Boat Tour Two in the afternoon till Six
Lake Nicaragua is in the top five largest lakes in the world and has enough water to keep Central America hydrated for hundreds of years if the tap turns off. Mario, our tour guide, brings out his map and shows us where the new Panama Canal is going to be built. Looking at the map, he points. The new canal will go from the from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea cutting through the southern part of Nicaragua, using this lake and a new man made fresh water lake to feed water to canal locks. China is scheduled to start this new canal soon and the project will change this country forever. ” These islands, ” Mario continues, ” are for sale.” He puts away his map, gestures with his hands, and grabs our attention. ” That one, ” he continues, is owned by one of the wealthiest families in Nicaragua, the Pella family. They own the Tona beer company too…. ” The good thing about owning an island is that neighbors are separated from you. The bad thing is some of your neighbors are living in galvanized sheet metal houses with boats dry docked in the yard and laundry hanging from makeshift clotheslines.. Men fishing in the river pause and watch us, then cast out their nets and pull them back in with tonight’s dinner. When the sun goes down fires glow in the woods as day is put to bed and stories roll out of their bunks. Most who live on this lake never want to see anything crossing it that ruins their fishing.
Baseball at the Lion’s Park Saturday morning in Granada
When growing up, baseball was the national sport of the United States. We had the New York Yankees, a multi World Series winning team with a barn full of horses like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Coach Casey Stengel and many others. One of the best players on the Pittsburg pirates was Roberto Clemente, an outfielder who was not only a great baseball player, but a great man.. When he was killed in a plane crash, taking food and supplies back to his ravaged Managua after an earthquake, it didn’t register because we didn’t know much about Nicaragua. People traveled less then and we didn’t have internet to bring the world immediately to us. Baseball doesn’t take a lot of equipment or a lot of space. Most kids can catch a ball and swing a bat, and parents support their kids. On Saturday, Nino leagues start at the Lion’s Park at one end of Calle Calzada, around eight thirty in the morning, Today, I watch the Sharks play the Academy and the Clementes play the Dissur team. The game moves in slow motion because it takes longer for kids to throw from first to third, chase down balls in the weeds at the outfield’s edge, try to move under a foul tipped ball in the batter’s cage. Some of the kid’s scowl at their team mates at a bad play, others kick their helmet on the grass after a strikeout. One of these players will make it to the major’s, just like Roberto. In the Nino League, the team that makes the fewest fielding errors, usually wins.
Painting on a Cathedral Ceiling Work in Progress
Our Lady of Assumption Cathedral is also called the Granada Cathedral. The church dominates the main plaza of Granada, Nicaragua and was begun in the 1500’s when the city was being colonized by Spanish conquerors. The church still serves the community and at a recent evening Mass was filled with locals as well as tourists who make the place one of their must do stops. This Cathedral dwarfs other churches in the city and is not as ornate or beaten down as its competition. It is still a simple box covered with smooth plaster, tall bell towers, and is painted a striking color you can see from a distance. In its shadows is the main city Plaza, a collection of horse drawn carriages lined up in front of the Alhambra hotel, vendors selling sunglasses and food, tourists, and locals who have nothing better to do than people watch and take photos and videos for their Facebook page. Walking into a Catholic church brings the usual statues, pews, robed white plaster men commemorated for dedication, nooks with burning candles, dizzying rotundas, a sense of space. The unusual in this church is a Genie lift that supports an artist painting on the ceiling. The cast of characters is to be expected. There is God, Adam and Eve, all of Noah’s animals, angels and scenes of Creation. This morning, when there is no Mass, I find the lift extended and observe a little man on the platform high above me patiently expanding his assigned themes. He is no Michaelangelo and this is no Sistine Chapel, but the effect is still jaw dropping. The ceiling is huge, and, with so many sections to be filled, it is hard to believe the task will ever be finished. But, completed or not,it is certain that this project will outlast many men and make the point continually that we are alive for a purpose, just not our purpose.
Iglesia La Merced from the tower you can see the city
Taking a different way to the Plaza, there appears another Catholic church, one of fifteen in Granada. This place of worship is unique for its grizzled exterior that looks older than history, and people are standing way up in a church bell tower taking photos of the city at dusk. It is evening and Mass is in progress. I have been told by a tour guide that the black stained exterior is not mold but comes from a fire built by an American, William Walker, who invaded and tried to take control of Nicaragua in the 1800’s to extend Southern slavery. He was trying to burn out defenders of the city who were holed up inside the massive walls of this church. Walker was eventually captured and executed in Honduras but American interventionism has never stopped anywhere. Church’s try to do God’s work, but men keep putting their foot in the door. American’s have been visiting Nicaragua a long time, and good has not always been on their mind, no matter what their mouths said.
” It Looks Like Hell” Masaya Volcano, outside Managua, Nicaragua
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.Masaya Volcano Peering into the Abyss
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.
Shipping Container Square Dance Back in Albuquerque
I-40 runs through Albuquerque’s midsection like a Mexican leather belt with a big rodeo buckle. At I-40 and Carlisle in Albuquerque is a new ” Green Jeans” shopping center built using shipping containers, Albuquerque’s new building material craze. While the old woman who lives in a shoe is a theme of yesteryear, the Santa Fe Brewing Company, along with a local builder, Roy Solomon,have created a new urban retail center combining shipping containers and more traditional materials. People are on the move in our 21st century and you can easily be asleep in Albuquerque tonight and wake up tomorrow in Singapore. Shipping containers are generic, sexless, and have no personality. They are big Lego’s; easy to move, stack, transform. They fit our generic drug, unisex bathrooms,one size fits all world. Doing investigative research on shipping container building with Alex, the architect, we visit, see, and leave the new shopping and dining complex feeling the place is well done but not that exciting or cost effective. Where I want is to live is in my own container mounted on the deck of a huge oil tanker sailing to the world’s ports, having scrambled eggs and bacon with green chili for breakfast, as we round the Cape of Good Hope. Till that happens, Green Jeans, with its craft beer, home made tacos and stacked containers, will have to do.
Soaking Hot baths on the Rio Grande
Things get new names. Route 66 becomes Interstate-40. Bruce Jenner becomes Caitlyn Jenner. British Honduras becomes Belize. Climate warming becomes a Religion. Kentucky Fried Chicken becomes KFC. Before Truth or Consequences adopted its new name in the 1950’s, to promote a popular television show,this sleepy New Mexico burg was called Hot Springs. For hundreds of years, Indians, cowboys and locals partook of mineral baths by the Rio Grande river. They put differences aside, slipped into above 100 degree waters, and looked out across the river towards the mountains where they hunted. In old times, before Elephant Butte Dam, the Rio Grande ran deeper and swifter. There are times of the year now when the river runs dry as southern New Mexico chili farmers scramble to pull allotted water and flood their fields. While you soak you can watch ducks bob in the Rio Grande or follow the trend line of Turtle Back mountain from its tail to the tip of its nose. For fifteen dollars an hour you have your own personal retreat, cool the upper half of your body as your lower half cooks like a chicken in a crock pot. Names change. Conservative and liberal are not what their parents named them. Going to war to make peace is an old song. Spending your way to prosperity is preached from pulpit and podium. Voting for the least of two evils is how we participate in our Constitutional Republic. When things get rough, soaking in hot mineral springs on a cool morning is a perfect tonic- no matter what they are named.. T or C is a place that sounds a whole lot more interesting than it will ever be and hot mineral baths take a little chill out of this winter that seems to drag on and on and on.
South Padre Island Sunset Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016
The sky is burning and, if it wasn’t, there would be no reason to snap this photo. Joan, Neal’s wife, and the rest of us, all stare as we all walk towards the Shrimp Haus, a South Padre Island restaurant that features shrimp, shrimp, and more shrimp – boiled, breaded, fried, cooked or uncooked with salad bar and side orders of fries, potato salad or cole slaw. The sky’s colors look like Matzatlan sunsets, sunrise in Ambergris Caye, the sun sinking in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas. For a moment it seems the clouds are waves and the entire world has turned upside down with the top becoming the bottom and the bottom becoming the top. Palm trees, that the wind shakes, are cheerleader’s pom poms at this heavenly football game.. Mother Nature waves her flag and is impossible to ignore, diminish, or trump. Tomorrow morning, we will be presented a different light show. Sunrise and sunset are bookmarks in nature’s novel. Being together is a good thing.
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