The loss of the camera in the rum jungle

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Is it a smart move to pass overland though a country five days after a military coup? The bus company seemed unconcerned because they had re-started the service through Honduras to Nicaragua after initially closing it, so following their lead we booked two tickets. In truth other than time wasting at an endless amount of military and police road blocks the bus passed though Honduras no problem. The army did board the bus at one road block which I could see visibly flustered the staff aboard the bus, but all the soldier did was look heavily armed, officious and moody, and then he left.
But not before a lengthy search of the baggage hold. This was on the same day that the Honduran President had tried to re-enter the country only for his aircraft to be refused landing rights by the military that had booted him out of the country in the first place. Maybe the soldiers thought he was trying to steal back into the country in the baggage hold of our bus?
Whatever, they were officially on 'searching the baggage hold detail' and they were going to carry out the task to the best of their ability.

With these delays the trip was a very long one and the bus arrived in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua well after 10pm. That's a problem because other than expensive international hotels most hotels in Central America are shut and bolted by this time of the evening.
So we quickly jumped into one of the taxis waiting at the bus station and headed for our first choice hotel. But it turned out that hotel didn't even exist anymore, and other places on the surrounding streets proved to be either closed or full.
The driver kept reiterating that he wanted to take us to a hotel he knew of. But we were wary because we know what this means, it means he will have a deal set up with that hotel and you will be overcharged and he will collect his cut once you're in your room and out of sight. But because of the hour of the night and the reputation of inner city Managua we were a bit stressed and felt we had no choice but to take up his offer. Once at this hotel the price of the room cranked up some, and the charade played out just as I expected.
Finally inside the room I was about to relax when I looked around and realised the place was a fucking dungeon, filthy with insects all over the floor. But I thought to myself, fuck it, just go to sleep and then tomorrow's another day.
But sleep was hard to come by in this hotel because TV's were blaring out of every room, the walls were cardboard thin, and drunk people were coming and going all night long. After an hour or so it dawned on me, we were in a hotel that people bring prositutes back to where rooms can be rented by the hour.
I went to the toilet and in our bathroom I noticed for the first time a door I'd not noticed before for some reason, it had a press door knob lock and I saw that it wasn't locked. I slowly turned the handle and the door opened out into what looked like someone's backyard, I closed the door shut and pressed the lock stud closed. But I knew in my head that anyone who wanted to could push that door open with the strength of their finger. It crossed my mind had the taxi driver and hotel owner colluded to put us in this room with a second door that doesn't lock to set us up?
At this point I felt for the first time on this trip that me and Lynn had lost our footing a bit. We were in the wrong hotel, in the wrong neighbourhood, at the wrong time of night, and there was no way out of the situation until morning.
The lesson learnt is there is a time to worry about money and a time not to. For the amount of money we were over charged by the taxi driver and again at his mate's dustbin hotel we could have spent about twenty quid more and been in the Crowne Plaza Hotel that was placed conveniently opposite the bus station in Managua, just for people arriving late at night like us.

Arriving in Granada the next day we felt instantly better. Granada is close to the buzzing Central American capital of my imagination. Latin music blaring out of the shops, bars and passing cars, and green parrots flying around the place as common as pigeons. Sometimes they cling onto the telephone wires and swing upside down and around like parrots in cages do clearly just for the amusement of it. The people are friendly and it feels safe. Although Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America its statistically the safest for tourists. The grim news is that with the serious poverty there are people here reduced to begging and this is something you can never get used to.

Granada is the oldest town in Cental America and the colonial buildings and churches of the town centre are over-the-top grandiose and colourful. It being the rainy season in Nicaragua there are not so many tourists around. All the rainy season means to us is we could negotiate a good deal on a hotel room with a balcony at the Hotel Terrasol, whose owners looked after us very well. The rainy season in Nicaragua is rain some days but most days are sunny and warm. I think it's probably the best time to visit Granada. The odd bit of rain and the breeze coming in off the lake some days is a welcome relief from the heat.
Granada is on Lake Nicaragua, a massive 3000 square mile lake. After seeing a leaflet showing photos of small unihabited islands home to tonnes of birdlife we thought this looked like a good day trip from Granada. But it was a disappointment, because although there are over 300 'isletas' the trip revolves around the islands closest to Granada that are all inhabited, mostly owned outright by weathy Nicaraguans that have built homes on them. The supposed highlight of the trip is Monkey Island, an Island where spider monkeys that are not even indiginous to Nicaragua have been introduced for what looks like the sole reason of tourist ammusment. The guide wanted to get one of the monkeys on the boat so we could hand feed it crackers, I hate things like this. Next stop was an island with a bar/restaurant, that killed nearly an hour and then it was back to shore.
So the lake is beautiful but the boat trip is rubbish. But it's not the guide's fault, he's probably just giving people what most people must want. At the end of the day I looked at the money I handed over as well, at least the guide and the boatman got a wage for the day.

The following day we did something much better. There is a volcano looming over Granada called Volcan Mombacho. It's a big boy and higher up the slopes towards the summit the volcano has its own eco system with unique flora. We took the longest trail around the craters at the summit which was a tough but worthwhile four hour walk mostly through cloud forest. The guide pointed out lots of unusual plants, flowers and ferns, things called bromeliads, and orchids, some of which are endemic to the volcano. There were also sunbirds, hummingbirds and lots of butterflies. It was a great walk.
At the summit there are vents emitting steam that smells of sulphur. Some looking as small as holes that rats might have dug in the earth and some big rocky gaping vents you can look down into. If you stand close to these or put your hand close to the entrance of one of the smaller holes you get these blasts of super heated steam that will burn your skin if you don't move away quick enough. Its mad stood there thinking of the source of this volatile heat deep down in the rock under your feet.
From the craters themselves you can see large plumes of steam rising every few minutes. It's to remind you you're on an active volcano, and to remind the farmers and citizens of Granada that everything they have built is in the end, only temporary.

On the bus trip back to Granada it began to pour down and as we were dressed in T shirts we had to sprint the 200 metres from the bus stop back to our hotel so as not to get soaked. While running I reached into my front jeans pocket for the hotel keys and a question jumped into my head, "where is my camera that should be with the keys in this pocket?" I stopped running and emptied both bags onto the pavement frantically looking for the camera, but it wasn't there and I realised I must have left it at the public bus stop at the ranger station a half hour ealier. Realising it was gone forever I kicked the bags around the pavement a couple of times, then we went back to the hotel.
When I calmed down I realised it's not too bad because I backed up all of our photos of this trip on a DVD up to and including America. But all the photos I've taken since then, from Mexico onwards and including the photos I took up the volcano are of course all gone.
Later with a beer mellowing me out still further I thought, in a country where there's over 50% unemployment, how upset can you get by the loss of just one possession?

One day while sat outside a pizza place a woman in her mid thirties approached us. Even before she spoke to us I was thinking she looked an unusual person. She spoke and she came across as eloquent and in a way I can't explain, enigmatic, she was a total individual. She had some badly designed home made flyers advertising her services as a city tour guide and singer. More than for the tour itself we arranged to do a tour with her because we thought it might be an interesting couple of hours with her showing us around the town.
Next day she came for us at our hotel dressed a bit mentally. She wore a flamboyant flamenco dress and in her right arm she carrried a little bo peep wicker basket. She wore too much rouge on her cheeks and 1970's electric blue eye make-up. To finish off the look she had a plastic parasol with teddy bears on it. I wish I had a photo! But thats not to be, because for some reason cameras are over twice as expensive to buy in Nicaragua as they are in England.
She took us around the historic buildings and churches of Granada explaining the towns history. Granada isn't Rome, but there are some interesting buildings here. More than the buildings themselves I found the history of Granada interesting.
Stories like when the original Aztec inhabitants encoutered the first Spanish Conquistadors here they belived that the Spanish galleon was infact a massive bird sat on the water. It fitted some prophecy in their religion and their first question to the Spaniards was "did the ship come down from the sky in a zig zag pattern like lightning?" If the Spanish would have answered "yes" to this the Aztecs would have believed them gods.
Granada was burnt to the ground more than once by tyrannical Europeans. Captain Henry Morgan (Morgan's rum') came here with three pirate ships and raided the city, stole all of the gold and ravaged the maidens. It's all the stuff of book and film don't you think?
After the tour we invited the guide for a drink with us, and even though I'd already paid her she couldn't seem to get out of tour guide mode and talked none stop for another hour or so while we drank and listened. Then at the end she did something bonkers. She told the barman to turn off the music, then she stood in the centre of the room and turned to us and belted out two songs at full on opera volume. It was great! but the whole scene with everyone looking on was totally mental.

Another day we took a stroll to the lake a guy came up to chat to us as often happens in Central America, people are just curious. He was my age and told me of how he'd been forcably conscripted as a teenager and showed me the exit scars of where he'd been shot through the leg during the conflict in the 1980's/90's.
(It's a fact that during the Ronald Regan era the CIA trained and funded death squads here. Stirring things to protect American interests and in the process perpetuating the suffering of the Nicaraguan people, its a similar story in neighbouring El Salvador)
I told this guy in my bad Spanish that I understood a little of the history of his country and it was an unjust and sad story. He looked at me impassively for a long moment, and then I saw his eyes slowly well up with tears and his face crumple. For a few seconds I thought he was going to weep on my shoulder, but thank god he pulled it back together just in time.
But this really brought it home to me, the things you get so used to seeing on the TV news about conflicts in far away places involve real people. For all I know this guy could have been thinking of torture he'd suffered, or the memory of seeing his family or friends shot. Or, he could just have been remembering the time he put salt on his cornflakes instead of sugar. I'll never know because of course you don't ask.

Next he asked me to take him to a shop and buy him two packs of Nestle powdered baby milk for his two babies back at home with his wife. Were we being scammed I thought? Would he exchange the baby milk back at the shop for cash once we were out of sight? I can't really say for sure if I was scammed or not. But, we did bump into him five minutes after the purchase of the milk a half a mile away from the shop and he still had the milk with him, which is a good sign. Later we checked at another shop to compare the price of the milk there with what we'd been charged, and the price was the same. And I know he must have had babies because he was very insistant at one point that we go back to his house to see them. I did have the feeling that I wasn't the first tourist he'd tried the same line with. But If the milk ultimately went to his kids, so what.

Next we go to the Isla de Ometepe a few hours away on lake Nicaragua. The twin volcanos I've seen many times on the internet. Its one of the most picturesque places in all of central America, and we don't have a camera, FFS.

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Comments

[Cath]

John Just your description of that room and hotel gave me nightmares. Shame about the camera. xxx