Nicaragua, Part Dos

We’re back home now, and I never did get a chance to write the next installment of our Nicaraguan journey. There is more to tell! I’ve just re-read what I sent out and realize that it sounded pretty negative. We did have a great time, in the end.

What I wrote before sounded exactly like me coming to grips, not very gracefully, with the contrast between my life of privilege and the difficulty of life in a very poor country. The phrase “grinding poverty” is ultimately very apt. It wears one down; life is a terrible hard road, strewn with baffling obstacles and not at all the smooth drive I have obviously become innately accustomed to. I could say, “I don’t know how people live like that”, but in fact I know better now: they scrape along however they can. Sometimes this means grabbing what little they can, however they can. Whether this offends my well-fed sense of fair play is totally irrelevant. I can afford to take the high road, in both literal and metaphoric senses. What I can’t do is pass judgment; it ain’t my jurisdiction.

Apologia aside, on to the continued story.

As you all know, I am no big fan of the Catholic church, but it is an important community institution in Nicaragua as throughout Central America. During our time there, we witnessed a lot of Christmas-related goings on. The celebration is a mishmash of North American and local traditions, so that you’ve got Christmas trees in the plazas, and plastic reindeer on the occasional roof, while various (suspiciously animistic) saints’ days are celebrated, and the big star of the show is the Blessed Virgin who gets a whole week to herself in early December (“La Purissima”) as well as a number of loud shout-outs during Christmas week. (JC himself is very much in the back seat.)

On our second night in Granada, we were woken up at three a.m. by what seemed, improbably, to be a passing marching band, with tubas, trumpets, drums and the works. We wrote it off as an anomaly. But the next night, the same thing happened, this time the march being preceded by an advance artillery of firecrackers and a cacophony of tooting. We guessed it was a wedding party, or maybe a quinceanera… Moving on to Ometepe, again we were blasted awake by trucks passing down the road with their loudspeakers blaring marchy mariachi music. And again, in Moyagalpa, bottle rockets, accordions, cymbals, hoots and hollers.

When we landed in San Juan del Sur, James and I ended up in a hotel in the middle of town. Again at three a.m., we were knocked awake by approaching explosions. There was a brief silence, then a countdown of cymbals and a full-on marching band started up right outside our window. All we could do was laugh. Honestly, by this time we were semi-convinced it was a national conspiracy to rid the country of gringos by preventing them ever getting any sleep. Thus, still giggling, we dubbed it the Fuck Off Gringo Marching Band.

The next day we found out that the tradition is to take up a statue of the saint and march it around town, waking the townspeople, to remind them to attend Mass at five. I am sure it is a very effective method, as absolutely no one, gringo or not, can sleep through that ruckus!

(I should take a moment to explain that “gringo” is not used or taken as a derogatory term by Nicas or local ex-pats. It just means foreigners.)

You’ll recall that we did end up finding a cute little cabaña to rent, only about 10 minutes walk from the lovely and oft-deserted Marsella beach. Aidan, Jen, James and I spent ten days there, cooking great meals on our little outdoor kitchen burners, playing cards and drinking 7-year-old Flor de Caña rum, which is absolutely the best rum I’ve ever run across, so dark and delicious! Jen makes an expert but deadly rum punch which tended to put us to bed by 9:30. (At 2-3 oz per glass, no surprise.) In the result, our New Year’s Eve went without bang or whimper. We were all in bed. Which is just as well, given that according to everybody, New Year’s Eve is the biggest night of the year for robberies, hold-ups, muggings, break-ins, road accidents, cattle-rustling, fist fights, knife fights, cock fights, dog fights, shootings both purposeful and accidental, and the usual host of regrets including fingers being blown off by jerry-rigged bottle rockets, plenty of occasions to vomit, and of course the rash of unplanned pregnancies, the tears and recriminations, all of which, I guess, make the night not dissimilar from the good times at home.

A Nica tradition we enjoyed was the making and unmaking of “el Viejo” – the Old Man. El Viejo is made from old clothes; he’s stuffed and propped up on a lawn chair (or hammock, or car hood) with a bottle of rum and a pack of smokes in his lap. On New Year’s Eve, the moment is celebrated by hauling El Viejo out into the back forty where he is soaked in chicha fuerte (the local corn-based firewater; I believe we call it “ethanol”), or gasoline (if the chicha’s wanted for last call) and torched. Or he’s stuffed full of fireworks and blown up. Sometimes they shoot him full of shotgun pellets first, then blow him up, and then burn the remaining blown-up bits.

Nicas are plenty fond of fireworks. On the chicken bus from Granada to Masaya, we detoured along a lane cramped with shacks packed from the dirt floor to the tin roof with explosives of all sorts. Instead of our classic “burning schoolhouse”, there you can buy “bag of gunpowder on a stick”, made extra festive by the addition of a long red ribbon, which presumably doubles as a fuse. On each shack there was tacked this thoughtful hand-written notice: “¡peligro de fumar!” As we drove by, I was thinking that perhaps someone should show this “danger, no smoking” sign to the old guy burning garbage out back. Oh, I’m sure he only burns when the wind is gusting away from the shacks.

So, even in our rum-induced stupor we heard every Viejo in the neighbourhood being gleefully incinerated. Down on the beach, the local ex-pats built a giant bonfire into which some sodden wag chucked El Viejo, who was packed with those whizzy, twirly rockets which then shot out horizontally in every direction at the celebrants. We heard all about it from our cabaña neighbour Chuck, who had some quite funny video footage of drunk-ass gringos diving frantically out of the way, whiz! ha ha! “Aargh, my eye!”

On that note, we did meet a few interesting local gringos. The aforementioned Chuck was an affable guy who gave us a few lifts in his truck and showed us the amazing house he is building on top of a hill overlooking the beach, three stories and all off the grid. Like many ex-pats, Chuck’s the kind of guy who doesn’t want to be bothered with “conventions” and “rules” and “laws” and such pesky things. A Texan from the Gulf, he’s been a surfer since 1960, through the Beach Boys era, and later he branched into catamaran racing, deep-sea fishing and other hazardous water-sports. At nearly 60, he is leathery and tough as a sea turtle, but a great storyteller and free with his rum. The cabaña we rented from Chuck’s buddy, a fellow named Vince, another iconoclastic refugee from the States. Vince was a union roofer for 28 years in Philadelphia. He’s got grey hair in a pony-tail, a thick moustache, smokes three packs a day, keeps two giant boxer-pit bulls at his heels. He’s one of those gruff, hard-living types who seems kind of intimidating until it is revealed that he is a renowned amateur entomologist with an extensive butterfly collection. (!)

Vince, Chuck, and just about every Nica or ex-pat to get behind the wheel regularly drink and drive; there’s no real prohibition against it. If you hit someone’s fence or pig, you’ve got to pay for it, but otherwise it’s an accepted practise. So, Vince tells us, one night he was coming home from town utterly loaded. He has developed a quite sensible practise over the years of only driving with his right arm across the wheel, so that if he falls asleep or passes out, he will pull the wheel, and thus the truck, off the road to the right instead of into oncoming traffic. This one night, Vince made it through the narrow cut and was just coming up on the bridge when he nodded off. The truck pulled right and went over the edge of a ten-foot ditch. It rolled, crushing the roof and throwing Vince across the bench seat. When he woke up, the truck was still running and Vince was lying on the roof. He managed to pull himself out, uninjured except for a badly bruised arm. He then pulled out his Blackberry and sent this immortal text message to everyone in his contact list: “Truck upside-down. Need he ”

After a few moments it occurred to Vince that “he ” may not be immediately forthcoming. So he climbed back in the truck, fetched his weed, climbed out again and went home. A few hours later he was awoken by friends and neighbours who’d found the ditch, found the ruined truck, but not found Vince. He had no memory of getting home and only had this to say: “I think I might need a jump start.”

Jen and Aidan took off on January 2 for a trek across country that would eventually lead them to Bluefields, the largest town on the Atlantic coast. From there, they were planning on taking a boat to the Corn Islands in the Caribbean. I am assuming they got there okay. James and I spent a last day and night on Marsella all by our lonesomes.

Sadly, the food had run out, so we had no choice but to venture out for our lunch. On Chuck’s recommendation, we went down to Maria’s. Maria’s place is a dirt-floored shack, with a tin-roof patio and a couple of plastic tables. Chicks run around under the tables and a couple of dogs laze nearby. It’s very windy in the Marsella valley and gusts of dust blow up onto the tables every few moments. When we got there, Maria was in a bad mood because José, her husband, was as usual drunk as a lord. (He harangued us, in a very friendly, continuous hand-shaking way, throughout the meal.) Anyway, we both ordered fish and then spent the next half hour regretting it and covertly saying the Gordon Ramsay prayer (“Dear Lord, may I not die of food poisoning this day”), given the state of the place, and the drunk proprietor, and so on. But eventually Maria came out of the kitchen with a huge plate on which lay a gorgeous whole snapper, cooked to perfection. We thought, “Oh, this is for us to share” but then Maria came back with a second plate, this time with a massive fish whose head and tail fell over the sides of the plate, it was so big, and this she plunked down in front of James. They were both delicious and we gobbled them all up with no ill effect. (Thus far.)

That night we went all out and ate at the Marsella Beach Hotel, a very swank joint at the top of a hill. It has an award-winning chef and a Jacuzzi overlooking the beach. We had a delicious meal with dessert and several drinks for the princely sum of $35.

Coming home took the better part of three days. We left the cabaña and got a lift into town courtesy of Chuck. We decided to forgo the chicken bus to Managua, which would have meant four or five hours packed in like sardines (which costs $3) in favour of a shuttle straight to the Best Western across from the Managua airport. The shuttle was to leave at 3 p.m., then 3:30, meaning 4:00, and by the time we left at 5:00 we were quite happy to say adios to the dusty, gusty streets of San Juan del Sur. (One of our fellow passengers on the shuttle was a completely insane American woman who had just decided to sell her Florida home and move to a yoga retreat up in the hills; where it is just SO PEACEFUL and SO JOYFUL that you hardly even notice the 24-hour armed security…but that’s another tale.)

We stayed Thursday night at what should more rightly be known as the Worst Western, where the rooms smell of “sorillo” (that’s “skunk”, y’all) and we can guarantee you’ll get a much better meal at the end of a dirt road with dogs and chickens and drunks yammering at you on Marsella beach. Our flight left Managua half an hour late; we were denied duty-free rum because of the effing security restrictions against carrying more than 3 oz of liquid through the Houston airport. Arriving in Houston we spent almost two hours getting through customs and immigration (“Today’s security alert level is ORANGE!”, announces a cheerful voice every 8 seconds over the PA), and thus missed our connection to Toronto by five minutes. (As did about 13 other passengers on the flight; why they didn’t hold it for ten minutes is a mystery.) Continental put us all up at the airport Hilton in Houston, which we can recommend as being very comfortable indeed. We got home, via Cleveland, on Saturday afternoon.

So, here we are. My back is peeling off due to an attack of stupidness on my part – turns out I DO burn! But the dog and cat are alive, as is Linno, and apart from the pile of mail we are right back where we started from. James is cramming in as many sports events as possible on the TV, and I am off to cook dinner. We’re having vegetables! After three weeks of rice and beans, you’d want some too.

Lots of love and a Happy New Year to all.

Las Noticias de Nicaragua

December 26, 2007

James and I have been travelling in Nicaragua for ten days and this is the first chance I´ve had to write anything. Partly it´s been because we´ve been very much on the go, but the more crippling factor has been the general difficulty of life here. I´ll just let you all know right out of the gate that the scales have definitely fallen from my eyes: we will not be moving to Nicaragua any time soon.

As you know, it is a very poor country. We have now begun to understand how, what, a century of poverty and oppression have affected the general character of the country and its people. Although we have of course met several great, friendly Nicas, overall they seem worn out. The relationships of all the Nica Joes and Janes with tourists is uncertain and they are often vengeful against us in small but really frustrating and angering ways, for example, by blatantly charging us double or more for bus fares, groceries and so on. We´ve had a few uncomfortable arguments. It does not feel good to argue with a ticket taker on a public bus that we shouldn´t have to pay a whole dollar more than the locals, when bus fare is insanely cheap to begin with. But the thing is, that guy puts the dollar in his pocket. It doesn´t benefit anyone but himself to cheat us. So I guess, it´s not the overcharging that bothers us, it´s the malicious intent.

Anyhoo. Managua, as promised, is not very nice and we just spent one night there before scarpering off to Granada to meet Aidan and Jen. Granada is like Hollywood compared to the Fort Apache that is Managua. It was founded in 1542, and although it has been burnt to the ground several times over the past 550 years, it retains its gracious colonial architecture. We met A&J as scheduled and spent several days exploring the city and the lakes nearby. In contrast to the wide colonial streets, Granada´s market is a scene of utter chaos: lanes only 4 feet wide, everything everywhere from butchered pigs to clothes to hardware, urchins running through at top speed, laden men who simply shove you aside muttering “Al lado, gringa!¨” (“One side, gringa!”). There are beggars and pickpockets aplenty; as a result, I have zero photos of the market as I was afraid to take my camera out.

We took a day trip to Masaya, a nearby city famous for its artisanal market. That´s where we had the nasty ticket taker try to squeeze us for the extra bucks. But we stood firm and thank goodness I was able to convey to him in Spanish that we weren´t going to get taken. I´m sure all the other bus patrons thought we were crazy for making such a scene. The market at Masaya ended up being pretty touristy, so we made for the workshop of a famous guitar maker I had read about. This guy is famous throughout Nicaragua and indeed elsewhere for his custom built guitars. I was expecting some sort of pro looking atelier – what we found was a shack with a dirt floor, guitars and guitar parts were hung from smokey old beams above. There were kids everywhere – and of course more appeared as I started handing out Spiderman pencils… I ended up buying a small classical guitar. It´s very pretty, made of cedar with a mahogany fretboard. I paid $100 and every Nica we´ve met has since assured me that I overpaid by $50 – but I don´t care. There were quite a lot of kids to feed! The Nicas quite relish the opportunity to tell us gringos what idiots we are for paying X instead of Y, and then they turn around and charge us X themselves!

From Granada we steamed by rickety car ferry to the Isla de Ometepe. This is an amazing figure-eight shaped island with an active volcano (Concepcion) on one end and a dormant volcano (Maderas) on the other. The whole island is perhaps 40 kms long, it´s apparently the largest freshwater island in the Americas. Like many islands it has a distinct culture, which I am happy to say is much friendlier than the mainland´s. We spend a couple of nights at the feet of Concepcion, whose last major eruption was in 1957. It is very active and in fact the day we arrived had let out a big belch of steam and lava. It is always ringed by a hump of smooth white smoke. I was a little afraid of it. But don´t worry, we had an evacuation plan, which was to first panic and poke people in the eyes (I´m not sure why) and then strap some plastic lawnchairs together and head out to sea. Hoping, of course, the bull sharks in the middle of Lake Nicaragua don´t decide to snack on us. Oh wait – the eye poking was for if we were eaten by bull sharks. Poke them in the eye, that´s how you get them to let go.

We split up one day on Ometepe: Jen and Aidan went off to hike up the volcano (because they are nuts) while James and I, along with a really nice American guy we met, hired a cute young guide and a driver for the day. Javier, our guide, is not quite 20 and is the sort of Nica who, with luck, will help pull the country forward into a better state. He´s earnest, funny, hardworking and enterprising. He took us for a hike part way up the dormant volcano to have a look at a high waterfall called San Ramon. It was a great hike and thanks to my trekking poles, I didn´t kill my back. From there we had lunch and then swam at the Ojo de Agua – the eye of the water – a beautifully clean clear spring pool. Along the way we ran into Aidan and Jen who as it turns out had rented a motorcycle and were tooling around the island having a great time instead of being boiled in hot lava. A good day was had by all.

After Ometepe, we came here to San Juan del Sur. We arrived on Dec. 23 with no reservation, which was not so smart given that it is the number one gringo beach town in the country. We hoped to find a cabana for a week but struck out the first night (Partly because the phone lines were all down) and instead stayed at separate hostels. But as luck and the kindness of strangers would have it, the American owner of the Gato Negro café got in touch with some friends and ended up finding us a great little spot a little bit off the beach about 15 minutes outside of town.

We spend Xmas eve on the beach and yesterday had a nice long, lazy Xmas day, drinking rum and cooking improbably good meals on our two-burner outside stove.

I have more stories to tell, but I have to get a move on here: we cadged a ride with a neighbour and I have to get the groceries before meeting for the return trip. But just to pique your interest, next time I write I will tell you about the Christmas traditions of Nicaragua featuring what we lovingly refer to as the Fuck Off Gringo Marching Band.