terms of available creature comforts and services. Or perhaps the pioneer feeling offered by Nicaragua is more their speed. Who knows.

For anyone who has ever visited a coffee cooperative in Nicaragua, there is a small, caffeine-buzzy thrill to finding Nica beans on a shelf in mainstream America. Fortunately, this is not as rare an event as it used to be, as consumer demand for Fair Trade continues to rise even as coffee drinkers become aware of the high quality of Nicaraguan cafecita. Indeed, Smithsonian magazine reports that "Nicaragua has recently become the 'hot origin' for gourmet coffee, with its beans winning taste awards and its decent wages for many small farmers a hopeful beacon for a global coffee market under siege. 

We are pleased and proud to announce that the latest edition of Moon Handbooks Nicaragua was given the Award for Best Travel Writing in the 2006 Peace Corps Writers Awards. PeaceCorpsWriters.org is a place for returned volunteer scribes to gather and share news about their writing, which helps promote the Peace Corps Third Goal of "Bringing the world back home." Say the site's founders, "the writings of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), all their novels, short stories, essays and poetry are a positive way of educating Americans about the world."

Authors Randall Wood and Joshua Berman first traveled to Nicaragua in 1998 as Peace Corps Volunteers, where they received intensive language, cultural, and technical training before moving to isolated posts in the Estelí countryside for their respective two-year tours. 

It's one of the first questions we get asked when speaking about the possibility of living long-term in Nicaragua, and in a Nicaraguan election year the concern becomes even more portentious: "What would happen if Daniel Ortega won the presidency?"

In November 2006 Nicaragua will again vote for its president, and Daniel Ortega is again running, so the question is inevitable. Here's a recent Washington Post article about the subject, and a couple of comments.