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.
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.
The last accident covered in Scott Treks was a rollover in Montevideo, Uruguay on the Rambla.
In this case, in the Cuenca Historical District, by the time I walk to see what the crowd is about, the scene is just a crashed blue bus with its front end partially inside the front door of a corner retail shop, a fire engine and ambulance on scene, yellow plastic tape roping off the area, cops in lime colored jackets keeping people away, no bodies lifeless in the street.
The funny part is the difficulty cops have in keeping people from ducking under their yellow tape, bypassing the scene, and continuing on their way. Authorities have roped off the entire intersection so people coming from all four directions are stopped from moving forward and told they have to go back the way they came.
Some people shrug shoulders at this nuisance, some approach the cops and are let through barriers with special permission, others lift the yellow tape and go through the intersection when the cop is distracted. It is difficult to get people to do even the simplest things when they don’t feel it makes sense or makes them change their behavior.
The accident happened in a second but it will take hours to wrap up the investigation and pin ” cause ” on something or someone.
This accident looks like it might go back to failed brakes, but human error is at the heart of most accidents.
This afternoon us humans have made yet another mess.
There are surprises on walks, many of them small, many that will be missed if you are not in the right mind to see them.
My first surprise this morning is horses in Calderone Park that kids can ride, pushed by a man. These equines roll easily on park paths. They look well fed, have saddles and reins, and come in all sizes. They appear real till you see their marble eyes and tongues that look like the end of Santa’s sock.
Another surprise is on a bridge crossing the Rio Tomebamba.There are three sets of locks, knotted together on a bridge railing. This might have begun as a protest, but, more than likely, a prankster kicked it off with one lock and chain with others jumping on board later. There is a similar, much larger, collection of locks knotted together like this in a Montevideo business district so I know even the zaniest things happen all over the world and I, or you, will not likely come up with something new under the sun.
A third surprise today is street art on walls leading down stairs to the river. Colorful, eccentric, imaginative, even obscene, the shapes, colors, and graffiti are difficult to ignore.
Even though I go looking for odd , I don’t want too much of it.
Without a lot of sameness, odd is not very interesting.
I speculate that Heaven is the only perfect place only a few are ever going to see. and, even in Heaven there will be a few loose strings and butt cans to be emptied.
Even angels have a hard time quitting cigarettes.
Looking where you walk in unfamiliar places is a very good idea.
On morning walks down Luis Cordero, through Parque Calderone, I ramble down stair steps, take a quick scamper over a bridge across the Rio Tomebamba, and park my creaking bones at the Gringoland McDonalds where Wi-Fi is still free and the coffee cup is almost bottomless. Customers come and go throughout the day and sometimes are entertaining.
Sidewalks and streets in Cuenca’s historical areas all have bumps and grinds that would make a stripper happy and there are multiple opportunities to take a tumble if I didn’t pick my feet up.
When walking here you keep eyes open because if you fall in Ecuador it is never the sidewalk’s fault. In a foreign port you can sue if you have a mind too but you will be assigned a lawyer that speaks a language you don’t understand,the jury will never be of your peers, and the courtroom will be full of strange rules. In a foreign country, the best thing to do is watch where you step, all the time.
Sidewalks,it seems, aren’t worth a look until you spend a morning taking pictures of them.
Looking at the world, from shoe level, gives you a different perspective.
Even in 2015, we still spend a lot of time on our feet.
This morning, it rains.
Having an umbrella seems essential, but, even now, there are people walking to work without one.
Ladies in pants suits have raindrops form in their dark hair and drop down on their leather boots like melting black icicles.
Motorcycles speed by with drivers wearing plastic drop cloths pulled over their heads to keep them dry, plastic flapping in the air behind them like huge wings.
Within an hour, rain has moved through and the Earth’s sun comes out.
In Cuenca, the only difference between summer and winter is the amount of rain that falls. The weather this year is, as most people remark, nicer than usual.
Having weather co-operate is wonderful, but weather doesn’t take orders from us.
We sail the seas but we don’t control the currents.
The road from Cuenca to Saraguro is two way but wide with shoulders on both sides, coming and going.
It winds up and over several large mountain ranges, in and out of valleys, over a few bridges, and, all the way, runs just below huge clouds scraping the top of the mountains.
Part of Ecuador is on the Pacific coast where driving is flat, part is in the Amazon where there are few roads, and the remainder is in the Andes Mountains. If you get motion sickness you take dramimina because even a good driver is not going to take bumps and grinds out of this highway. Looking out you see a patchwork of green, some cultivated and some not. As far as you see there are mountains, clouds, green, and so many hills and valleys that it would take a road man centuries to level them out with his yellow Caterpiller.
Today, Marcos drives. He is an Ecuadoran who worked in the United States and came home. Marcos can help you get a bank account, settle up with a Doctor, find you a good lawyer, or just explain how things work. Today, he gets Carol and I to Saraguro and back and that is worth a million.
Today, I am feeling like a sailor on dry land after months at sea. Riding in the back seat is no positive. When you drive at the top of the world, vertigo is your companion. This must be what it feels like riding a bull in a Texas rodeo.
Photos and words have a hard time doing justice to these vistas.
It was Carol who put this trip together.
When we first met, I was struggling up the stairways from the Plaza Otorango faint with food poisoning. She took the time to help a stranger.
She gave me a few drops of Dragon’s Blood, a natural Ecuadorian remedy for the “grippa. ”
I recovered and came back to say a proper “Thank You.”
Good people are close at hand but it sometimes takes food poisoning to find them.
Up top, on our double decker bus, you have wind and sun, but, on this trip, you can’t stand up because low hanging electric wires will take off your neck. Our guide reminds us to watch for low hanging wires, watch the tree on your right, don’t stand too close to the edge of the top floor rail. From the second deck, we all see the city as we pass through, weaving, bobbing, climbing, descending and ascending hills.
This Cuenca city tour takes us in a circle from Parque Calderone to the Mirador de Turi and back. We leave the Historical District, cross into a newer part of the city, climb hills to the famous look out point, then return through the opposite end of the Historical District that we left from, ending back at our beginning.
Andres gives commentary in English and Spanish but mostly all you have time on this tour to do is point your camera, shoot, enjoy the sights.
The ride costs $8.00 U.S. and takes, with a half hour stop at Turi, two hours. Along the way, I see a Panama Hat Museo that might be fun to visit. The Museo Pumapungo looks important. There are lots of churches crying for admiring photographers..
Our guide tells us that Cuenca, a World Heritage City, has only five murders a year instead of Chicago’s five a day.
After driving in this mid day traffic, I would think bus drivers here would shoot at least one person a day so the murder rate in Cuenca wouldn’t sound fictitious.
Leaving one place and moving to another is more difficult when you have enjoyed your stay. Then you have one place tugging at one arm and another place tugging at the other.
The Caribbean is worn, tattered, frayed, chipped, pieced together, bright colors, strange language, intense sun, stifling humidity, rain, mosquitoes, stewed chicken, rum punch, hesitation to do today what should have been done yesterday. The weather, people, traditions conspire to wring compulsions out of you like twisting a wet towel and snapping it in the air. Nature is everywhere; a lizard climbing up the front porch wall, a trail of ants along a fallen vine, fish in a bucket on a pier, a bird standing motionless in the sea until it sees its opportunity and comes up with a jitterbugging silver fish. The music is Latin, African, American rock and roll, Cuban and reggae. Rasta men stay to strict diets and a young crowd wears bling and attitudes more big city than island, more pretend than real.
The Caribbean is a worn pair of house shoes that you favor because they give you support but don’t constrict you. In the Caribbean, you find boundaries erased and a tolerance for eccentricity. You feel your mind slip and inhibitions drift away from their pier.
The vista changes as we fly. It starts with blue green turquoise water, small green clusters of mangrove islands, sand bars, and just above the water line, land. Then, sea and land is obscured by clouds. Breezing across the Caribbean we cut over Panama and Columbia down to Ecuador, over the Andes Mountains. Ecuador sprawls, the color of a leprecaun’s green patched jacket.
Over Cuenca, tonight, you see man-made lights that look like burning matches in a dark room. In San Pedro Town, you see what there is too see in a month. In a city the size of Cuenca, you can only see your small part of the reef, the little hump of coral around which you live, sleep, do your shopping, cultivate friends and neighbors.
We are going to be good friends, this city and I.
Not finding things to do here would take a monumental effort.
The last rainbow gracing these postings was in San Jose, Costa Rica near the Hotel Aranjuez.
This masterpiece is between Belize City and Ambergris Caye on the boat ride back from a tour of Lamanai, Mayan ruins in Orange Walk, Belize.
Mother Nature sends us a parting bouquet of flowers, a little good by kiss, a temporary light show, a reminder of who is behind all that we have been observing.
It is the end of another day on Planet Earth , November 23, 2015.
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