Mar 2007

As promised, I've included a few more pictures taken over the last week of our travels through Nicaragua. But first, we've enjoyed our first few days in Costa Rica, including a combined hike of 15 kilometers through the wonderful Parque Rincon de la Vieja near the city of Liberia. The first hike was a loop around some cool geothermal features, including bubbling mud pots, a miniature volcano and a rather toasty lake.

The second hike took us to a great waterfall and a nice pool beneath it, which made for a welcome break after a 5 kilometer slog. Along the way, we spotted an agouti (like a giant squirrel with no tail), a coatamundi, a brown iguana, blue Morpho butterflies and two small coral snakes.

And in another rare sighting, we met up last night with a friend I hadn't seen in 18 years. Walter Cruz, who was an exchange student in Dodge Center, Minnesota, my senior year in high school, drove up with his lovely wife from their home an hour south of Liberia. It was great to catch up with Walter and meet his wife, and best of all, they didn't laugh too much at our weak Spanish. A great local story we heard from Walter, by the way, is that the people of Costa Rica jokingly refer to some missionaries as, uh, testicles. Why? They're always together and one is always bigger than the other.

OK, on to the pictures. The first is a view of Leon's cathedral from its central park.

The second is of a resident of Masaya and his faithful dog waiting for a blessing during the Magdalena Church's celebration of San Lazaro, somehow affiliated with pets.

And the third, my favorite, is of an up close and personal encounter that Geoff had with some local wildlife from the Isla de Ometepe.

When we last signed off, we were enjoying Nicaragua´s historical characters like the ugly, crazy top-heavy woman and the headless priest. The latter once lived in Old Leon, which we visited with a local guide. It´s supposed to be the Pompeii of Nicaragua, as the whole town was buried by the eruption of Volcan Momotombo.

Beforehand, however, said priest was beheaded under the colonial governor´s orders for defending the natives from some truly awful treatment, including branding them and unleashing hungry dogs on a group of warriors in a Colisseum-like plaza to dissuade the natives from rebelling. In quick succession after the priest´s untimely death, the city was hit by a hurricane, an earthquake and a volcanic eruption. The townsfolk decided the city was cursed and abandoned it before a second eruption sealed the deal.

Like the colorful legends, a lot of Nicaragua´s fascination lies in its striking juxtapositions. Wonderful birds flitting around a ruined city. Smoking volcanoes in the skyline of a vibrant city boasting a top-notch collection of modern art from Latin America (Centro de Arte Fundacion Ortiz-Guardia in Leon). And in Leon´s most popular hotel and restaurant, El Convento, a bizarre ceramic statue of the Pamela Anderson Lee of angels showing off her ample assets to a crowd of gawking children. Which was tastefully placed within eyeshot of a beautifully restored altar from the city cathedral.

We were even more surprised when we strolled to the very-well designed and hopping central park in Granada and stumbled upon a well-received drag show, complete with overwrought power ballads, high heels and tiaras. Not really what we were expecting to see in front of the cathedral.

Granada is a bit less rough around the edges than Leon and more popular with tourists. We thought its churches were less interesting, but a museum in a former convent (Convento de San Francisco) showed off some of the country´s prehistoric riches - a great set of stone statues carved in volcanic basalt about 1,000 years ago that are part human and part animal, such as bird, snake, jaguar or alligator.

We saw strange animals of another sort the next morning when, on a tip, we visited the nearby city of Masaya to witness the annual celebration of San Lazaro at a church called Magdalena. It´s not clear exactly how or why it all started, but the people of the city celebrate the patron saint of mascotas (or pets) by dressing up their dogs as pirates, gypsies, clowns and other characters and bringing them to church for a candle-lit blessing. And then to an outdoor stage for a costume contest.

The animal theme continued when we arrived in Isla de Ometepe, a wonderful island in Lago Nicaragua formed by two adjacent volcanoes and full of cool creatures like howler and white-faced capuchin monkeys and blue Morpho butterflies. Unbeknownst to us, however, the island was in its first full day of a tronque, or roadblock. Two sets of them, actually, exactly between where the ferry let us off in the town of Moyagalpa and where we needed to be. From what we heard, the locals very much want to add a third ferry to the island to boost tourism revenue and spread the wealth - a plan opposed by the current owner of the only two boats transporting people to Moyagalpa. To demonstrate their displeasure to his opposition, a bunch of islanders decided that no one was going to go anywhere. For three days.

Which allowed us plenty of time to observe the domestic pigs, horses, dogs, cows and yes, chickens that were all crossing the road at will. Luckily, we were able to get a taxi to the first set of roadblocks, walk through them and pay a pick-up truck driver to hustle us to the second set before the people there became overly testy. Our hotel had promised to have a van waiting for us after that one, but the driver chickened out after seeing the unhappy people manning the blockade. A helpful tip, by the way: smiling a lot and saying "Hola" repeatedly can do wonders when facing a potentially hostile crowd.

We were saved by a local bus, which just happened to be turning around after the last barricade and took us all the way to the Finca Magdalena, a huge old farmhouse on a cooperative coffee farm at the base of Volcan Maderas, near a small village called Balgue. We met some awesome fellow travelers while staying at the finca for three nights (a big shout out to Tom and Anna from Boston) and witnessed the biggest tarantulas we´ve ever seen. In the communal bathroom, actually.

Fortunately, we were staying in a cabana and only had two smaller tarantulas spending their evenings with us. Harmless, everyone kept saying. And then laughing. Curiously, you can see spider eyes very well at night if you´re wearing a headlamp; if your light shines at the right angle, the eyes reflect a bluish glow back at you and on a brief night hike we saw dozens of blue lights in the grass around us. Very cool. From a distance.

While on the island, we also swam in a beautiful spring-fed pool in the midst of a banana plantation and did a lot of walking along the roadside while waiting for sporadic buses, while watching white-faced capuchin
monkeys trying to steal eggs from some very noisy tropical bluejays. On the last full day of our stay, Volcan Maderas kicked our butts on a day hike that produced more sweat than we thought we were capable of. By four kilometers up the volcano, at which point the steep path of rocks and roots had turned to rocks, roots and mud, Geoff´s knee and my thigh had declared war on our bodies and we were forced to retreat. On the plus side, we saw some extraordinary butterflies while howler monkeys hooted all around us.

No lasting problems, and the roadblocks mercifully ended, allowing us to make our way to Liberia, Costa Rica last night - a little redder, sorer and, hopefully, wiser (more pictures coming soon).

After Copan, we made our way to Roatan in the Bay Islands and were treated to the Honduran portion of Central America´s impressive coral reef.

And in a strange testament to how small the world really is, our Roatan flat adjoined that of Richelle, Albi and Walker Huff, who once lived less than four blocks from us in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and have since moved to Minneapolis. Great folks and we really enjoyed eating, chatting and hanging out with them on our communal porch space.

In Roatan, I succeeded in not panicking on my first SCUBA dive (Geoff´s third) and we saw some interesting sea life though we´ve both admitted that we prefer snorkeling so far, especially since we swam with an amazing variety of tropical fish in a portion of the reef less than 25 yards from shore.

A view of a Roatan sunset:

After a few trying travel days that claimed a pocket knife (stolen in the airport) and a pair of jeans (ripped in a taxi), we made our way from Teguchigalpa with its thickets of razor wire and metal bar to the surprisingly arid and cactus-dotted north of Nicaragua.

Our introduction to the country was a bit bumpy - literally. After three hours of our "express" bus careening across an unpaved road to avoid the largest potholes, seemingly picking up anyone wandering along the roadside, nearly hitting a horse and almost claiming the foot of the vendor who had just sold us lard and pineapple-flavored cookies, we made our way past an impressive line of volcanoes and entered the city of Leon.

The colonial city and Sandinista stronghold is fascinating, with anti-U.S.A. murals, war memorials and bullet-scarred buildings, plenty of university students, beautiful but somewhat neglected old churches and Central America´s largest cathedral:

As in Copan, the city seems determined not to let anyone sleep in, with a jarring air-raid siren that sounds every morning at 7 a.m. Tradition, supposedly.

At a riveting but bizarre museum in the ruins of a notorious jail, our guide told us about the brutalities of Nicaragua´s Somoza dynasty, with some frank depictions of the types of torture practiced there by National Guardsmen under the dictator´s orders and newspaper photos of some of the many Leon residents who were killed or simply disappeared during the country´s civil war in the late ´70s.

Housed in the same building, however, are other rooms containing a hodge-podge of dioramas depicting Leon´s local legends, like the golden crab, haunted oxcart (complete with lit-up skulls, scary sounds and stuffed oxen) and the headless priest - actually a good guy who was a champion of the indigenous people but was beheaded by the Spanish and now wanders the streets, or at least in the stories told to scare misbehaving children. The same legends are also shown in mosaic form in the museum´s courtyard.

Here´s the haunted oxcart:

None of the legends, however, can compare with that of the local woman who was so ugly she couldn´t find a date, even after showing off her ample bosom - and yes, this is also lovingly depicted in the museum.

One of our last forays in Guatemala was to the gringo hippie enclave of San Pedro La Laguna, mostly out of sheer curiosity. Almost on cue, we were met at the dock by a guy who offered to play the bongos for us. Um, no. And then the local women and girls arrived en masse offering sweet rolls, banana bread and chocolate cake for sale. Interesting. Actually, the cake was pretty good, but we received several other offers which would have required the assistance of the U.S. State Department if we had accepted them.

After a brief return visit to Antigua, we moved on to Copan, Honduras to see the famous Maya ruins. First though, we saw some amazing birds at the nearby Macaw Mountain Bird Park and Nature Reserve. All of the birds are either unwanted pets or were found injured and now live in sizeable enclosures in a really pretty 10-acre setting. The park has 28 scarlet macaws, including 7 born in captivity through its breeding program, as well as an abundance of toucans, owls, hawks, parrots and other tropical beauties. Life for the inhabitants isn´t completely idyllic, as a boa constrictor once got into one cage and wolfed down a toucan, and opossums have been known to munch on the smaller birds from time to time, requiring the workers to set out traps. Still, the birds seem very well cared for and we got to hold several of the tamer ones in a cool interactive section of the park. And yesterday, when it was 100 degrees in the shade, we returned to have lunch and swim in the park´s great natural pool.

We also visited Hacienda San Lucas, a historic old farmhouse in the hills above town that´s now an inn and restaurant. We hiked to a small and strange Maya ruin on the property called Los Sapos, or The Toads, where some experts believe Maya women may have gone to give birth. Watching the sunset, drinking rum and lemonade, and eating a candelight dinner made in the hacienda´s original wood stove kitchen weren´t too shabby either.

And although we nearly melted in the sun, the ruins at Copan were really incredible, especially the detailed carvings and intricate heiroglyphic stairway. It´s amazing how archaeologists have been able to decipher the gyphs and understand a considerable amount about the ancient city, which seemed to have reached its peak in the 8th Century AD and may have supported up to 28,000 people within it and the surrounding valley. There´s a great museum right at the site, and a smaller but just as fascinating one in town.

Nearly as awesome was the Copan County Fair, or something suspiciously like a fair in New Jersey or Minnesota, complete with creaky rides (including a hand-turned Ferris wheel and a Tilt-a-Whirl that looked like it was a few loose bolts away from whirling through the fields), good greasy fried chicken and fireworks. A bit more irritating, though, has been the preferred way of drumming up visitors: a particularly loud burst of fireworks at 4 a.m. followed by a meandering van fitted with a loudspeaker.

Finally, we received a birds-eye view of the Copan Valley earlier today with a ridiculously fun but slightly terrifying canopy tour that involved 14 cables. Our young but professional guides seemed rather amused at our wide-eyed responses to their innocent suggestions, like telling us it might be a good idea to brake a bit early on the 1 km-long cable dangling over a particularly steep ravine, or encouraging us to dangle upsidedown during our slide down another cable and letting them brake for us (which we did and survived to our astonishment), or goading us into flying like Superman down the final cable while they held our legs from behind.

Yes, we did that too, and then laughed in relief like five-year-olds. As an added bonus, I now have a particularly good blackmail photo of Geoff hanging upsidedown. Coincidentally, the ancient symbol of Copan is also a bat.

First, a word of thanks to President Bush: due to his arrival in Guatemala, the country´s principal highway has been completely shut down, stranding us for an extra day by a stunning crater lake surrounded by three spectacular volcanoes.

Which isn´t to say that Bush is necessarily receiving a warm welcome by the people here. A guest at our hotel told us he attended a big demonstration in the capital where protestors were spraypainting slogans on nearly everything that wasn´t moving (including buses caught in traffic). The worker at another hotel today swatted the television with a newspaper when Bush appeared live. Mayan priests are planning to re-purify some ruins after the president´s visit. And the press has had a field day, especially after the recent detention of illegal Guatemalan workers in Massachusetts, during which no one at INS seemed to remember that the children might need to be looked after during their parents´detention. Oops.

A political cartoonist for the Prensa Libre captured it all with a panel showing unhappy demonstrators greeting Bush with various slogans like "Go away" while a young girl holds another sign saying, "I want my Mommy."

On our last day of Spanish class in Antigua (a fairly successful venture), two American fighter jets zoomed overhead as part of the Bush preparations, emptying the classrooms as teachers and students laughed nervously about what is an exceedingly rare sight - and sound - in the city. Our host mother, Dilia, told us later she thought it was a nearby volcano erupting.

Here's a view of another one, called Volcan de Agua, which we saw every morning on our way to school.

Besides the impromptu air show, we were treated to some wonderful home cooking and awesome views of the volcanoes and ruins. The most interesting tour, though, was when we visited the museum where our host mother's youngest daughter works: El Museo Vigua de Arte Precolumbino y Vidrio Moderno (but the Web site doesn't really do it justice).

Like the huge Casa Santo Domingo hotel around it, the museum incorporates the ruins of a colonial church and convent. Our sister for the week is not only the curator but also an artistic director and restorer of many of the old ceramic and stone pieces, some of which date back more than 2,000 years. Amazingly, many of them have been found by workers on the museum owner's fincas, or plantations. Even better, our sis had great stories about ghostly presences at the site, including the time she was restoring an unusual Mayan burial jar with skulls on its lid and it kept moving around on her. Another time, her boss was examining a jade hatchet and wondering about its function when a ghostly voice said, "para matar," or "to kill." And finally, she swears that a photo of her with another restored jar depicts a mysterious light, and in the foreground, the image of a friar bowed in prayer. Spooky.

On to Lago Atitlan, where we're watching live coverage of Bush's visit and waiting out the first downpour of the trip at a hippy enclave called San Pedro La Laguna. We arrived Saturday and stayed two nights at a ridiculously amazing hotel called La Casa del Mundo that's perched on the hillside above the deep crater lake. From our room, we had unbelievable views of two more volcanoes across the lake. Like this one:

And this one:

In a fitting end to our first night at the hotel, we soaked with other guests from around the world in a wood stove-heated hot tub overlooking the lake, told ghost stories and marvelled at the brilliant stars overhead.