Heading Home

Time to go.

We pack up, drive back over the mountains to San Jose, and slide by degrees back into the ordinary. The plane is supposed to fly out at 1345 h local, but the sense of dislocation is already starting. In several hours, we will look at Houston and then Detroit, and wonder why anyone would want to live that way.

See you all soon.

Rob

Acclimated

A sure sign that a vacation is nearly done here is that everything about life in Jaco has become... not necessarily ordinary but unremarkably familiar. We have spent the last few days on matters of the magazine and the phone book, with daily trips to the beach for David to continue to practice surfing. (Rainy season is nearly done; there was enough direct sun yesterday to give me a bit of a burn.) Either we eat at home, cooking our variations on local food: gallo pinto and vegetables and dorado or chicken, or we eat local foods at a couple of sodas - and the details of each meal no longer stand out. We shop at Mas Por Manos or Mega Super, the latter as little as possible because although it is nearer, the selection is not as good and the prices are higher. The assorted vagaries of the infrastructure are hardly worth noting any more; the power went on, off, on, off, in rapid sucession, and then on and finally off for an hour and a half last night. And the drains had been repulsively reluctant since yesterday midmorning. This seems normal.

A quick glance at my watch says it's the 7th. Of course - we leave tomorrow.

Aftermath

We drove only as far as Playa del Coco, as Lay Mey had to work that night at La Vida Loca; there was a Halloween Bash on. We saw Eddie, rented a room at a B&B, and went to L.V.L., where much fun was had by all and I lost at both pool and table tennis. Then we drove back to Jaco on Saturday, eventually arriving at dusk all hot and sweaty from the trip and anticipating long, long showers.

Where we found that the water to the house had been shut off with one day's warning over a bill of about $US 5.00, delivered the day after we left. (As far as we knew, all payment arrangements had been followed; we were in error.) There is nothing like not being able to flush a toilet in tropical heat to remind you of how essential modern plumbing is, and I cheerfully invite anyone who derides it to give it up.

It was too late to call anyone on Saturday, and on Sunday, there isn't anyone to call. I stuck a pot under the leak in the rain gutters that night for enough water to flush about once and our neighbour put his hose over the fence on Sunday afternoon, so I could fill up pots and pop bottles and so on for Jane; I 'showered' in the yard. We were not cooking because unwashed dishes here attract hundreds of little ants in minutes if you don't keep your kitchen clean. We couldn't go out because all our clothes needed laundering from the trip, except one clean outfit each that wouldn't be for long unless we had showers... all in all, a less than happy thing after the great fun and excitement of our side trip to Granada.

Which is why I didn't bother to post on it as it was happening; it didn't deserve official notice.

On Monday morning, an official was proclaiming to Ruth that he had been out on Friday and turned everything back on, even as nothing still poured out of the taps when we opened them. He then said he would be right out, and he was in half an hour, but he hadn't brought the right tools with him, and borrowed some from Chuck across the street, but the shut-off was broken - of which he was aware, he said, because it had broken on Friday... this translates to still no water. He went away. We just shrugged our shoulders and waited. After a while, six city workers showed up, there was a gush of water down the sidewalk as they replaced the shut-off, and the Great Drought was over with. Back to the business of business.

I have still not resolved to my own satisfaction the political feel of Granada. There is a big election coming up on the 9th, I believe, but there did not seem to be a lot of posters about the town. It has been touted by some as a referendum on the current government. An English language daily paper on the main desk in the hotel lobby had an article slagging former Sandinista leader and now-president Daniel Ortega, for arresting members of some NGO charity type thing or other on charges of corruption and money laundering; he had their computers and files seized too. The paper suggested that he was doing it to deflect criticism for failed policies. I think it is because ultimately he knows of no other way to govern. But on the other hand, he has nowhere near the power he had thirty years ago; he too shall pass.
Some of his offical posters seemed to me to have a little too much cult-of-personality, concerned-leader-knows-best tone to them, but remember, this is an outside opinion. I do not know, one way or the other, how the locals take him.

And I finally did see one of those movie cliche trucks with large speakers driving about loudly exhorting something or other. No one seemed to be taking notice. Obviously the details of daily life were more important.

Getting out of Dodge

And on the third day, we left. Eventually. After breakfast at Kathy's, an encounter with parrots and packing, we decided to go to the mercado in Granada, and found that although laid out somewhat differently that the one in Masaya, the spirit of the place was just about the same. Some things were purchased, a very slick pick-pocket managed to unzip a pouch on Jane's purse and got absolutely nothing of worth, and the taxi mentioned a few entries below drove Lay Mey and Geoff and I all over town before we corrected his belief that we wanted the Hospital Colcibolca. We scrap cars that are in twice as good shape back home as that cab. We were returning to get our luggage and then meet Jane and David at the park where our taxi driver who brought us from the border would show up.

Simple, no? Well yes, except that none of us had any cordobas after paying off the cab, so we rushed back on foot overladen with everything (trying to make up time for the inadvertant scenic tour of Granada), and Geoff sat in the park with a big pile of luggage, and I took some magazines to Jimmy Three Fingers'. And then we waited for Jane and David and Lay Mey, who had returned to the mercado, and then I waited while Geoff went, and then Jane and Geoff and David came back, and then Geoff and David went to buy the previously descibed calzone -and then the taxi showed up early while we didn't have everyone.

And then Lay Mey came back... do you notice a trend here?.. and we waited. No calzone is ready before its time and all are very much worth the wait. Jane and I bought some drinks and ice in plastic bags from a vendor and didn't die from intestinal diseases. We got in the cab, and got to work on the food and we were in the countryside before one tenth of it was gone. This was either a long or short time, depending. Eventually I could eat no more.

Without warning, the cab developed a serious case of the staggers, probably due to water in the gas. We had an anxious few minutes before the engine had enough power to get the car back up over 15 miles per hour. After a while, the taxi driver stopped and bought a package of cigarettes, explaining that he had talked to the cops and found that this was what they wanted to not notice him driving past. And eventually, we slowed down at a checkpoint and the hand-off was neatly done, and we continued on our way. The driver was happy, were were happy, the cops were happy...it is probably best, however that this does not catch on at home, as I can't see anyone there being satisfied with mere cigarettes.

Back at the border, the beggar cluster was bigger than before, but thoroughly thinned out by passport checkpoint into the crossing proper. There were people trying to sell us for two dollars the forms that the officials would give us for free, but we ignored them and went directly to the spots we needed to, watched each other's baggage like hawks and declined politely all the vendors. With everything stamped, we went through three more checkpoints, dodging around puddles and huge semi-trailers and buses, and then got the car. We drove a couple of hundred feet and parked at the Costa Rica building, where someone tried to sell us forms that we could get for free inside. More stamps, and we were back.

But not done with roadside passport checks. There were four more of them along the road home from the border.

Day Two, Part Two

It looks like Jane is too busy with work to do the next post; so I'm going to fill in for her; and probably at greater length than necessary as usual.

We took the bus to Masaya for a few cordobas each, and very quickly were outside of the the oldest part of Granada. Here the shabbiness of all things came more strongly into focus; the closed court-yard houses and impressive government buildings of the old city either hide away or do not emhasize how badly the last few decades have treated these people. Something about more modern structures makes their decay scream for attention. Roads seem more potholed, garbage less collected, tourists far less obvious, everything needs repainting.

We hired a taxi that pulled up to the bus stop as we stepped down, as soon as his passengers were out of the car. The cab was a Hyundai Breadbox (not its real name, but that should give you an idea of its general size and shape), well dented and scraped. There were six of us in a vehicle designed for five again, but headroom is not a problem in this car. It is even narrower than the Gnat, for those of you who remember that late unlamented Festiva. On the way to the market in Masaya, our driver gave us a price to go to the volcano, and we arranged for him to meet us back at the market in an hour and a half. It should have been in two days.

Take some corrugated tin and nail it up to keep the rain and the sun off whatver tables, pipes, scrap lumber and beams take shelter under it or hold it up - and keep nailing tin up until you've covered maybe half an acre. Maybe more. Fill every square inch underneath with booth after booth after booth of every product imaginable, suspend them from the roof on cables or hooks, ropes and wires - everything that won't fit on the shelves and tables, leave crisscrossing aisles of two and a half feet or so to walk between, have no maps, no booth numbers, no directions, cram it with vendors and their children and their babies, and their dogs, import a constant stream of customers...and you will get an idea of how confusing we found things under that tin roof. The prices here are cheap even by Nicararguan standards, a leather belt $US 3.00, a turned wooden box $US 4.00. Ripped videos are $US 1.00 each, and they will put them on so you can see the quality of what you are buying. Shoes, clothes, rice, watches, toys, rice, slabs of unrefrigerated meat, chickens killed and dressed while you wait. Fish, wallets, purses, shirts, other clothes, haircuts, perms, pots, pans, souvenirs, things repaired, stereos, pinatas, icecream cones, sunglasses, spices, baskets, cleaning supplies, beans, candy, hammocks... you get the idea. We got separated from Geoff and Lay Mey, got lost and probably never saw 75% of the market and still came out with most of everything we needed in little plastic bags.

From the moment we entered, we had two persistent guides who wanted to 'help' us find things, and it took some firm words from Jane three or four times before they finally left us alone. I was ignoring them and that wasn't working.

There are no pictures of the market because we forgot to re-charge the camera's battery; this will account for the misleading dates on photos from the volcano because we used Geoff's camera there and I did not know that the date stamp was on and incorrectly set.

Our taxi was waiting for us at the appointed time and we all squashed in, with David sitting on my lap in the front seat - and we were not even out of the parking spot before a traffic cop wrote the driver a ticket for being overloaded. Then we left anyway, because the driver said that they could only fine him once, and the ticket could be now considered a pass. But it was going to be for more than the price of the trip to the volcano. After a some discussion, we stopped and put David in the trunk - relax; the Breadbox is like a little van - and here is the first photo of that adventure.

Off we went, and my opinion of the financial state in which most Nicaraguans live was not altered by anything I saw. We drove quite some distance to the volcano, which is a state park and the fees to get in are probably priced high enough that most locals do not go (unless there is an unposted Nica price.) We covered the cost of the taxi driver to get in, and he drove us directly to the top of the mountain. Here are pictures of the lava fields through which we passed; there is some vegetation growing over the rock but its rough structures would make it nearly impassable on foot.

At the crater... there is a reason for these signs in the parking lot...

...and it is this. When I first saw and smelled the gas coming off the crater, I named it the Mouth of Hell, which echoes what the Spanish priests thought of the place when they raised a cross there and put an end to the locals flinging children and virgins into it to placate some old hag spirit who lived down in the lava. The gasses are unpredictable, and the crater is potentially active at at any moment, and you might want to leave in a hurry. There are stairs built to the top of the peak over the crater, and by the time David and I and Lay Mey got to the top, the sulphurous fumes were too much to bear and we only stayed long enough for a quick picture or two. Jane had some issue with the sulphurous gas - the damned stuff seemed to cause a sulphite reaction - and we got her out of there as quickly as possible; if we had thought the whole thing through clearly, we never would have come up to the crater. **Jane's note, I would have, I just would have taken extra meds and a mask!! :)**

There is a museum at the entrance to the park, and we had a quick look through it; this is where I found out about the hag spirit.

Jane needed a new inhaler; the taxi driver found us a hole-in-the-wall pharmacy where merely from description and without a prescription we purchased a ventalin inhaler of double strength/ double dose (compared to that at home) and a vial of epinepherine in case of anaphalactic shock, for about $US 6.00. Why is it that former dictatorships treat you like an adult, capable of deciding things for yourself, and democracies like ours swathe you in bubble wrap and smother you in regulations and laws and bureaucracy, and pervasive nanny-statist clap-trap and insist that you can't take care of yourself? Jane has had asthma attacks progress so far that she ended up in emergency for treatment because a pharmacy at home that had sold her countless inhalers before could not give her another inhaler when she obviously needed it because the prescription had run out.

The taxi driver said he could give us a ride all the way back to the hotel, and we agreed as this would be faster than getting back on the bus... so he stopped and took the taxi sign off the roof, because he was not permitted to drive into Granada. This did not bother us in the least. He had said nothing about having to swallow the fine back in Masaya, and deserved a chance to get back whatever he could, and for his patience, trouble and excess distance covered, we paid him about double + tips what we had originally hired him for. We had had use of his cab for two hours, and it cost us about $US 18.00.

Back at the Hotel, we cleaned up and walked across the park, and stopped for the fireworks being set off in the town square. This was an eye-opener; there did not seem to be even the rudimentary safety precautions that we took all those years ago at Alice and DJ's neighbourhood fireworks night in place. There was nothing between the crowd and the mortars that launched bigger and ever bigger charges skyward. And the historic structures behind them? Nothing burned down, so it was all good. But I guess that's all part of what I mentioned above: fireworks are dangerous, so it's your business to figure that out and stay away. Which we did.

We went down a street off the park to Jimmy Three Finger's, a restaurante run by Jimmy himself, who is from Alabama and can cook up steak dinners that you must simply see and try to believe. I had 10 0z of filet mignon perfection, and regretfully declined the brownie desert at the end, although by the time I made it back to the hotel, there was room. Steak dinner and drinks for five, $US 52.00. Do you notice a trend here?

David took a picture of his dinner, both before and after.

Swimming thereafter, Flor de Cana 5year-old rum and cokes ($US 4.00 per small bottle) and sleep.

Day Two

After a morning on the computer - this is Jane in the VUI Nicaragua office - doing the far-flung business empire thing, we tottered off to the bank (see below), then to have breakfast at Kathy's, a restaurant across from the Convento San Francisco. We sat at tables outside under the porch roof and ate a delicious breakfast while watching the citizens of Granada go about their business. This involved using a lot of contrivences made of recycled junk pulled by scrawny horses, new European, Korean and Chinese delivery trucks, women carrying wicker baskets of foodstuffs on their heads, battered fourwheel drive pickups with cargoes of workers, innumerable dented taxis beeping at every corner, bicycles with three family members aboard, a motorcycle with the rider holding a yellow Tropigas propane cannister onto the seat behind him, and the inevitable street vendors who wanted to sell us flowers, pottery, cashews and brightly painted, hand-carved whistles. These were usually children, sometimes an older sister/little brother combination, and although they were supposed to stay on the sidewalk, no one in the restauant seemed to care if they came up by the tables to try their luck.

And I got a thousand watt faceful of beaming encouragement from a very pretty young thing of about twenty who seemed to find me attractive.

Did I say the food was delicious?

The former convent across the street has been a museum for a century or so. While we ate a tour bus pulled up to the ancient steps and disgorged a load and I cast a mental sneer at them for doing touristy things when they could be stuffing themselves like me on gallo pinto. It was not until we returned to Costa Rica that I learned the museum has one of the most extensive collection of pre-Columbian statues anywhere, which I would have found completely fascinating, and I didn't lever myself away from the table to go and see, then or the next day either when we had breakfast at Kathy's again.

It's not like the street is any wider than any other street in Granada. And the museum is very inexpensive.

We went to a bank west of the square, where through the unremarkable miracles of modern technology, we could load up with American dollars drawn on a Canadian bank in mere seconds and convert them to cordobas with the helpful money changer who operates from the bank's doorstep immediately thereafter. He is making his living on the percentage difference of about 0.61 percent, and perhaps accumulating hard currency in the process.

Back to the hotel, and more far-flungery; we talked to Athena over Skype and found out that life in Brantford was cold and miserable, if you were outdoors. Always nice to know how the rest of the world, or the bit of it you are familiar with, is doing. Because of the old-style architecture of the hotel - high ceilings of about twenty feet, big doors and a courtyard open to breezes - the heat of the day was merely hovering in the background without the necessity for air conditioning.

Enough of my blather; Jane can tell you of the rest of the day.

Tele-pizza

There is only one best pizza in the world, and it is in Granada.

No, really. In one of the old buildings just off the town square by a block northish, and two easterly, you can sit down in the Tele-pizza restaurante and eat the absolute utter best pizza you will ever eat anywhere. Or at least the best pizza I have ever eaten anywhere, and in spite of my extremely limited experience around the world eating pizza, or doing much else for that matter, I challenge you to try it and compare to your personal favourite. And Tonas are 20 cordobas (about a dollar US), making it a sin not have at least two. A large pizza with five toppings, six drinks, five desserts - flan, chocolate cake, tres leche - about $US 15.00.

Three tres leche and the two others make five desserts, see?

Still not convinced? I tried to eat, on the day we left, a calzone from Tele-pizza, which is to pizza pockets what Arnold Schwartzeneger is to PeeWee Herman... if Arnie was made of delectable crust and crammed with freshly cooked ham and most of a block of superlative melted cheese and a little bag of wonderous tomato sauce to drizzle on to taste, and Paul Reuben was disinterestedly thrown together by Mccain out of sawdust and recycled cardboard. Or something. This metaphor isn't working; but I stalled with about a fifth left, unable to eat any more no matter how much I wanted to, which was quite a lot.

Update: I see by my notes that we spent $US 19.00, not $15.00 as originally posted on that supper, which obviously is far too much, and we never should have gone.