Emolyn’s Travel Snapshots

Our boat on the tour of Las Isletas

The sun rises slowly but the noises of morning come suddenly. I’m used to hearing roosters alarm sleepers that morning has risen, but here a large community (or so it sounds) is quacking and twittering “get up, get up.” As I stand in the yard a parade of animals make their debut, one at a time. A pig is scoffing his nose in the dirt and in seconds a chicken and her chicks come shuffling through in a line. They flip leaves over to see if a worm or bean lays underneath. A dog who has seen better days wanders through looking for any resemblance of breakfast. It dawns on me, poor dogs, that they don’t have it as easy as the other animals because they don’t eat grass or leaves. Minutes later, a sheep makes an appearance. Her fleece is short almost like a cow, not soft like the wool my mother uses to spin and knit. A woolly sheep would be miserable in this ninety degree heat. A minute later I compare her fiber with a goat’s that is chewing its way through the yard. Taking no notice of me, it eats down the path like a lawn mower, out to the trees. It’s only 6 a.m. and already I have been given a tour of domesticated animals in Arenal, Nicaragua.

Today we are going to Granada, on the northwestern side of Lago de Nicaragua, and I wait for the sound of Donald’s truck. Donald is a produce farmer and coordinator of sorts for other farmers in his community. He is also the driver for the village. He honks and I take the dirt path down from Patti’s house, where I am staying with her and her five year-old daughter. We pick up others and by the time we leave Masatepe, we are three in the front and six in the back. I speak with Marta, the school teacher, while we head down the road, but soon the wind carries away my words and I seek refuge on the bed of the truck behind the cab.

art in Granada

I am excited to see the colonial city, one of Nicaragua’s most affluent, and still one of the most popular. Over the years, the city has been redeveloped, old homes renovated, historic buildings restored, thus becoming a tourism model for the rest to the country. As we park the camioneta in the city center, I can see Volcan Mombacho, the highest point in the distance with its crumbled top. I am not used to seeing volcanoes, being from southeastern US, and they continue to fascinate me. Nearby the vibrant yellow Cathedral of Granada is full and still filling with people dressed in white for el Purisima on December 8th. Inside the massive building, rows of people hold hands with family members to sing and celebrate the Virgin Mary. Outside in the plaza others are watching the scurry of people, eating platano or slippery papaya, or catching up with friends. Our group takes a seat at a bench and Donald passes a bag of salty platano around for us too. The thin fried vegetable is more than addictive. I may just have to eat it…all the time.

My friend and I walk around the streets, wandering to comfortable coffee shops and cafes, that are well established here for the constant flow of travelers. At a book store with over-priced novels in English, we purchase the guide book “Moon Nicaragua”, again, because ours was stolen. A little spiteful, we spend the money anyway, but at $20? Used? Fuming a little about robbery and why…WHY!, my gaze falls on an open building with paintings inside. The walls are covered with images; to the right, left, on the tables, on the shelves. I flip through some dry heavy canvases and I can’t stop looking at the brilliant oil colors. I wander to the courtyard in the back and watch two painters leaning in over their easels in concentration.

Later, we pile into the back of the truck again and I’m buckled in by hope that we won’t have a road accident. When we get to the shore of Lago de Nicaragua, I can’t help but stand, belly up to the back of the cab, and watch Las Isletas de Granada wisp by. “How fortunate we are,” I think with wind in my face “to have hosts show us around instead of being a tourist.” Do they know how much they are giving us just by being in our company?

In a motor boat, we venture out into the lake. The three hundred or so small islands were once the top of the towering Mombacho, until it exploded and formed the archipelago. I read in my new guide book that it happened twenty-thousand years ago. Now it is home to families who row a boat to church and school. If I’d grown up here, instead of wanting a car when I turned sixteen, I would have begged and pleaded with my dad, “Pleeeease can I have a row boat? I’m old enough now!” We cross the lake and the driver idles the boat by a shore. Then I hear him say, “Mira, los arboles!” I look up wondering what he’s talking about. Finally I see the small furry face looking at us through the leaves. The monkey poses childlike, curious about yet another boat cruising past his limited habitat.

After a long day we leave Granada for the countryside. On the way home, I am cuddled behind the cab again while most everyone is dozing. While I sit there, the events of the day come back to mind. The ceremony in the cathedral, the plaza, and the boat tour of the islands. Then I remember the painting workspace. I can still see the colors, remember sifting through the images, and the mere quantity of it all. The more I think about it, I realize it wasn’t the artwork that attracted me inside the building. It was the feeling of comfort to see people working out of interest, not solely for income. The painters were absorbed in something stronger than any chaotic surrounding, any place of haggling, or uncertainty outside in the streets, inside homes, and neighborhoods, where the next meal may not be laid on the table, and people often go without help. The canvases displayed a people who had found support from somewhere, monetary or not, and a tranquil place to work. A small particle can flourish and people will pursue their interests, if let alone to do it.

Posted by Emolyn Liden, Dec. 2009

Emolyn´s Travel Snapshots

Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua

We got a fresh start on December 1 out of San Juan del Sur, juiced up at Margarita’s restaurant and hopped on the chicken bus, like in the movies, right as it pulled out of town. We slumped into a sticky plastic seat and low and behold, our Japanese surfing friend was sitting across the aisle. ¨Hey! How have you been?¨ He asked. ¨Well….¨ We told him what happened during the twenty-four hours since we had last seen him. ¨Oh. I´m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Did they let you keep your memory card?¨ Somehow it´s so easy to cross between serious and comical and his comment was just enough to push us over into laughter. The memory was still too fresh in my mind and I flashed back to the terrifying moment the men advanced on us, covered their faces with their t-shirts, and flashed the foot-long butcher knives. ¨No, surprisingly they didn´t give us that option.¨

In Rivas we got off the bus in the middle of what I see as chaos, but is actually the open market. ¨¿Donde esta la iglesia?¨ The answer came in the form of “4 north, 2 east” which meant we responded by going in the direction where he pointed, and turning in the direction where he pointed. Once in front of the church we marveled at the activity surrounding the square. The open church stood empty and upon entering I felt like a ghost in an unattainable story. An ocean scene depicting sinking ships and crying people adorned the dome. We found no material to read in order to make sense of it or of the history which radiated from the dilapidated building.

In San Jorge we boarded a ferry to Ometepe and sat in the first place with air conditioning that we´ve found other than the bank. Going without air conditioning is preferable to me and really, why should we have the choice anyway? Outside the window, the island became larger, and soon the view enticed me more than the soap opera on TV. I understood more of the story line, for that I give credit to my wonderful Spanish teachers in San Juan del Sur. I didn´t learn the right vocabulary for the show, however, but the actors repeated things more than once which lowered the comprehension level. ¨Te amo! Te quiero!¨

After we pulled in to the port, we got on a bus in Moyogalpa that was headed for Merida. Three hours or approximately twenty miles later, depending on how you want to look at it, we had circumvented the island and arrived at Hacienda Merida. For most of the drive, the bus was packed, chaotic, and hot. But as evening approached, the horizon turned a fiery red, Spanish rock music played on the radio, for once not too loudly, and the driver hustled the retired American school bus down the dirt road into the sunset. It was a few minutes of peace in the long day of travel. Houses and life of the land swept by, and I was no longer sweating, just sticky almost to a fly-paper degree. At the end of the drive, the bus driver waved us back into our seats while he turned the bus around and backed it up into a little alley way. Then they shooed us out the backdoor. I had a moment´s thought. We were approaching unknown territory once again and I hoped someone or something would be there to take care of us.

The sun rises at 5 a.m. and we rose at 6 with the birds. Before long, with a pack weighed down by water and sweet biscuits from a small roadside tienda we were saying hello to the pigs, chickens, dogs, horses, and children as we walked towards Cascada San Ramon. We were on the lookout for hmmm….a yellow? gate? Feeling one-half tourist, one-half investigator, we found it and on we went up into the mango and citrus orchard.

I could hear the water but couldn’t see it around each bend and nook. No water. Eventually we approached a river bed and snaking through the dusty rocks was a black pipe. Could it be, the whole river was being piped down to the village? We followed the pipeline until the trail crumbled into the river bed where, trickle trickle, came the stream. The sides of the mountains steepened and the river embedded deeper into the ground. Soon we were traipsing in a fern valley. At the fall, the water hurdled 56 meters off a smooth black rock wall into a small knee deep pool, more like a large puddle. On either side, ferns, moss and green goo grew under the mist. We waded in the moment.

Posted by Emolyn Liden 10 Dec 2009

We have been lucky in many ways so far in Central America, the first being that my Costa Rican friend, Jorge, picked us up from the airport.  I guess because I was raised in a small town, I noticed quickly how houses had fences around the properties securing them from the street and people passing outside.  I couldn´t help but wish it didn´t have to be this way, though it led me to enjoy the feeling of discovery once inside my friends house even more.  Other worlds existed behind the simple appearance from the street.

The first morning, Jorge´s mother, Maria, took us to a park to see flora and fauna of Costa Rica.  To get there we walked on the skinny shoulder of a main road where cars were driving from San Jose in to Heredia.   “The Costa Ricans have pledged to take care of the wildlife here,” Maria said while cars zoomed by on the hot black road.  It seemed to me that she was not afraid of anything.  She continued the talk while dump trucks down shifted and pulled up the hill.  We approached a bridge and the luxury of a sidewalk.

Maria stopped us for a moment on the bridge and we looked below at a shack.  All I could see was a rippled tin roof and other pieces of metal puzzled together, in the tropical bushes.  Then directly under me, I saw hands reach out, pick up a plastic bowl, and begin washing it in the tub of water.  I was standing in the exact spot as this person, but on the level above, and the hands that were reaching from under the shade continued washing.  They dumped water from one tub to another, over the bowl, then scrubbed it with a sponge, and dumped rinse water over it.  “This man is from Nicaragua,” Maria said.  “The police come here and take people away every few days.  It is empty for a while, then another person is living here.”  She clarified that those who occupy this hut do not have papers and they come to Costa Rica for work.   Is this situation better than in Nicaragua?  They have left the place that I am about to travel to.

In the biological park Maria spoke with wisdom once again.  When an iguana pooped on my friend she said, ¨You are lucky cows don´t fly.¨  We left San Jose the next day in a downpour.  In moments the streets filled with water and rivers gushed in the ditches.  ¨We have two big problems in Costa Rica,¨ Maria had said, ¨trash and pot holes.¨  Now in the car, Jorge dodged the pot holes as best he could on the way to the bus station.  The windshield wipers swooshed back and forth at the highest speed.

Just over the border we got off the bus headed for Rivas and waved down a taxi that was going to San Juan del Sur.  I saw two passengers already sitting in the back seat and thought there wasn’t room for two more.  But, how silly of me! The driver popped open the trunk and made room for our two backpacks in amongst the stacks of eggs he was also shuttling.  I scooted in beside the two others and my friend took the front.  We arrived in the center of San Juan del Sur in ten minutes, while I learned about taxis ¨collectivo¨ which seems to be a great idea.

Four days into the classes we were cheerful.  We studied in the morning and by twelve each day we were off to one of the many options for site seeing.  Surfing is the most popular activity, besides drinking during sunset at restaurants that line the beach.  Shuttles run back and forth to the nearby spots where surfers write their names in the waves.  Other businesses offer a canopy tour, similar to a high ropes course; the turtle excursion; booze cruise; and then plain old hiking in the mountains on the northern and southern points of the coast.  Anytime a tourist leaves the pack however, they must always be aware of their surroundings because they are putting themselves at risk.

Day one we walked the town and sat on the beach.  Day two, my friend surfed at playa Remanso while I guarded our bags and swam in turn for breaks.  Day three, we trekked up to the statue Jesus Cristo, who peers down over the beach.  At night the gigantic statue is well lit, constantly reminding us all to think about our choices.  From there we could see all life below.  Day four, we walked out to the rocks on the coast, also near the statue.  We sat in the sun and took some pictures, like most content visitors would.  I am sad to say though that our happiness was cut short.  Before we knew what was happening, we were at the mercy of two young men — at knife point, and they literally ran off into the sun set with our bags.

Nicaragua is a beautiful country.  Here they have beaches, mountains, volcanoes, and wildlife in flying colors.  It is a wonderful place until those few decide to steal, illustrating how we are all at the mercy of others.  It effected my mood to say the least.

Posted by Emolyn Liden, 03 Dec 2009