Volcanic Sandinista Colonic
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2006
1
93
110
Trip End
Apr 01, 2008
Granada,
Nicaragua
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Instead, I decided to go Granada, one of Nica's two preserved colonial towns. This meant three hours on a chicken bus. There was no livestock, but those school bus seats were not designed for my legs or ass for on a Nicaraguan road without air conditioning and a large local woman squeezed in next to me. This is supposedly the second poorest country in Latin America, behind only Bolivia, and, at least based on the roads, I believe it.
Which leads to a digression. This is a country of contrasts. It is poor, but the people are happy, outgoing and friendly. (It used to be quite rich, but a 1972 earthquake, the Somozas' brazen theft of the relief money, their execution of an opposition newspaper editor, the subsequent revolution by the Sandinistas and Daniel Ortega, and the economic war waged by the U.S
Bromeliads in the Cloud Forest
. through the CIA selling arms and drugs to fund the Contras, ravaged it.) But despite that poverty, it feels much safer than the other countries I have been through so far. Partly, I think it is because there are far fewer Alzheimer patients and 8th grade dropouts slinging shotguns on the streets, partly because the guidebooks do not contain the usual portents of doom, and partly because I read an angry rant on a website by some expat challenging another poster for suggesting there was virtually any violent crime or theft more serious than pickpocketing against tourists. He demanded proof and received none. (Sound familiar, GAs?).Too, Nicaragua has been a democracy since the end of the Contra-Sandinista civil war in 1990, when they rejected Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in favor of the first popularly elected woman President of a Latin American country, although Nica is far from a model of women's rights, being one of only three countries in the world where abortion is legal under no circumstances (and the other two are also Catholic, not Muslim). Nica continued for the next 16 years to elect leaders other than the Sandinistas and achieve some growth, although one of those leaders was sentenced to 20 years for corruption. But in 2007, the two main opposition parties' joint choice for president died a few weeks before the election, so their votes were split in the election, allowing Daniel Ortega to return to office with just 35% of the vote. However, he appears to be a changed man
Bus Terminal
. Although he still talks populist rhetoric, he is has embraced power, money and graft like a seasoned professional pol, and concomittantly suffers the dull criticism of being a rank hypocrite while using 500 cordoba bills as Kleenex when he rubs one out.What remains somewhat unknown is whether the growth and foreign development that occurred between 1990 and 2007 will continue, but it appears so since Ortega has agreed to many projects favoring foreign investment and development at the expense of the poor he gives lip service to, including giving the convicted opposition leader all sorts of perks in exchange for that opposition party teaming up with the Sandinistas on legislation. And there does seem to be a lot of development for a country that has no money or resources (no hydrocarbons have been extracted here in over 30 years, but Nica sold exploration rights for a cool $50 million) other than coffee (its main export) and eco-tourism, using Costa Rica as their model since Nica has all the same sorts of rain forest, cloud forests, volcanos, Pacific and Caribbean beaches, and indigenous peoples as its much more prosperous neighbor.
And it does seem to be working. Tourism is clearly booming, with beach developments being scarfed up by Americans and Canadians. Further, I cannot blow cigar smoke without hitting a humanitarian or voluteer of some sort or another. I have met all sorts of volunteers, interns, and parents of volunteers and interns. Or, as one bar owner in Granada explained it to me, "You see how my staff is all bi-lingual
Colonial Buildings
. They didn't used to be. A year and a half or two years ago I realized I needed them to be, so they learned or I got new staff."Granada itself reminded me of Antigua, Guatemala in that it is a well-preserved colonial town, with brighly painted buildings, a pretty Central plaza and park, churches littered about like dog droppings, a nearby volcano towering above it, and a lot of people speaking Spanish. It also has a very international feel due to expats, numerous Spanish-language schools (and the students that for some reason seem go with them), and a main drag with every type of restaurant one could want except Nicaraguan. Plus, there are two sports bars with multiple TVs. The differences include that it is hotter. This is despite being on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America (which was used, along with a railway, to cross the Isthmus before the Panama Canal was built). They also handmake better cigars, and the rum is dangerously cheap. For example, one "promocion" I stumbled across was 3 (smallish - 1 oz. or so) shots of the 4, 5 or 7 year-old rums for 25 cordobas, or $1.30. But even the normal price for a double shot is around $2.00, which is scary. You can get bottle service at bars for $7.50 a bottle.
As alluded to, the food was international and nothing too spectacular. The best meal I had was the first night at the Alabama Rib Shack Bar and Grill, aka "Three-Fingers Jimmy's" because the guitar playing owner only has three fingers on one hand after a saw accident
Crater
. I had the steak and ribs combo, which was very good, and met the three-fingered man himself because he came out of the kitchen to meet the very unusual gringo - me - who ordered his steak rare in Guatemala. Apparently, the rest of you pikers are too afraid of the beef, even though everything he uses is from the U.S. (Otherwise, my meals were mediocre chicken, mediocre hamburgers, and mediocre lasagna.) That first night (Saturday) was the only bustling nightlife night. I spent the early part of the evening talking to a Canadian who sells real estate in Colombia and was a typical liberal expat doomsayer who has convinced himself that the US and Canadian economies are going to crash like the Great Depression and who guaranteed me that Bush would attack Iran before the election, saying "Let's talk in 5 months." Nah, I'll pass. You had no support for your contentions other than your beliefs, which unsurprisingly supported the life choice you made. You secretly hope for the disaster because it would legitimize your decision to sell everything you own and leave your friends and family as prophetic. Because, otherwise, your Chicken Little spiel is just a disguise for a fear-mongering method of selling Costa Rican real estate to support your quest for the young "chicas" (translation: putas) that disappointed you and your 53-year old limp dick that night at Jimmy's. (Like The Place That Shall Not Be Named, I saw and met a lot of aging boomers with, engaged, or married to young Nica chicas.) Later, though, at the happening Cafe Nuit quasi-outdoor salsa disco, I met a much more interesting Harvard Business School post-grad who was working with a charitable trust to create a village and jobs in a rural part of Nicaragua
Earthquate Crevasse
. Unfortunately, he had a penis.Sunday I just wandered the town. I watched a little soccer (Euro 2008 just started and all the expats and travellers are glued to the screens just like during the World Cup in 2006 in Europe). I saw cows playing baseball (see pic). I talked to some of the Nicas, who, like Cubans, seem to live their lives completely publicly, with open doors exposing their living rooms and at tables out on the street in front of their homes, as I walked by them. I went down to the lake, but it is not really a swimming lake and it looked pretty grubby. One can take boats or ferrys from there, though, to the near by 350 islands formed by the last eruption of Volcan Mombacho 20,000 years ago, some of which have private hotels and/or dive sites, but I didn't do that. After dinner, though, I went to Zoom Bar and had a very interesting conversation with the owner and a British guy who had just started Granada first English-language newspaper about Nicaragua, its economy, and its politics, some of which is summed up above. I did exercise some tact, however, and not mention my views on expat marriages to child Nica brides once it was mentioned that the owner was married to a Nicaraguan woman. I didn't know her age and I chose not to ask.
On Monday, I toured Mombacho volcano, which is just a few kilometers away. As this is low season and it was a Monday, I received a private tour. David, my tour guide, rocked. His English was excellent as was his command of the flora and fauna of the cloud forest at the top of the volcano
Hotel Courtyard
. We went through another coffee plantation on the way up, and I learned, among other things, that a picker makes about $10 per day. Up in the reserve we saw a sloth, barely, because it was sleeping and not terribly visible or exciting, several liazards, including an iguana that must have been close to 3 feet long, steaming fumeroles (although the volcano has been dormant for 18,000 years or so), the foliage filled crater, some interesting bugs, and bucket loads of interesting flowers, orchids, epiphytes and bromeliads, but the wildest thing was this 25-foot wide, four-foot wide, and many yards long crevasse that had been opened by an earthquake that is best described by referring to my pictures. Finally, Monday night was so mellow in town it's barely worth mentioning; watching the Giants sweep the Nationals was the highlight.So with that, if you are interested in more, I just now found an eeriely similar, but somewhat more fleshed out, version of what I just said from the NY Times travel section. (I even saw two of the drum and marionette bands he mentions.) Next up:
San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua
