Early in the morning no one is about except tourists with cameras, construction workers getting a jump on the sun, security guards walking to work talking on their cell phones, vendors loading little carts with bananas, potatoes and pineapples for a day of selling.
On the boulevard in Lake Nicaragua Park, at the end of the Calle Libertidad, a few men operate leaf blowers and primp the grounds for the real barrage of tourists in October, November, and December.
I watch a trash truck overflowing with bags coming closer, remember my morning rides on Saba, on winding dangerous roads, on the way for a day of cistern building a number of years ago.
As these men and boys pass, they hang off their truck, wave, laugh, happy to be riding on a cool morning instead of walking. It is not safe to take deductions too far but these guys don’t seem unhappy.
” Here we are, ” they say, ” take our picture. ”
And so, I do.
They wave at me, as they go by.
Picking up refuse seems to be bad only if you see it that way.
Granada is built on the shores of Lake Nicaragua.
In olden days, the rich or famous of Managua came to the lake to relax with their families and built huge homes that go unused by heirs who have moved to the United States or other foreign lands for more opportunity, better weather, or because they can. There is a huge park at the end of Calle Libertidad with open air discos, park benches and swings, nooks to enjoy a swim and cooler breezes.
This morning, horsemen push cattle past as I stand in shade, out of the way. When one of the herd moves closer to the park’s grass, it is driven back towards the shoreline by one of the cowboys. A slight breeze moves leaves in the trees, water gently kisses the shoreline, and people have not yet begun to wake.
Granada is a place where animals are important and a part of daily routine.
This moment speaks of a more pastoral time when men spent the day with their animals, weren’t in a hurry, and lived well with nature.
In the evening these cowboys will come back this way, cattle driven home by the caballeros, the lake turning pinks and yellows and reds as the sun goes down.
Dogs will keep the cattle in a straight line and everyone will be hungry after a hard day of work.
This is a small poignant piece of the nineteenth century still alive in the twenty first century.
These days, we too are being driven, but it isn’t cowboys that herd us.
The three hundred foot rock walls of the crater go straight down as if a giant using a post hole digger, dug a hole for a fence post and then walked away without filling it. Light on the sides of the walls is the color of the fire in the bottom, and, at that bottom, are moving waves of reddish yellow molten rock.
” It looks like Hell, ” someone says, and a woman clutches her cross, and says a prayer.
For the scientist,this is just a fissure in the Earth and the magma belies intense heat and pressures at the core of this planet. it is all explained by the Big Bang Theory..
Sightseers move along the length of a stone wall along the crater’s edge, fixated on the fire in the hole. It is a dark, starless night, and some sightseers have brought flashlights to help them see the path around the volcano as they scramble for better places to see it. This whole place smells like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Walter, our guide, motions me to the exact spot where I can see the cauldron.
Ancient men would have sacrificed to the Gods here, but that custom has been abandoned.
Now, we worship ourselves.
Nicaragua is home to 27 volcanoes.
Some shoot ash and gas into the air while others are a seething cauldron of molten lava.
Masaya is a thirty minute drive from Granada and much closer to Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. It erupted most recently in 2008 and was one of the first authorized National Parks in Nicaragua. The park closes depending on what emotions the volcano shows and in 2008 visitors were surprised by the eruption that killed two people.
Tour companies are plentiful in Granada and their sales force stands on the steps outside the tours front doors and work the crowds in English and Spanish. Like all sales persons, they tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to know.
Our evening $20.00 U.S. tour ( which includes a $10 park fee ) takes three hours to complete and includes a ride to the Masaya National Park, a thirty minute photo op of the volcano at night, a ride back to Granada on highways where motorcyclists and bicyclists wear no helmets and have no lights on themselves or their vehicles.
This evening our bus is filled with eleven people from Germany, Australia, Canada, Austria and the U.S..
At our thirty minute turn at the top of the volcano, we exit our van and scramble to a waist high rock wall that separates us from a three hundred foot drop to the bottom of the crater, where, at strategic points, you see molten lava moving like waves. Gas funnels up into our faces and way up in the sky are night stars, even hotter than this volcano.
Caught between molten rock on the inside of this planet and gases in the atmosphere, walking on a land that shakes from quakes and drowns in floods, how can we be convinced we are masters of this world?
It isn’t our power that holds atoms together.
A small bookcase in the Cafe de Arte, in Granada, has books for visitors who like to read.
It is unknown whether these books come from the owner’s library, were donated by friends and patrons, or are part of a take one, bring one system. Readers these days are becoming scarce with humans preferring to surf the web – an almost unlimited bookcase of ideas, images, sales pitches, entertainments, propaganda, lies, and sordid truth. You can see and read more on the internet in a night than you can see or read in a lifetime of going to bookstores and libraries.
In this little bookcase is a tome on weight loss, an obsession in industrialized countries where people work less, sit more, and want to look pretty from every angle.
There is a book by Rachel Cohn , ” Cupcakes, ” that follows girls having good fun and good sex.
There is a choice for Believers on Landmines that keep them backsliding.
There is a crime novel by Walter Mosely with a $1.00 sticker from a Dollar Days sale which tells me crime doesn’t pay.
I find poems by Ruben Darios, a Nicaraguan poet whose bust is on the Calle De Calzada by Lake Nicaragua.
You would think there might be a Louie L’Amour western, something by Hemingway, a book on surviving the pending economic collapse?
While the reading here is girly, coffee and words go together, and reading doesn’t cost you anything but your time.
As an English major, browsing books is a habit worse than cigarettes.
On Sunday, I hear church bells.
Citizens stay close to home and tourists are carried through empty streets in horse drawn carriages with flowers braided in the horse’s manes .A few retail stores are open around the plaza and taxi’s lollygag in front of hotels.Waiters stand in their dining rooms watching soccer on television. Moms and dads tend to children and older parents.
On Monday, the sounds change.
On Monday, there is a great flowing of people out of their homes and sidewalks become outdoor grocery stores with baskets, buckets, wheelbarrows filled with beans, berries, apples, citrus, lettuce, rice and staples. Workmen carry scaffolding, pick up paint brushes, swing machetes, keep streets swept clear of trash. Everywhere there are people in motion, bright colors, conversations, money changing hands for goods and services.
According to facts, Nicaragua is one the world’s poorest countries.Only a third of children finish primary school and much of the population stay poor. It is a country of great natural wonders and biodiversity and is visited by tourists from around the globe. Nicaraguan’s value family and are famous for their hospitality. Their culture is one of European, African, and Caribbean influences.On Monday, I start in line at a BAC bank changing two five hundred Cordoba notes just pulled from their ATM machine because local merchants are reticent to take them. There are seven people ahead of me doing bank business and next time I will use the money changer in the street outside who wears a ball cap and has a wad of money in his right hand.A funeral proceeds down the street outside with a long line of mourners following a black hearse with white curtains in the windows to the Cemetario.On Mondays, the living get back to the job of living.
Calle la Libertidad is a main street in Granada, two blocks from the Vista Mombacho apartments, that I follow all the way to the Historical District, the main city plaza, and, at its end, Lake Nicaragua.
Soon, these streets will be teaming with life, as little fish in the city coral reef come out of hiding and dart through shafts of light that cut down through the water as the sun rises in the sky. This colorful urban reef is a painting by Monet, all individual strokes of paint combining to give shape to the ocean.
It takes time to get the melody of a place to the point you can begin humming it in your head, even longer before you can sing it.
I am here a month.
Even that might not be enough to feel I belong.
I order an omelet, toast, and black coffee.
The Cafe de Arte is on a side street in the Historical District and traffic is thin this Sunday morning around seven.
There is a bookcase near a corner of the dining area where browsers find books to go with their eggs. Displayed art, done by local folks, portray agrarian scenes and stylized portraits of life in Nicaragua. A Trip Adviser sticker on a merchandising case tells me I am not the first to patronize this eatery.
A couple enter after I have been here about ten minutes, and then another older gentleman shuffles in and takes a chair with a view out the front door.
In this place where horse drawn carriages clatter on the streets outside, couples do what they normally like to do. The old gentleman looks at his phone and connects to wifi. He has seen changes in his lifetime and one of the worst is not being able to walk without fear of falling.
Home bases and food are two things I settle on first in a new place. If I have a good home base and have a good place to eat, I am most of the way to my nirvana.
My Denver omelet in Granada, it turns out,tastes the same in Nicaragua as it does in Denver.
The Vista Mombacho Apartments are in a residential neighborhood in Granada. From the outside, their appearance is unspectacular, but, inside, the architecture, furnishings and decorations are nicely done.
This pool courtyard is shaded and protected on one side by a tall blue wall covered by green ivy and, on the other side, massive walls of the apartment complex. There are no ” Swim at your own Risk ” signs and, as of yet, I have been the only guest using the pool. Sheets and towels drying on an old fashioned clothes line say that someone else is staying here and we are both lost in the 1950’s.
The water is warm with no need for a heater and the pool slopes from three feet in the shallow to seven feet in the deep. It needs a coat of baby blue paint.
In Granada, old is not ashamed.
There is much about ancient history that reminds me of our times as I float on my back in the water. stretch out my arms and legs, fill my lungs with air till I become a balloon, and become a target for passing birds.
Floating in the pool, under clouds, I am only different from ancient man in the things I have been forced to learn that he didn’t even know about.
Airport security is what it always is; intrusive, obnoxious, unproductive, insulting. From standing in front of the x ray scanner with your hands above your head, to a quick pat down by a uniformed government servant, it is hard to ever feel this is for my own good.
Once I clear scrutiny, I eventually end at my proper gate where i wait more, finally board my latest jet and fly for my sixth travel ring in the belly of a gussied up tin can.
Houston to Managua is a boring three hours in the air and standing in Managua, going through Customs, travelers who have been here before share their travel adventures in loud voices you can’t escape.
” Last time down we shot a hell of a lot of ducks, ” a middle aged man with a Hemingway beard and a protruding stomach tells me. ” I’m staying at the Hotel Alhambra. My friends and me come down here three or four times a year. ”
Customs goes quickly and paying a $10 entry fee to get into Nicaragua I smile for a camera mounted on the Custom officer’s booth window as he stamps my passport.
Martine, my pre-arranged shuttle driver, is waiting for me outside the terminal, holding a sign with my name on it. It is night and he is paid to get me to my lodgings.
” Welcome to Nicaragua, ” he says, in English, with a smile.
The United States is behind me, Nicaragua is in front of me.
Why so many people leave the U.S. looking for paradise is a Graduate student’s dissertation I would pay to read and actually read.
In the middle of the night, on our way to Granada, I can’t see anything of what I have gotten myself into, only know that another place on a world map is about to unfold for me.
I’m glad, as Martine navigates the dark narrow roads, that I’m not a duck.
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