Aventuras Nicas (Primera Parte)
Hey everybody,
“So… Why Nicaragua?” It’s what Nicaraguans kept asking us while we traveled around the country. They were legitimately curious as to exactly why we were there… like they were happy to see us but a little surprised. It’s not as if we were the only travelers, but Nicaragua seems to just be getting its tourism legs so people really want to know what drew you to their country. They regarded us with a mixture of curiosity and puzzlement, like if you open a kitchen cabinet and find the one sock that you thought you’d lost a month ago. You’re happy to see that sock but you’re also like… where did it come from? How did it get in the kitchen?
Leon
My buddy Mauricio (a co-worker, native Nicaraguan and known communist) assured me multiple times that he would pick us up at the airport and give us a ride to Leon… until he called me the night before our flight to say he had to go to a party. I can’t fault the man’s priorities but it did leave us scrambling for a ride.
Leon is the leftist, revolutionary center of Nicaragua that houses one of the country’s main universities. It was a good place to start easing our way into a new culture and adapting to the heat and humidity. Dawn and I spent our first day wandering the city center, eating, drinking and napping. Leon is gritty and busy, where tourists have to adapt to its environment and not the other way around. The facades of all the buildings are in various states of decay except for the immaculately maintained cathedral. The city center is packed with folks going on about their daily business to and from the central market and university students doing whatever it is that they do. We visited the Museo Ortiz-Gurdian which is supposed to be the best contemporary art museum in Central America with works from Chagall, Miro and Dali. To be honest, I preferred just walking around the grounds since the museum was built in two old hacienda-style buildings with beautiful central ponds, fountains and gardens. We lingered around the town center for a while to watch some of the preparations related to the celebration of La Purisma, a 9-day festival dedicated to the virgin Mary. There are processions every day through town that end up through the front doors of the cathedral. Did I mention that Nicaraguans are super Catholic? Part of the celebration also includes lighting fireworks and firecrackers in the streets at random times throughout the day and night. More on that later. The highlight of the first day, however, was our visit to the Museum of Myths and Legends that is housed in former political prison from the Somoza dictatorship. This is a difficult place to describe. There’s no doubt that it’s a prison from the high outer walls with guard turrets and barbed wire mesh. Someone decided to repurpose the building, though, in order to tell the story of Nicaragua’s various myths and legends using papier-mache statues in the various cells and communal areas of the prison. On top of that, they decided to depict vignettes of the daily lives of prisoners by painting them on the walls of all the rooms. So you’re in a prison surrounded by creepy statues and drawings of prisoners being tortured. In one of the rooms they even set up a strobe light which gave it the cozy ambiance of one of the “Saw” films.
Let’s be honest, though. The real reason to visit Leon is not for any of that cultural stuff. I have two words for you: volcano boarding. Essentially, you hike to the top of a volcano with a plank of wood then hurl yourself down along the volcanic ash at a 45 degree angle. That’s right. You’re surfing down a freakin’ volcano. Armed with a board, gloves, goggles and a protective suit we headed to the Cerro Negro volcano in the national park a half hour outside of Leon. Our guide was a young guy named Luis who explained that the last time Cerro Negro erupted was in 1999 showering the city of Leon with ash-filled rain that led to many collapsed roofs. Cerro Negro is one of two active volcanoes left in Nicaragua and if you dig deep enough under the surface ash you can feel heat and see steam coming off the rock itself. The hike up and elevation of the volcano gave us striking views of the surrounding countryside all the way to the city of Leon which made the steep incline down the side all the more intimidating. That is why I “let” Dawn go first. Once I saw that she was safely out of sight I got kitted up and followed suit down the mountain. I’ll be honest… it was not as scary as it looked. The incline is steep but you never get quite enough speed to feel like you’re in any danger. Maybe it’s because the “board” is more like the top of a shipping crate with a rope attached. What you do get plenty of, however, is volcanic ash. Everywhere. In your shoes, stuck to your head, in your pockets, in your ears. It’s like you just walked out of a coal mine.
The first couple of days were also a bit of a challenge when it came to communication. One of the things about speaking Italian is that you *think* you can speak Spanish even though you really can’t speak Spanish. Most of the time you’re bullshitting your way through a conversation with random words that sound right but may or may not apply and somehow you manage to communicate just well enough to achieve a basic understanding. That also describes communication between most Italians so maybe it’s just something inherent to the language. Or to Italians. Anyhow, it’s not usually a big deal unless you’re ordering from a menu in Spanish and think you’re getting tapas and shrimp but instead get a plate of olives, a hot bowl of soup and two warm shots of rum… the perfect combo when it’s 90 degrees.
Coffee country
Everyone from the hotel staff to other travelers told us not to take the chicken bus to Matagalpa. It’s too slow, too hot and too crowded. Take the minibus, they said. It’ll be nice and air-conditioned, they said. You’ll ride in comfort, they said. I kind of liked the idea of riding in repurposed U.S. school buses painted like they belong in a Pride parade but for the purposes of expediency we opted for the minibus. We arrived amidst the chaos of the Leon bus station at 9AM to try and catch the 9:30 minibus to Matagalpa. The taxi driver drove into the station and dropped us off in an area where people were waiting in various lines under an awning next to various stalls selling merchandise and food. He pointed to one line, said “Matagalpa” and drove off. Dawn and I scrambled over with our stuff and stood in the line that the taxi driver had identified. There were several Nicaraguans of various ages in line ahead of us and there were other lines to our right and left. An older man seemed to be in charge of corralling all the minibus passengers to various destinations. He made it over to our line and handed out slips of paper on the back of which were written numbers denoting your place in line. We got 7 and 8 which gave us plenty of wiggle room for an 18 seat minibus. As we stood there sweating 9:30 came and went, as did 10 o’clock. The line was growing along with the impatience of the would-be passengers. People kept walking up to the old man to ask what the hell was going on and he kept blowing them off as other destinations required his attention. 10:30 passed by. At this point there were at least 25 people in line or lingering around the line sweating and waiting for the minibus. Tensions were running high… at least based on my limited Spanish and the snappy chatter surrounding the old man. Dawn and I were confident, though, because we had our numbered scrap of paper. As the minibus approached at around 11 o’clock the line quickly degenerated into a swarm of people headed straight for the sliding door of the bus. As the tallest person within half a mile I had a unique perspective on was going on around me and people were taking no prisoners. Fat guys were elbowing old ladies for position, old ladies were using grandchildren as human shields to bully their way to the front… it was anarchy. Dawn and I were holding up our “tickets” in vain as the old man was swarmed by a mob of scrap paper-wielding would-be passengers. At that point I realized that this numbered scrap of paper system has some serious flaws, like the fact that scraps of paper are fairly easy to replicate. I mean… you don’t really “forge” a scrap of paper; you just have to make a scrap of paper and it ends up looking like every other scrap of paper. The old man should really consider moving to a barcode-based system. Anyhow, there were only a couple of seats left as we shoved our way to the front and I couldn’t enter until I’d secured our bags on top of the van. When I looked down I could see that Dawn had wedged herself into the entrance of the sliding door, bodily holding back a tide of angry Nicaraguans until I could fasten our bags. As surprise mixed with admiration and concern I must have sort of frozen because Dawn was staring at me with a gaze whose unspoken significance could only be interpreted as “Hurry the fuck up you idiot”. We scrambled inside and grabbed the last two seats, which were not really seats but lawn chairs with the legs removed so they could straddle the aisle allowing for maximum contact with our fellow sweaty passengers.
As we headed toward Matagalpa we passed several industrial coffee farms along the main road. They looked more like internment camps; walled compounds with raised guard towers where workers were using rakes to spread out the coffee beans to dry out in the sun. When we reached Matagalpa we switched from the minibus to a taxi to take us up into the mountains to Finca Esperanza Verde, the coffee farm lodge where we’d be spending the next couple of days. It took about 45 minutes to travel five miles up a dirt road through a couple of small villages until we reached FEV. The open-air lodge is located in the flat part of a mountain valley surrounded by tree-covered hills. Our cabin was a bit of a hike up from the lodge but from our balcony we had beautiful sunset views of the forested mountain landscape. There were only a handful of other guests staying at the Finca: Alex the German backpacker who just quit her job and decided to travel until her money ran out, John and Lizzie who were at FEV for a month on a project to catalog bird species and migrations for a museum in Tennessee, and James and his wife who were trying to negotiate the purchase of a nearby coffee farm. There was also Jacks the dog who spent almost the entirety of our second day acting as a trail guide and an annoying three-legged cat that decided that 6AM is a good time to plant yourself on our doorstep and start meowing. We spent the next couple of days enjoying the extensive network of hiking trails around the property surrounded by sloths, howler monkeys, migrating birds, chickens, dogs, trees, coffee, waterfalls, Ewok bridges and variably-legged cats. There was free coffee! We had a guided tour of the coffee farm where the coffee manager showed us the entire process from composting to planting, picking, sorting, milling and drying. FYI, bad beans float. Everything was done by hand except for the mill that ran on water power. Also… there was free coffee! The food was fantastic and the vegetables were grown onsite in the organic garden. It was dark by 7 and we were isolated enough where all you could hear were the sounds of the forest.
On our second night we were settling in for a good night’s sleep, or at least as good as you can have on a lumpy mattress under a mosquito net with a three-legged cat meowing outside, when a renegade gnat (or mosquito) decided to pierce the idyllic peacefulness of our natural surroundings. My rest was disrupted by a series of wild flagellations punctuated by exclamations of “ohmygodtheresabuginmyear” amid a stream of curses and weird squealy sounds. The next 15-20 minutes are kind of a blur. I watched helplessly as Dawn windmilled around the room chanting “Itsstillbuzzingitsstillbuzzingitsstillbuzzing”. I succumbed to the clutches of panic as one thought climbed to the surface: Vacation Over. I began to visualize the logistics of how exactly a helicopter would land in the coffee farm to airlift us out of there. Would we get adequate help in Managua or would Dawn insist on returning to a hospital in the US? Somewhere in the background I heard Dawn say something about bugs laying eggs in her brain but I was too preoccupied to pay attention. Is insect attack covered by travel insurance? What kind of claim forms would I have to fill out? If they had to cut out part of Dawn’s brain could she go on disability? What if they had to cut off her ear? Ewwww. Eventually the panic gave way to grave concern so we were able to consider possible solutions. The buzzing had stopped so either Dawn’s frantic head movements had shaken the bug loose or it was dead. We decided to go for a water flush and inspection just to be safe. Side note: You know you’ve reached a new level of intimacy in your relationship when you’re probing into your partner’s ear using an iPhone flashlight and a pair of tweezers. Anyhow… it was a long night. The next morning I went to breakfast and solicited help from some of the other guests. John said it happened to him once and he had a bug in his ear for two days before he could get it out. James said that one of his ex-girlfriends had a grasshopper fly directly into her earhole and get stuck, which sounds like something straight out of a cartoon. Since the buzzing was long-gone we decided to play it safe and get some isopropyl alcohol from the staff to flush out Dawn’s ear again. Crisis averted… or was it? I guess we won’t know until the egg gestation period has safely passed.
Granada
The city of Granada seems to be the traditional, colonial counterpart to Leon. Most of its buildings (including the b&b where we stayed) are those old haciendas with a central open-air courtyard that has either a garden or a fountain or both. Ours even had turtles. Our first night we wandered around the city admiring the colorful facaes and the central square that was bustling with food stall. The main cathedral probably the tallest building in the city, immaculately maintained and facing right onto the central square. The highlight of that first night, though, was seeing an old man successfully give his wife the Heimlich at dinner. The unfortunate combination of Purisma fireworks and mosquitoes (who happened to have an affinity for Dawn’s legs and, later, her face) combined to make it yet another rough night for sleeping.
On our second day we took a boat tour of Las Isletas, the chain of over 360 mostly private islands that lie just outside of Granada in Lake Nicaragua. Our guide Vladimir navigated us through the archipelago, pointing out many different species of migratory birds as well as the usual standbys of egrets, herons, vultures and crows. The individual islands all have power lines which extend in a webbed network from the city of Granada. A large portion of the homeowners only use the islands as vacation spots so quite a few locals are employed to simply maintain the properties. We saw camouflaged tree bats and visited Monkey Island where Dawn got a chance to feed Panchito the spider monkey. On the way back we saw a couple of fishermen fishing with nets and hauling in their daily catch of bass. In the afternoon we visited the Choco Museum, a touristy setup albeit with tasty chocolate liqueurs, and we climbed to the top of Las Maderas church for 360-degree views of the city. The most memorable activity of the day, though, was the night tour of the Masaya volcano. I had never seen real, actual lava flow in my life but it’s something that will stick with me forever. You can only stay at the viewing station for 15 minutes until they kick you out but I could have stared at that bubble and flow for hours. I was like Gollum… I wanted to dive in there. Swim in it. The raw power of the earth, man. That shit can be overwhelming when you’re face-to-face with it.
The next day was to be, sadly, the best beach day of our vacation (more on that in the next installment). It was a mostly uneventful day trip to Laguna de Apoyo, a freshwater lagoon that happens to be in the crater of an extinct volcano. Other than Dawn getting harassed by construction workers on our way down we had a pretty chill day laying in the sun, swimming in the crystal-clear and oddly mineral water and kayaking around the lagoon. When we got back to Granada we wandered around the public market so we could find a lady that made vigoron, a mixture of yucca, cabbage slaw and chicharrones served in a banana leaf that’s a local specialty of Granada. We also tried quesillos which are essentially tortillas with cheese although I’m not sure exactly how they differ from quesadillas or guirilas. There are a lot of dishes that combine some sort of cheese with a tortilla. Dawn also made me buy a disgusting candy apple from a street vendor that was so mealy it almost disintegrated upon contact with my mouth. I couldn’t even get a stray dog to eat it (true story).
One thing I also need to mention is that the breakfasts we had in Nicaragua were fantastic. Seriously. You should just visit the country to have breakfast. Nica breakfast with tortillas, pinto gallo, eggs and cheese. I mean, the food overall and especially the seafood was great… but the breakfasts. Damn. Too bad the coffee mostly sucked. All the good stuff gets exported so in-country you’re mostly stuck with “presto” a.k.a. instant coffee.
In the next installment: Isla de Ometepe, San Juan del Sur, and the Corn Islands.
Take ‘er easy,
Dave