Mount Masaya Calling

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Monday, December 21st

As part of our walking tour we went to a collective that taught at-risk youth how to make hammocks in exchange for a promise by the students to go to school. Men with wads of cash would stand on street corners in front of banks, quite legitimately offering to exchange dollars for cOrdobas – a sight that too many years of watching the Sopranos never failed to surprise us. From there we rented bikes and explored a cemetery and the ruins of the old hospital. Typically we were like pinball balls, bouncing lost from one set of instructions to another, not registering the response to our queries for directions whether they were in English or in Spanish. The hospital was like discovering ancient ruins, lost histories, forgotten memories of lives long gone. Lago Cocibolca is the same size as the island of Puerto Rico. It was there that we went kayaking among the 365 Islas en Las Granitos. Las Islas were formed from the fallout from Volcan Monbacho. Some of the islands only had one house or had mini-mansions like that of the owner of Flor De Cana (Nicaraguan rum). We returned in sunset and swam under the full moon and mom made wishes on stars, there were lots of them. 1638 was the last time there was an eclipse on the winter solstice and we stayed up to watch for the portentous red moon which won’t appear again until 2094. Mostly it was a cloudy fog, but there was something very serious about people all around the planet looking up at the same moon witnessing the phenomena.

Tuesday, December 22nd

Hay mas tiempo que vida. This Nicaraguan saying means “there is more time than life” and was a repeated mantra throughout the trip.

Our guide almost made us turn around when he saw I was only wearing flip-flops. But I convinced him that I had trekked the Inca trail in flip-flops and that I would have no problem. As I tried to keep my balance trekking up that volcano side with mom pulling me back from my belt loop and the wind pushing me forward from the other side, both of us couldn’t help but laugh. We laughed remembering all the other times we had pushed ourselves to do what other people would call crazy, like our sunset hike to see a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka and getting lost on la isla de sol in Bolivia and we laughed about our pitiful but strong attempts to rescue any last scrape of pride as we crawled up the volcano. Shaun of course was sprinting ahead.
When we arrived mom invoked us all to breathe deeply the smells of mother earth, which turned out to be a pretty lousy idea as it was filled with the toxic sulfur gases, one ton of which is emitted daily. The Volcano is the largest crater in the Americas and last exploded 9 years ago. It has been used as a fortress, a prison and a site for witchcraft for human sacrifices.

Shaun entered the market with a mission in mind: to find the perfect gift for Elena and he perused every single object diligently. Los Pueblos Blancos and San Juan del Oriente which is known for its pottery. Shaun and I both got a chance to throw a pot and seeing as we had to spin the wheel with our foot while trying to have a bowl appear out of the glob of clay it ended up being more like a hand-eye coordination competition than anything else. The clay wiggled like it was dancing the mambo or trying to hoola hoop. Preparing the clay was done by stomping on it like one would grapes being prepared for wine.

That night we had a real, “authentic,” Nicaraguan experience – a baseball game! Baseball is Shaun’s area of expertise and he found his fellow male travel buddies Carmine and Ryan to speak this language of baseball as fluently as he does. Baseball is Nicaragua’s national sport and Dennis “El Presidente” Martinez pitched the 13th perfect game against the Dodgers for Philly. Vincent Padilla, another famous Nicaraguan player, signed a 2.6 million dollar contract at the age of 26, becoming Philly’s star pitcher. Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash trying to deliver aid to Nicaragua after the 1972 earthquake. The game we saw was between the Grenada Oriental’s and Chinendagas. The mascot was this guy who seemed to have made it his responsibility to be the dancing mascot for the last 60 years but he smiled proudly in his fire-truck red uniform. The game reminded me of the Yankee games I went to as a kid, excitedly sitting up in the “nose-bleeder” section. This time I got to sit in the best seats of the house, right behind home plate! These lucky seats were the most expensive at $2.00 a pop, general admission was 50cents. Instead of cracker jacks, there were fried plantains, cole slaw salad and tostonos (fried cheese). I’ve heard that students can get free entrance to a game to Fenway Park in Boston if they pick up the trash too. At this stadium were 3 little boys, about 5 years old, running around the stadium waiting to pick up all the empty Tona cans and water bottles after people had finished drinking them. The three boys seemed to be as interested in observing us as they were in watching the baseball game. When one woman from our group gave the rest of her fried cheese to one of the boys, he eagerly ran away to find his two friends and wouldn’t have any himself until they both had some.

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Photos

Baseball Game
toss the peanuts & crackerjacks...I'll take some plantains...

Bike Ride through the Cemetery
The living, and the dead.

Trying to Throw the Pottery
while spinning the wheel myself :/

Shaun's proud grin of accomplishing the bike ride...
for now.

Volcano Trekking
at the start - to infinity & beyond!