Back from Granada

Wow. Double wow, in spades. Nicaragua was not what we expected, if only because our bar had been lowered by years of news reports slanted for the effect of selling more newspapers/ holding the attentions of more viewers. In short, if it bleeds, it leads.

Not that life in that country is all sweetness and light for everyone who lives there. I saw cattle sheds in the middle of cow pastures that were houses, for crying out loud. I was pestered by people who have to beg for a living because they can't find work ( and by people who probably make a relatively decent living from begging too). But this revolting poverty does not sum up the country either. It will probably take weeks to sort in my head everything we saw and did into some greater narrative, so I will just dump here things as I remember them. I will attempt to withold from the following my contempt for Che Whatshisface and commies in general, because I saw that both were still respected in Nicaragua, and my disdain for that bearded murderer will not give you or me insight into why.

Getting there:

We left Jaco early in the morning, but still an hour later than planned. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant at which I last ate in June (food as good as ever), then went on to Playa del Coco, with everything looking utterly familiar. Sometime around noon, we picked up Lay May in Coco, and drove for two hours to the border, where we parked the car in a 'secure' parking lot in the no-man's land described below - and no one touched it while we were gone. I'm including this apart from the next bit because until we got out of the car, we really were still in Kansas, so to speak.

Take a strip of land maybe a kilometer long, maybe a fifth of that wide. Wall it off (in places with old concrete and wire (and other places nary a barrier in sight), pave it with whatever is is at hand and let it go to dirt and puddles and ruts otherwise, fill it with stationary semi-trailers, their drivers and assistants, police with automatic weapons, boarder officials, buses, bus drivers, travelers, backpackers, beggars, pick-pockets, transient workers, taxi drivers, vendors, money-changers, etc. and so on... all of them doing whatever all at once. Do not include any signs explaining where to go or what to do when you get there, Fill it with 'entrepreneurs' who will 'help' you fill out paperwork for money - yours - and are probably scouting you out for their partners to rob while they do it. Load us up with all our bags and start walking. I had my cheap shoulderbag (positioned behind me because I was carrying more stuff on my other arm) slit open while we stood in line to get the passport stamped. Turned out they got nothing; the bag held only laundry and I turned around a second or three later and discovered the slit. Miraculously the crowds behind me soon vanished once it was obvious that I had noticed the rip. There was no point in making a fuss about it; I should have been paying closer attention, and could not have identified anyone if asked. There had been three or four 'guides' all trying to get my attention as they 'helped' me. But it would not be until we made it to Granada that I could confirm that nothing was taken.

Getting to Granada... we had two choices at the boarder, a taxi or the chicken bus. This last is exactly what it sounds like, an old school bus probably made in Brantford with a massive roof-rack added since, with Nica passengers and occasional livestock, that stops about a billion hand, does not stop, and we wanted to get there before dark. However, there were five of us, and the cab seats four. "Two cabs, $US 50.00 each," we were told. When we said we would rather take the chicken bus, we were told "One cab, $US 50.00" When we declined again, the price became $US 4o.00, and we accepted. When I say we, I mean Jane and Lay May and Geoff, who speak Spanish. I took no part in the discussions. We were led through another passport checkpoint to a... well, see the picture David took of the cab in Granada, after the ride. Now the beggars swarmed us in earnest, for we were outside the crossing, and in Nicaragua proper and the thick of the poverty. There was nothing to do but squash in and wonder why the driver had taken the cab sign off the roof before we left. We found out. Five seats - six occupants - transit police who can count. Plus no authorization to take passengers into Granada. On the other hand, $US 40.00=800 cordobas, a great return on two hours of the driver's time, from his point of view.

I did not take pictures of the things I saw on the way in. It seemed somehow wrong to record for posterity the rickety hovels I saw in the beautiful landscape, the spavined glue-factory rejects we passed pulling carts made of old truck tires and axles and rough, weather-beaten lumber - so help me, I saw carts with wheels made of solid wood - because none of it seemed the fault of those people we saw forced by circumstances beyond their control to live there. I might as well be calling it all 'quaint'. People do not make houses out of salvaged hurricane-bent corrugated tin and black plastic because they just don't feel like driving the new truck down to the lumberyard right now.

But there was no universal level of poverty, no lack of effort on the part of anyone to get ahead as best they could. There was no sense whatsoever that the population had given up and was waiting in stunned misery to be saved. For every shack patched with cast-off rubbish, there were twenty houses that were merely a hundred years or so old, and many more newer ones that hadn't been maintained or updated in the last few decades. The cars and trucks were well-worn, and not present in numbers sufficient to create congestion. There were motorcycles, scooters and bicycles everywhere. The scenery was lush and green and the fields of the ranches and farms we passed show not only great potential for wealth, but active use: that money is going into the economy somewhere. The flurry of begging at the boarder, of hanging around waiting for the gringo to explode in showers of money, vanished as soon as we left the area; there are no other opportunities available right there. We would encounter few more outright requests for money, but these would be heavily outnumbered by street vendors who wanted to sell us something, and they would be polite and simply move on when we declined to buy.

I do not know enough of the history of this beautiful country to justly apportion the blame for its current economic state among the various governments local and foreign that have mucked about with the people for decade after decade, but the one running things now ought to be as ashamed of things as any. At that, I have been told that the real power here resides in several ultra-wealthy families, and that it always has.

The roads were remarkably free from potholes, compared to Costa Rica, perhaps because there is much less heavy road traffic to batter the pavement to pieces. Very often we would pass a cow or two, all horns and ribs and hipbones, cropping free grass at the side of the road. For a while, we were right beside Lake Nicaragua, and the water was brown, with choppy waves. I have seen the lake from the air; at umpty-thousand feet, it appears calm and flat and green. We passed an island of two volcanoes, and our driver told us that the lake is home to the only fresh-water sharks in the world.

Two or three times, it was necessary for Lay May to duck down as we passed transit police, and once there was a complicated little drive around Rivas until the coast was clear. At one stage there was rain blowing in the windows, mostly on me, but it passed. We found that in Nicaragua, all the drivers beep at all intersections, and as a polite way to let everyone else know they are coming, in circumstances where it looks like someone is going to step out in front of them. In Costa Rica, everyone assumes that you know what they are going to do - and that you will get out of their way. There was nothing about our cab that was not battered, bent or broken but our driver was a good sort - and we ended up hiring him to drive us back. He took us directly to our hotel in Granada; one moment you are still in the countryside, the next you are on narrow streets laid out centuries ago. As that city deserves multiple entries, I will end this one here. If there are not yet pictures included, there should be by tomorrow when I am awake enough for Jane to add them.