” We aren’t to feed the monkey’s, ” Mario warns, much to the dismay of my fellow tour boat passengers.
” Monkey’s are loco…..If you knew what I know you wouldn’t want to get close to them. ”
Our boat stops at Monkey Island and several of the small mammals come to the water’s edge to greet us.
One lone monkey scampers out on a tree limb, reaches his hand out, and a young tender hearted woman, in another nearby tour boat, gives him a treat.
This group of monkey’s was marooned here years ago and they provide entertainment in exchange for people food that isn’t even good for people.
Our foraging solo spider monkey, once he has his fill of handouts, leans down and drinks from Lake Nicaragua.
He might get hungry but he won’t ever run out of water.
Taking what someone freely offers you doesn’t count as begging.
This monkey and his business are not messing around today.
Azucena,tending bar, is the only person in the Bar Imagine when I walk in.
She is polishing glasses, checking inventory, brings me a menu, works on the books while I decide on fish tacos and a Tona beer, a local favorite.
” Que tiempo, la musica, ” I ask?
The board outside the building says the Latin All Stars will be playing Beatles music at eight. The chalkboard in the entry says the Latin All Stars will be playing Latin Salsa at nine. Handbills on telephone polls around town say free music starts at eight and nine and Happy Hour is 5 – 6?
” Nueve, ” she confirms.
A photo of John Lennon is on one wall, prominently displayed. There are two chairs and a mic on an empty stage. Two cooks are slicing tomatoes and onions and one brings me out chips and picante sauce while they thaw fish and turn on the gas to their stoves.
” Que donde todo gente? ”
She shrugs and says, ” Ocho, ocho y media? ”
It is a quiet evening on Cervantes street and, in this town, I would expect to see Miquel sitting at this bar with his caballo tied up outside, his lance close to his hand for encounters with windmills. That famous novel, ” Don Quixote “, has chapter after chapter of the adventures of a man on a mission, standing for justice in an unjust world.
” My English is not so good, ” she says, but she manages to get me to buy more drinks than I planned.
Don Quixote is to fiction what John Lennon is to rock and roll.
After dinner and two Tona’s, I catch a cab home and vow to return tomorrow to catch whatever music happens to be on stage.
The only Abbey Lane in this town is on the front steps of this Bar.
A trip to the grocery in a foreign country can be setting yourself up for shock treatment.
There are items in the grocery here that are less than what I pay at home, but many items are far more expensive.
In a country where the minimum wage for a working guy or girl is less than a U.S. dollar per hour, why would any sane person want to drink a six pack of beer at almost $10.00 U.S., or shave with Gillette shaving cream at eight dollars a can? On my most recent trip through the grocery gauntlet, my costs for a handful of items were $12.00 U.S.
For my money today, I buy two bars of soap, a link of sausage and a package of chicken cold cuts. I bring home an avocado,two boxes of saltine crackers, a small bag of apples, a bunch of bananas and a loaf of wheat bread.
Coming from Europe, or the U.S., or wealthy South American countries, Nicaragua is a bargain.
On the other hand, walking in a Nicaraguan’s shoes pinches your toes..
If I only make seventy or eighty cents an hour I would have to work two days to pay for what I just bought.
If you really need to know what a country and it’s people are about, peek into their shopping bags and watch what they ride to get home.
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.
This sweet roll is pure Texas.
Tired of omelets, biscuits and gravy, toast, waffles, steaks with eggs over easy, diners can always opt for a non-politically correct sweet roll breakfast that Lyle Lovett would feature in his kind of songs.
This roll fills a plate instead of a saucer. It would go well on Caesar’s table at a fine Roman buffet where elites dine with the Emperor served by slaves and entertained by musicians and dancing girls.
This morning Dave and the Russian Vera join forces, one with a fork and the other a knife. The roll is carefully, surgically divided into smaller bites and by the end of breakfast they have finished half and put the other half in a takeout box.
I look for togas here but people in Pier 19 are wearing windbreakers and baseball caps and look middle class. We sometimes think we have a Caesar in the White House,but, so far, American Caesar’s don’t have a professional food taster, don’t get killed too often, and are kicked out of office after eight years if they can fool the voters two elections in a row.
Vera will have to walk miles to recover from this decadence.
Dave never gains weight but he will need a smoke before breakfast is done.
E-Harmony, from what I have learned about it, is doing as much for foreign relations as all our American Ambassadors put together.
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.
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.
There are dining opportunities available this morning.
This girl is carrying, on her head, confections to sell in front of the New Cathedral to afternoon crowds the day after New Year.
The mounds of whipped cream with ice cream cones stuck in the top, look like curlers and wiggle as she walks.
This treat doesn’t melt, tastes good hours after it is made, and doesn’t cost much for consumers- little kids and old timers.
By the end of afternoon the mounds of treats will be more than half gone.
It will be as if a giant reaches down, with his right forefinger, and scoops up a sample, gives an appreciative nod, and rumbles off towards the mountains for an afternoon nap.
You go down Luis Cordero all the way to Calle Larga, make a right, go mas y meno two blocks and look right, and you are at the Sunrise Cafe Cuenca.
The Sunrise Cafe Cuenca is a hangout for ex-pats. It is a comfortable mom and pop place with good prices, basic local and American eating, and people coming and going.
In the back is a huge room where friends get together on Saturday mornings to socialize but the room is open to anyone who wants to take a seat.
Breakfast is huevos rancheros in a way I haven’t had them before.
They serve their plate with a scoop of guacamole, diced onions, fried potatoes, eggs over easy on a tortilla covered with homemade salsa.
Frank, the waiter from Cuba who sells Cuban cigars on the side, keeps coffee coming and a lady next to me is studying lines for a radio play she is reading tomorrow.
There are families and kids here, as well as married couples and singles. Some of the old guys have gray hair, pony tails, and talk Bernie Sanders. Some of the women are grandmothers and talk about last night’s smoking date.
In Cuenca, you do like Cuencanistas do.
This lady in red, walking in heels and checking her phone, is lucky. The sidewalk here is negotiable.
Her bumps, even from across the street, don’t appear to need repair.
From the street, this exposition seems promising.
There is a huge dinosaur on a flatbed in Parque Calderone. There is also, nearby, a tall movie poster featuring a reptile with big teeth, the word Dinosaurs in big letters, and an offer to children to get in to this exhibit absolutely free if with their parents.
Dinosaurs are still one of the first topics in grade school science and movies like Jurassic Park have kept interest fanned in the large creatures who, by their fossils, we know to have existed.
These modern man made show beasts are fabricated from steel, plastic, with rubber like skin. They are brightly painted and dwarf us little humans, hardly sand grains between their toes.
I don’t see any animal here I would want to take home and have to feed but any one of them would keep riff raff out of my back yard.
Dentists, I have no doubts, would love to get one of these guys or girls in their biggest chair but doing a root canal would not be easy because peering into this Rex’s mouth, and going in with the biggest drill you have, would take nerves of steel and several drums of anesthesia.
I bet their dinosaur breath would be the kiss of death.
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