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Published: February 2nd 2011
Nicaragua: Sandinistas… Contras… civil war… Iran-gate… Reagan...
For me, those would have been the limited word-associations for “Nicaragua” until only a few years’ ago if I’d really stretched my brain cells. I knew it was in Central America (give the girl a medal!), but, much more than that, and I would have been struggling. I didn’t even know which ocean or sea lapped at its shores. (In fact, it straddles the fragile little wiggle of land that separates the behemoths of North and South America, the Pacific coast being a surfers’ paradise, and the Caribbean side of the country remote and autonomous with little by way of infrastructure or common culture to link it to the political capital of Managua in the west; a dramatic range of volcanoes – Nicaragua’s share of the Pacific “ring of fire” – divide the two.) But then an old friend from my first days of working in London and her husband decided to adopt a little boy from this impoverished but valiant little country, and Nicaragua leapt into my consciousness. After all, if my friend was living there for eight months as part of the adoption process, I clearly HAD to go and visit…
After a hectic five weeks in the chill of a sporadically snow-bound UK over Christmas and New Year, I happily packed up and headed for the airport.
Amy was still in the middle of the unbelievable mountain of paperwork involved in adoption, so I knew I was going to be based with her in Managua for a while. However, she quickly gets city-sick, and before I’d worked out which way was up (though I had already lapped up the warmth and sunshine like an animal emerging from hibernation), we were on the road for a 3-day trip to the Boaco and Chontales departamentos, areas she hadn’t yet explored. I really didn’t know what to expect…
Just south of the geographic centre of the country, these departamentos are the heart of cowboy country where, believably, cattle outnumber humans. Horses are a regular mode of transport here – unlike in Africa or India – with bridles constructed apparently ad hoc out of rope, and saddles reminiscent of the Wild West. The scenery is mountainous, though not volcanic; we had left the smoking peaks of Volcanes Momotombo and Masaya, behind us. Instead we were venturing into the heart of the Serranías
Amerrique, part of the central spine of the country, with impressive peaks, cliffs and valleys, and home to charming villages only a scenically bumpy drive away from the main road from Managua to El Rama.
Our first stop was one such village, Santa Lucia, an oasis that time seemed to have forgotten. I felt it had aspirations to greater things, with the way that its main road divides around a central reservation in the heart of the township, somewhat disproportionate at present. However, taking this aspiration further might have to wait a while, I fear. Half of the bridge across the river on the main approach road had collapsed… and there was no hint that reconstruction might be on the agenda any time soon. This had, of course, dramatically reduced the amount of vehicular traffic at this end of the village, and we found ourselves walking along the main street in near silence, watched by locals unaccustomed to seeing tourists, let alone two white women with a little brown boy in tow. I found it a little eerie. In India and Africa, locals in this situation would call out to the visitor. I couldn’t walk for more than half
a minute down the street my first afternoon in Rwanda’s Gisenyi without responding to yet another “Good morning” (regardless of the time of day), “Bonjour” or simply “Muzungu! Muzungu!”. Small children would run up to me, curious or seeking money, pens or sweets. Here we were followed by eyes only, though if we offered a “Buenos días”, it would be reciprocated and with a smile.
It seemed to be a village where no-one ate out, not even in the scruffiest park café, but, after numerous requests of locals, Amy established that a yellow building on the way out of town might produce something. As we entered, it seemed to be a stocks-everything corner shop, but it was attached to a large empty hall simply decorated with a banner and the odd poster advertising Toña, one of the local brews. Maybe this was Santa Lucia’s happening nightspot, we speculated. In any event, the owner was easily persuaded to offer us freshly-cooked eggs and tortillas, which duly if a little improbably emerged from another building off the central courtyard, and we were furnished with a repast that would have gone down well in far flasher establishments than this… though maybe the
flasher establishments wouldn’t have had hens wandering in.
We spent that night in Boaco, a town on two levels. Historically, there were two towns here, one dramatically clinging to a narrow ridge above the valley floor, and the other littered around its base, but they are now united by a series of near-vertiginous roads. Again, we had an unexpectedly dramatic approach to the town: this time, the road disappeared into a river. Fortunately, a couple of vehicles coming in the opposite direction illustrated the manageable route through, and the car’s undercarriage had an unexpected bath. In fashion true to this part of the world, the next oncoming traffic we met was a herd of cattle with a couple of cowboys in attendance. This was not England’s M1.
Most Nicaraguan towns and villages are built around a parque central, dominated by the town’s main church (or one of them, if the present-day town is a conglomeration of several old villages). This predictability makes it much easier to get one’s bearings in a new place, and every little helps in this regard because Nicaragua is a country without street-names. Addresses are by reference to the distance and direction from particular
landmarks, or, sometimes, former landmarks (just to keep you on your toes): it is quite possible to be told that your destination is three blocks east and five blocks north of where Ernesto’s old garage was. (I was happily reminded of my father: when asked to give me a lift to a particular cinema in Edinburgh, he would invariably respond, “Oh, you mean the New Vic/Old Vic/Regal”, whatever the establishment had been called several incarnations previously when he was growing up.) In Managua, there is the added wrinkle that compass directions are not used; instead you are told whether to head towards the lake or away from it, or towards the mountains or away from them. I was relieved not to be driving myself around the city, and took my hat off to Amy for the way that she had conquered this system.
The next morning, we drove on to the Chontales capital, Juigalpa, via another bumpily-accessed village glued improbably to the mountain-side, San Lorenzo. Hyped as the prettiest village in the region – with some serious competition – it certainly would give others a run for their money and its charm was further enhanced for me when a
trio of horsemen rode down the street. More frivolously, I was enchanted to see a Pepsi booth in the corner of the churchyard. Good to know that this devout country’s vocal chords can be oiled so close to the seat of their devotions.
In Juigalpa, we treated ourselves to one of the best hotels in town, less than a block away from the main square and its modern-look Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. For the princely sum of US$35, we had a comfortably-furnished quiet room off the hotel’s central courtyard for the three of us, complete with luxurious en suite, and, at least some of the time, internet, hot water and electricity. (Neither of the latter two are guaranteed in this country, even in the chichi-est neighbourhoods of the capital.) It wouldn’t have taken much for us to put down roots here, with the place almost to ourselves, even if the resident parrots were a little noisy at times...
Juigalpa is another grid-planned town. Like Jinotepe in the Pueblos Blancos near Managua, it sensibly adopts a one-way system through its narrow streets to ensure that traffic is kept in some degree of order, but, also like
Jinotepe (and, for that matter, most of the country), the local authorities clearly think that signposting which direction traffic should go along a particular street would take all the fun out of it. At each crossroads, Amy would pause, checking who had right of way and, with her indicator on, would wait to see if someone shook their head at her or flashed their lights to warn her against the proposed manoeuvre.
That evening Amy narrowly prevented me from making a major food-ordering error. My Spanish isn’t up to much – though it’s now infinitely better than it was when I arrived here two weeks’ ago, even if some of it has been taught me by a small child – and I didn’t like constantly asking Amy for translations. So when I spotted “huevos” on the menu, I was delighted: I could order eggs all by myself. Now to work out which version under the “huevos” heading might be attractive… What I hadn’t taken into account was the fact that the heading consisted of two more words after “huevos”: “de” and “toro”. I’d come within milliseconds of ordering myself a dinner of a bovine male’s crown jewels. While my
vegetarianism is “of convenience” – and in Nicaragua, I’m having to make a lot of exceptions or face a constant diet of “gallo pinto” (rice and beans) – this would have been several steps too far. I still shudder at what I nearly faced…
The highlight of the trip was the unexpected discovery of Parque Arqueológico Piedras Pintadas. Nicaragua doesn’t have the vast ruins of ancient civilisations in the same way as some other parts of Central and South America, but it does have a lot of petroglyphs. Many of these have now been moved into museums, or require a longer and more strenuous hike to see them than we could have managed with a small child in tow, so when we read about this national park, part-funded by altruistic Finns, containing the largest collection of petroglyphs in situ in the country, and found that it was not a million miles away from Juigalpa, we set off to find it.
A degree of exploration and a lot of crossed fingers were required. We knew we had to get back on the El Rama road and head east for another hour or so, before turning off at Villa Sandino,
but weren’t sure how to find the place thereafter. Sure enough, it required several “Permiso, ¿dónde está…?” (which didn’t always result in consistent responses, just to keep things interesting) before we wiggled our way through the little town and out onto another bumpy Chontales special. Not far down the road, we even found a signpost advertising the Parque Arqueológico. Things were looking positive… Half an hour of bone- and chassis-rattling later, we drew up at a padlocked gate. Just as our hearts were sinking to have had such an arduous journey frustrated at the final hurdle, a young man appeared on the other side of the gate and, seemingly bemused to have any visitors at all, never mind our slightly kooky group, let us in for the princely sum of a dollar each.
No-one seems to know much about these petroglyphs. The guide books say, a little unhelpfully, that they were carved between 800 and 1200 AD… probably… And that some might be of religious or spiritual significance… or not… They might just be doodles… Heck of an effort to put into a doodle, I would have thought, looking at the depth and clarity of the lines carved a
centimetre deep into the rocks, albeit carved into fairly simple forms, including, recognisably, tortoises, snakes, crocodiles (or, more accurately for this part of the world, caimans), dogs, humans… and, less recognisably, alien-like human-insect things and other squiggles that would have given a Martian-landing conspiracy theorist a gratifying amount of material.
I was struck by the chance involved in the discovery of these petroglyphs. Some of the boulders within the park were still covered – or, perhaps, now re-covered – with moss and new tendrils of nearby plants crept across them. It wouldn’t take much in this land of luxuriant growth for these patterned rocks to disappear once again. How on earth had someone tripped over these in the first place? And, if there were so dense a collection right here, in an area that we wandered slowly around in less than an hour, how many more might also be littering these hills?
But those questions remained unanswered for now. We drank in the spectacular view from the far side of the park, over the valley and towards the distant hills. Lost to the naked eye in the glare of the late-afternoon sun but visible on my camera’s screen
when I idly reviewed a photograph I’d just taken, was the outline of a smoking Volcán Momotombo, the far side of Lago de Managua, not far short of 200 km away. Making our way back to the car, Amy described this as one of the highlights of her time in Nicaragua. I was honoured to have been able to share the experience.
But now to tackle the bumps and the setting sun for a more immediate and basic need. It had been a long time since breakfast.
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Lynn
non-member comment
Fantastic as always
Boy do i love going with you on your journeys, if only via your words. Glad you made it back to the warmth though its not like it's the Arctic over here! Looking forward to the next installment, as always!