Travel, Photography, Life.
Nicaragua
Beautiful sights and half the tourists of Costa Rica.
Another Party To Ruin My Plans
May 22nd
March 14, 2008
Day 840
I took a short bus ride to Managua this afternoon and headed straight for the Tica Bus terminal to buy my ticket to Honduras. I knew that traveling during Semana Santa (the week leading up to Easter) would be difficult because it was a vacation week for most people. Still, I was shocked to learn that the bus was already sold out for the next six days! I looked at the only other company with buses to Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras), but they were sold out several days in advance as well. So since I came to Central America six weeks ago, my travel plans have been disrupted first by carnaval in Panama City, then the local festival in Liberia, Costa Rica, and now Easter. It’s times like this that you wonder when these people actually do work.
I finally found an international bus going to El Salvador via Honduras, and I bought a ticket to get dropped off at a city near the border with Nicaragua. I’ll have to catch a couple extra buses from Honduras and probably waste a day in the process, but it’s certainly a better option than having to hang out in Managua for the next several days.
The Little City that Could
May 22nd
March 11-13, 2008
Days 837-839
My next stop was the small city of Granada, which, like Ometepe Island, was on Lago Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America. Granada was an important trade center from its founding, so much so that the French, English, and the liberals from Leon constantly fought for control throughout its turbulent history. That all came to a dramatic end when American William Walker, who had briefly controlled the city, was forced to abandon it and had it burned to the ground in 1856.
The city was mildly interesting with an old church with a lookout tower where one had a great view of another church, a few nice parks, and a crafts market in nearby Masaya. Again, the people were friendly, but it was a very poor place where horses were still being used as often as cars. I didn’t feel like staying long, but I found out too late that the bus to Honduras left from Managua (the capital) early in the morning, and I didn’t feel like spending any time there, so I had to stay in Granada another day.
The photo album for this entry is here.
The Forgotten Island
May 22nd
March 8-10, 2008
Days 834-836
Ometepe Island was just a hop, skip, and a jump from San Juan del Sur, and was, in fact, visible from the main highway when I first entered Nicaragua. However, the large island that was made from two volcanoes wasn’t a very touristy place for some reason. Unlike San Juan del Sur, it was totally devoid of nightlife. It was so dark I needed a flashlight to walk around, even when we weren’t experiencing one of the frequent blackouts. And there were warnings of water shortages, despite being located on the biggest lake in Central America. It was my kind of place.
One day I rode buses around the island. Life moved very slowly and traditionally with farmland taking up most of the flat area surrounding the volcanoes. There were lots of hiking trails to check out the wildlife and bits of remaining original swampland. Just the thought of a volcanic tropical island located on a huge lake sounded exciting, and the culture and wildlife made it even more worthwhile. I couldn’t understand why more tourists didn’t visit it.
My Ometepe challenge was to climb the Concepcion Volcano. Several people warned me to take a guide because of the high chance of getting lost for days. I didn’t see how you could get lost on a volcano because you just walk back down if you can’t find the trail, but I caved and hired one. Indeed, the trail was easy to follow, but it was still nice to have a guide to point out the animals and plants of the forest covering the volcano.
Along the way, we saw lots of wildlife, especially howler monkeys. Sometimes they would surround us in the trees, staring at us with their beady eyes, screaming at the top of their lungs and swinging around the branches to intimidate us without any sign of fear. Mixed in with the monkeys were birds the color of the Nicaraguan flag making several varieties of beautiful calls. A huge tree had been chopped down illegally with an axe so as not to attract the attention of the authorities. Some of it had been hauled away to build a house, but most of it was left to rot. I could tell conservation was a priority, until it meant that a human couldn’t have a dwelling for himself.
I was told I couldn’t climb all the way to the top because the volcano was in the middle of spewing out noxious fumes. Indeed, when we got to 1000 meters, I began to smell the sulfur. However, we ran into a large group of disabled Europeans who had ridden to that level on horses and had been camping there and filming a documentary for the last five days. They were continuing higher on a rope, but that’s where I had to stop. I didn’t mind too much, though, because the cloud cover got too thick to see anything at that point and the view from where we were was spectacular.
My other big news is that my shirt collection is officially rockin’. Not too long ago, I only had two shirts, and life isn’t very interesting when you’re wearing half the clothes you own on any given day. But then I scored a shirt from some hippies in Colombia, I won a dressy shirt in a poker game in San Juan del Sur, and I completed my collection on Ometepe by buying a Hawaiian classic from a guy in the street who had gotten it off the Goodwill ship, fresh from the United States. Now my shirt collection is five strong and life couldn’t get much better.
The photo album for this entry is here.
The Sunset Sail that Wasn’t
May 22nd
March 4-7, 2008
Days 830-833
I ran into English Richard from the Corcovado National Park once again in Liberia. Just when I thought he had gone back to England long ago, there he was next to me getting ready to head into Nicaragua for the last part of his trip. I’ve learned many times during my trip that if you don’t think you’ll ever see someone again, you’ll definitely run into each other, but if you actually plan to meet somewhere, it won’t happen.
Richard, me, some Canadians, and a crazy Finnish alcoholic with ADHD headed to Nicaragua together. As soon as we crossed the border, I could tell the difference from Costa Rica. Burly men were hauling wood and food around in horse drawn carts, bicycle taxis were more common than the ones with engines, and many people were trying to eek out a living by selling a few onions or a pack of gum on the streets. This was obviously a much poorer country than the one we had left. We all got some local money and headed to San Juan del Sur in an overstuffed taxi with no radio, seat belts, or turn signals, and a trunk that was overflowing with all our worldly possessions and was being held halfway open by a few strands of rope.
San Juan del Sur was a small beach town on the Pacific Coast. It was packed with tourists, but they were of a different breed than those of Costa Rica. High-rise five-star hotels were replaced with small hostels with twenty beds to a room, McDonald’s was replaced with the local sodas selling equally unhealthy food, and the loud, fat Americans the color of bathtubs were replaced with laid-back, tanned Aussies, there to catch some waves. The few actual Nicaraguans in town seemed to tolerate the gringo explosion quite well, especially considering their country’s turbulent history.
The US government has severely damaged many countries I have visited, but none quite as badly as Nicaragua. Back in the early twentieth century, the US manipulated politics in Nicaragua to the point that if a non-favorable president was elected, the US marines came in and kicked his ass right out of power. This was all done so no other country could build a canal across Nicaragua, even though the US already had its eyes set on Panama for the building of the canal. The Somoza family later took over the country with the support of the US government and installed puppet leaders using fraudulent elections when they themselves were not in power. Anastasio Somoza Garcia was a brutal ruler who killed anyone who got in his way and eventually his family and friends owned most of the property in Nicaragua, while the rest of the people remained desperately poor. But we continued to support him because he let us use his land to launch a revolution in Guatemala and to invade Cuba. Franklin Roosevelt said of Somoza, “He may be a son of a bitch, but at least he’s our son of a bitch.” And of course let’s not forget the Reagan years, when fear of communism led us to sell weapons to Iran illegally at inflated prices and siphon the extra money to thousands of Nicaraguan Contras in order to overthrow the democratically-elected government. And this is just scratching the surface of what we’ve done to Nicaragua. I was really surprised at how friendly the local people were and how quick they were to forgive.
Even though the fighting in Nicaragua has ended, I could see another disturbing invasion brewing around town. Every American I talked to seemed to be either a real estate agent or someone looking to buy land here. All of the nice houses along the coast were already owned by Americans, and even the older places were being bought out because the locals didn’t realize how much money the land would be worth in a few years. It’s the same thing that has already happened in Costa Rica, except it’s only in its beginning stages. I’m surprised the government is allowing this subtle invasion of their country to happen, but they’re probably also getting a piece of the action, if you know what I mean.
The beaches around San Juan del Sur were bordering on paradise with fine tan sand and crystal-clear water. A few of the more turbulent beaches were packed with surfers, but many others were devoid of human life. One day I went with a few people from my hostel on a French-owned sailboat for a “sunset sail.” When we got out of the harbor, our comandante driver cut the engines, put up the sail, and we drifted to a beach that was inaccessible by land. Dolphins followed us through the water, we did some snorkeling, and played lots of Frisbee. The problem was that the crew all got themselves in a big hurry to leave and were pushing us along to a smelly boat taxi and on the shore to a truck to take us back to the hostel well before sunset. A couple of us stayed behind and watched the disk of the sun give us its final farewell of the day on the horizon, while everyone else was too busy hurrying back to the hostel. Even in a place as laid-back as San Juan del Sur, some people just can’t live in the moment.
The photo album for this entry is here.