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.
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.
We return our golf cart.
The cart jockey is a tiny man wearing shorts, tennis shoes with big socks, a blue faded ball cap. There are four carts ahead of ours that he has to clean, toss trash, wipe down seats, check gas, and inspect. We use golf carts because they speed up our play and that, in theory, helps us score better.
At my feet is a small key with a number 3 on it. Barely visible, I pick it up, bend it, watch it spring back to its original position. It isn’t a real golf cart key because they are metal and a different shape.
I ask the little Irishman with blond hair pushing out from under the sides of his ball cap what my found key goes to?
He looks a moment while he wipes down a cart seat.
” That’s the key to the box of Forgotten Dreams. ”
There are many keys in this world. Keys to lock boxes, keys to offices and homes, keys to cars, keys to your heart.
All the dreams in the world aren’t much good if you forget where you put them.
As we head back to the car, I hear him whistling ” Danny Boy. ”
I believe he has a box full of dreams under his bed that he opens frequently.
At seven in the morning, you show yourself down several hallways into the restaurant.
Giovanni or one of the girls gets a pot of coffee and a full cup to me when they see me. When the wind blows I can feel the entire pier swing its hips like a drunk hula girl. It is five o’ clock somewhere and Jimmie Buffet Drive runs right through our dining area to the bar where Happy Hour begins when someone starts a fish story and the bar girl pours her first round.
At seven in the morning, this restaurant has an odd feel. Everything slants to the left and the guys who built the place must have had their heads in Margaritaville when they picked up their hammers and screw guns and measured their cuts.
By seven thirty, my order is on the wheel and cooks are scrambling eggs, frying bacon, making biscuits and gravy.
Sitting near the kitchen I listen to them talking about parties and during Spring Break plates will fly through their serving window as fast as they can fix them as they break their necks looking at girls in bikini’s, or less.
By eight, the sun is warming me through single pane windows and a pelican on top of a close by pier post in my line of sight is grooming.
Deckhands on the Osprey are out swabbing decks, loading poles and ice coolers filled with drinks, sandwiches and bait shrimp. In the gift shop, a clerk runs credit cards for men and women going out to fish this morning on the Osprey.
At seven, the world looks screwy. By nine, kinks are worked out.
South Padre Island, when you look at its aerial photograph on the wall, looks like a shark’s tooth.
I keep a sharp eye out for one legged sailors.
They are my canary in the mine shaft.
Sea turtles can grow to five hundred pounds and range widely over the world’s oceans.
They mysteriously return to lay eggs on the same beach where they were born and man has been one of their biggest enemies since their meat is tasty, their shells can be fashioned into ornaments, their body parts dried and ground into Oriental medicine.
A sea turtle rescue center operates on South Padre Island’s Gulf Shores Drive. Volunteers staff it, donations keep it alive, and injured or sick turtles inhabit a series of lined swimming pool tanks inside the rehabilitation center.
Some turtles have been victims of boat propellers, some were injured in fishing nets, some lost a limb to sharks. Life as a turtle has dangers but when the turtles are recovered from their setbacks, they are released back into the Gulf, tagged, monitored, and celebrated.
Allison is a current resident turtle with a prothesis. Losing her tail, she has been fitted with a new rubber one that lets her glide in her small tank like a Gulf War veteran with new robotic legs. Victims of carelessness, malice, chance, turtles are easy to love and people support the turtle cause by buying turtle memorabilia in the gift shop.
Man too has his own tragedies to overcome.
Our safety tanks take the form of halfway houses, hospitals, psych wards, jails, and churches.
There are plenty of days we aren’t ready to be released into the world again, either.
Sand is the most common material on the beach.
While we walk on it, draw initials or hearts with arrows through them, there are those who use sand to sculpt fantastic visions.
Outside Pier 19 in South Padre Island there is a sand sculpture. There is sand art in front of the visitor center on Gulf Shores Drive. Even some creations done on the beach ,by anonymous hands, take ideas further than a small bucket, a plastic shovel, and a kid’s hands and imagination can ever go.
There are those who say we humans are sand, but gifted with mobility, speech, and the breath of life. We are walking dreams, puffs of smoke, fireflies on a dark evening, mermaids doing the backstroke on a midsummer night’s swim. Shakespeare, as a writer using sand instead of words, would have built incredible sand castles surrounded by moats and topped with colorful flags. On the plains outside the moat would be raging battles ,and, in the highest towers ,huddled men would plot while women played lutes and whispered court scandal.
Sand in Michaelangelo’s hands would turn into lightning bolts flung from the hands of God’s.
This mermaid and porpoise make good companions. Flowing lines are always more peaceful than straight ones. This couple defines contentment and commitment.
They are waiting for the Sorcerer that froze them in time to relent.
Seagull Charley doesn’t come when you call his name.
Without a fish for Charley, he ain’t going anywhere and he won’t push tennis balls with his beak or do circus tricks.
This morning Charley strolls the beach watching for opportunities. What he catches is his and he will share only if he has a mind too.
There are dining opportunities on this beach all the way north to Corpus Christi and south to Mexico and when waves go out Charley quickly covers his little piece of real estate. He doesn’t own anything but his feathers but his basic rules are self preservation, having a full stomach, and taking care of Mama Charley and the kids.
When Charley leaves the beach and takes flight, this Padre Island strip of sand seems more isolated and less friendly.
In air, between sand and sea, Charley is free,and,oddly enough, it makes me feel free too as I watch him glide in the wind above me.
Wanting to fly has been a long time dream of our human species.
It is Weston’s idea to go see the dunes.
Passing through Midland on my way to the beach at Padre Island,Texas, I pay a visit to a nephew living in what some call ” the armpit ” of Texas.
Saturday we drive to the sand hills, take off our shoes and climb dunes. Sunday will be devoted to watching the Denver Bronco’s try to reach another Super Bowl. Weston is from Colorado and I wouldn’t expect him to support anyone but John Elway’s team.
Midland is a big small town in the middle of the oil patch. Around, and in, it’s city limits, are drilling rigs, unused casing, semis for delivering pipe and oil machinery, thousands of mud splattered pickup trucks, and metal buildings filled with oil related businesses
Women are, I am told, scarce here.
Finding a man that has a paycheck is a woman’s prerequisite for a long term relationship, so, with the downturn in commodity prices, many of the fair sex have moved to better hunting grounds.
Trekking up and down these baby dunes makes me believe it must be humbling to have to cross the Sahara Desert with a caravan of camels and only the stars to guide you.
This is a hard land to live in.
To survive here, women have to be tougher than the men who love them.
Walking in the Cuenca Historical District wears your standards down.
This is an old part of Cuenca and you gradually become accustomed to deteriorated appearances.
After a few weeks you don’t notice worn doorknobs, peeling paint, plaster coming off walls, windows with no curtains, roll down steel security doors with graffiti. You look instead at flower pots on balconies, colorful flags flying from hotel entries, mannikins in doorways wearing hip fashions.
You accept old and un-maintained as old and charming.
On a turn through town,sidewalk chalk paintings are beautiful in their delicacy, their colors almost camouflaging them against the brick sidewalks.
” Support art and culture, ” the words say.
The chalk is going to vanish in a matter of days, walked on, washed down and swept away by women cleaning sidewalks in front of their shops. The drawings are light and little can withstand the sledgehammer of a modern city on the move.
I am careful not to walk on the faces. They are cheerful, hopeful, and fresh.
Supporting art and culture are good goals, anywhere in the world, any time.
The 31st of December begins quietly.
As the day moves forwards it changes like your favorite radio station whose volume keeps increasing as the variety and quality of the songs gets better and talk gets more inflammatory.
As night falls there are effigies being burned, in front of a hotel, by the flower market, on your corner. There are satires performed, bands play, and revelers dance in the street. As dark comes, city folk in masks and costumes parade the streets in gangs looking like escapees from a Michael Jackson Thriller video.
New Year crawls in and the Old Year creeps out.
This year has not been bad so I don’t have joy in seeing it burned up.
The old year goes with a whimper and the New Year lies before us like a baby in a manger.
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