Adventure/Holyoke

I offer this account of my three weeks in Nicaragua in spite of the fact that I am not sure it is worth reading. Take a look if you like. For those of you who need help, Nicaragua is in Central America, northwest of Costa Rica and southeast of Honduras. The capitol, and only international airport, is Managua.
    Beth and I flew from Columbus to Ft Lauderdale on Tuesday June 26.   After waiting hours in the airport, Tristan joined us from New York. We waited more hours and then took a flight to Managua, arriving a bit past midnight. Walked across street to Best Western. Worried that they would not permit three people in room with two double beds, because their written material said just that. left Tristan sitting on planter/bench out front. Given lack of activity, figured we were not fooling anyone. Made friends with desk clerk, went to room, looked for back-way to sneak tris in. No back way, of course, what kind of security would that be? Went out and walked Tris thru front door, No problem. If friendly desk clerk had not been busy with another set of arrivals, would he have been obliged to bust us? And the security guy, who i am sure knew Tris had been out there waiting for us, did he have his back to us, watching the TV, on purpose? It was an auspicious start to our stay; the Nicaraguans were good to us through-out our trip, until the last transportation we took, the taxi to the airport. I will leave that ending story for the end. Nobody else tried to screw us too bad as far as we could tell, and people were friendly.
    Next morning at 10am we took a pre-arranged shuttle service to San Juan Del Sur. It is a beach town on the Pacific coast, maybe 15 miles from the Costa Rican border. Our vehicle was a mini van, the three of us in the back and the driver's wife and baby in the front. I was surprised by the lack of crazy-busy traffic (total opposite of Vietnam) and pleased with our driver's caution, which I attributed to his valuable front-seat cargo. The 2 hour ride cost us $100. I think it was two hours, but I fell asleep. I didn't want to miss a thing, especially for $100, but i couldn't help myself.   i was viewing everything at such an intense level that i had to take a nap. Beth and Tris told me what i missed: a puma, a 23 car pile-up and two comets.
    I don't think i have ever seen as steep a driveway as the one up to the Pelican Eyes Resort. With a rolling start, we made it, though. We were welcomed at reception with a delicious fruit drink for each of us and a blank stare in response to my name. I started trying other names: Bruce Morgan, Phil Corns, Rich whose last name I couldn't remember. I asked if the words "time share" were applicable. The place looked awfully damn classy; I started to worry about getting stuck with paying full-price. This couldn't be Bruce's idea of a joke, would it? Nooo! Finally the lovely lass behind the desk asked me to write my name and recognition dawned on her face. I guess i wasn't saying "Holyoke" right.
    We had a lovely week there. Great view from our Casa Ensueno (pronounced ensuenio). Great access to the swimming pool (also with a great view). Great exercise climbing stairs, all 335 of them from the resort entrance to our casa. You want a good view you gotta climb some serious stairs. Great breezes. Tristan's girlfriend, Erica, joined us for 8 days. Other things we did that week: Changed dollars to Cordobas at the bank. The guard who stands outside the bank with the big gun and the wand waves the wand around you and tells you to turn off your cell phone and remove your hat. Once he has gotten that message through to you, he signals the guard on the inside with the small gun to open the door. There you join the line (very long line on Saturday and Monday mornings). When it is finally your turn, the cashier asks for your passport, which is back in the safe in the bedroom. Only one bank in town is satisfied with my driver's license. 23 Cordobas equals 1 Dollar. People are happy to be paid in dollars, but it was less confusing to use cordobas. Watched some European Championship Soccer. Read books. Walked around town. Bought groceries at the tienda. Fifth of Flor De Cana rum; 170 Cordobas. Victoria Beer and Tona (tonia) around 120 cordobas a six, i think. That would be a bit more than $5. We eventually found it a bit cheaper from the distributor. Beer in the restaurants catering to tourists was 30 cords. 20 cords in the cheapest restaurants. We were told that $10/day was a good wage for a construction worker, so i am guessing that beer drinking is not a big activity with the working class.
    Bought fruit in the market. Mostly bananas, also mangoes, watermelon, avocados, onions, garlic. Hiked up hill on point at south end of town to old fortification for view of coast to south. Could see mountains on the Costa Rican coast.
    Books i read on my summer vacation: two P. G. Wodehouse books. Enjoyable, but interchangeable with any other two Wodehouse books. The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Occasionally tedious but well worth it. Flowers for Algernon. I must have been gone when it was assaigned reading in school. Enjoyed it. And lastly, a novel set in San Juan Del Sur written by a proffesor from San Juan's sister city of Newton, Mass. It was pretty good and very interesting, and a copy signed by the author, but i cannot remember the name.
    We didn't swim on the town beach - lots of people did, and it looked clean enough, but we waited and took the beach shuttle from one of the many hostels. There are also many places renting surf boards and offering lessons. Tris and I rented boards and tried surfing a couple days. I cannot claim that we had a lot of success, but we had enough to want to keep trying. I got my head plowed into the sandy bottom hard enough to be a little more scatterbrained than usual for a few minutes, not that anyone could tell.
    I got a shave at a barber shop. He gave me the pencil-thin mustache. 70 cordobas.
    On July Fourth we moved to Austin and Michelle's house. Beth met them at a Natural Plastering Workshop in Arizona last year. Beth and Austin were the two people in the workshop using plastering in their work, so they were asking lots of questions, i am told. Austin was known as Senor Pregunta (Mr. Question). Anyway, they have a really nice house they had built on the north side of town on the Chocolat road. No, the road is not chocolate, but it is the way to get to Chocolate. They built a cute little strawbale house out front on the road for their man and his family to live in. It seems that every fancy house in Nicaragua has either a security guard or an onsite cottage for a watchman. Their watchman, Jordan is a great guy, speaks very good English, and performs many more functions than just watching.
    My first priority at the new location was to get a bike to ride. They had a couple, but they needed work, which another of the employees and i did. Thereafter i was able to take early morning rides out the Chocolat road. I saw a house with a sign that said "Bavaria Pequena," of which i took a picture for Kaethi. I saw a dead monkey, probably a Howler Monkey hit by a truck. I saw the smoldering dump, with about a hundred vultures. Sometimes I biked the other direction, into town. Bikers had to walk their bikes across the awesome suspension bridge, probably 50 feet tall and a couple of hundred feet long. Pedestrians only, cop on the town end to bust anyone who tries riding. In Nicaragua security guards are cheap and plentiful.
    Tris and I paid the thirty bucks for Da Flying Frog Canopy Tour. 17 platforms, 16 ziplines. It was fun. I am glad we did it. But it was not what i would call a tour of the canopy. A tour of the canopy would involve some thoughtful observation of aerial life. Our guides unclipped and clipped us from one zipline to the next fast enough to make our heads spin. I was confused when our guide stopped to point out a spiderweb; I thought we were in a hurry! I think the whole trip took about a half an hour, including 10 minutes to drive to the top. I asked our guide if they ever tried to see how fast they could do the whole course. He said "oh yeah, 8 minutes, but we didn't use all the safety clips."
    There is a huge statue of Jesus overlooking town. We hiked up to it. Turns out the driveway to Pelican Eyes is not so steep after all. You all know me and my confidence on a bike! OVER-CONFIDENCE, some say. Well, i walked the bike up a few hills (nothing unusal in that), but until this trip i never would have been such a wuss as to walk a bike DOWN a hill.
    On Wednesday, July 11, we finally got off our butts and went traveling. Taxi to Lake Nicaragua (otherwise known as Lake Cocibolca), ferry to Moyogalpa, on the island of Ometepe. Took our first Chicken bus of the trip. One of the passengers indeed had a chicken, trussed up in a newspaper, with a plastic strap for a carrying handle. Skirted the active volcano, Conception, then across the isthmus, where the road turned really lousy, and then part way around the inactive volcano, Maderas. We got off at the very end of the bus route (no chance to miss your stop that way). We stayed two nights at the Hacienda Merida. The proprietor explained his novel program for cleaning up the locality. Every day that a person comes to work at Hacienda Merida, he or she has to supply to the resort with a plastic two-liter pop or water bottle stuffed full with trash. He has accumulated 16,000 fo them. What will he do with 16,000 pop bottles full of trash? He has used them as filler in a concrete table with concrete stools around it. Also as filler in a concrete floor for a school house he is building. The walls of the school house are built with earth-bags (think sand bags) and he has replaced some of those with stacked bottles.
    While there, we rented kayaks and hired a guide for a paddle to a swamp. We saw some Howler Monkeys. Live ones, this time. We saw 2 caimans. That is a type, or relative, of the alligator. Tris got a picture, and would have gotten a picture of the caiman jumping into the water, but when the caiman jumped, so did Tris.
    We took the chicken bus out of there and almost missed our stop: Ojo de Agua: Eye of the Water. It is a lovely freshwater spring. Gravel bottom, concrete steps around the edge. Rope swing. Very refreshing. From there we hiked a ways until a taxi happened along and took us to the ferry. The ferry was built in 1986 in Germany and was big enough for 3 semi-trucks and a couple hundred people. How did it get upriver past the rapids to this lake, i wonder?
    From the ferry dock we took another taxi (we thought about a chicken bus, but it was late afternoon and raining, and the driver agreed on a reasonable price) to Granada, which claims to be the first European city in mainland America. We stayed three nights at the Hostel Oasis. Our first night there, for the first time on our trip, we felt the need for airconditioning. So we transfered to a room with nighttime airconditioning. They turn the circuit breaker off during the day, there will be no lazing about in coolness during the day! A block away was the market, but even closer the sidewalks were clogged with vendors. I was intrigued by the vendors of videos, who had tvs on the sidewalk and were sampling their own wares. In the other direction was one of the many old churches, this one with a bell tower open to the climbing public. 20 cordobas, 65 steps up a spiral staircase, great view of the city. It was only from above that we could see that the city's character was defined as much by the courtyards as by the high-walled buildings crowding the street.
    Beth and I swallowed our pride and signed up for a tour, with Tourists. It is wat it is, we are what we are. We got a tour of the Mombacho Volcano. It was COLD and misty when we got out of the back of the truck at the top, but it cleared up enough for us to not freeze and to view Granada and the lake and the islands. We felt hot steam coming to us directly from the center of the earth!
    I got my second, and final, shave of the trip. This barber, in addition to the pencil-thin mustache, trimmed my nose hair and decimated my eyebrows. 60 cordobas.
    Beth and i went to a museum to see pre-columbian statues, and attempted to decipher the placards from espanol to ingles.
    Finally, it was time to go home! Tris took the chicken bus back towards San Juan Del Sur and we took the "Express" bus to Managua. As far as i can tell, the difference between the chicken bus and the express bus is that the driver of the express bus doesn't slow down quite as much when he sees a potential rider standing by the side of the road. All bus drivers seem convinced that a loud horn, a trumpet, really, blown with enough frequency, will ensure a full bus. Add to that the conductor, leaning out the door, yelling "nagua, nagua, Managua!!! Meanwhile, the target audience, the person standing by the road, usually at a bus stop shelter, is studiously staring off in another direction, surely aware of the commotion, and very concious that if they so much as peek at the approaching bus the driver will likely slam on the brakes and put the bus into a fourwheel slide and then be pissed at them if they don't get on.
    We end our sojourn in Nicaragua, unfortunately, on a diagreeable note. Our final taxi ride, from the bus station to the airport, ended with an argument about the price. You will have my side of the story, and you will be satisfied. He named a price; $20. That would be 460 cordobas. I countered; 350 cordobas. He and his confederate agreed with alacrity. On arrival at the aeropuerto i did not have small bills, so was forced to ask him for change from 400 cordobas. He said we agreed on $20. I told him that he and his buddy agreed to 350 cordobas. We went back and forth like that a bunch of times with no variation at all, because neither of us had the vocabulary, which is just as well, because he wouldn't have been happy with the names i would have called him. I did not get any change from my 400 cordobas, but what bothered me was that that wasn't good enough for him. He still wanted the $20. However, I would like to make clear that that was our only experience of bad faith/communication on the whole trip, other than Spirit Airlines and their outlandish extra charges. One of their charges was called "unintended consequenses." You probably think i made that up.