CENTRAL AMERICA – WEEK 5

 

Comayagua turned out to be nothing more than a rest stop along the way between Roatan Island and Grenada.  Honduras is a dangerous place; definitely not a country I’d visit on my own.  We checked into our hotel, only to find there was no electricity.  Luckily, it was not off for long.  We were thankful for air conditioning even though the shower reminded me of a man with prostate trouble.  On a more positive note, there was a Wendy’s just down the street and, for some strange reason, Fox Sports was on, with coverage of the NASCAR race in Daytona.  Things were looking up!  On the way to Wendy’s, we passed four armed security guards; there were two more standing at the door to the restaurant.  But the burger and fries were divine!

Up at crow piss the next day, it was to be our longest on the road; twelve or thirteen hours our guide told us.  We got to the border around 11:00 in the morning.  As per usual, our guide, Javier, collected our passports and the fee for crossing the border.  Then, we got out of the bus and walked across “no-man’s-land”, the area that straddles the border between Honduras and Nicaragua.  He’d warned us that getting into Nicaragua could take a while since they tend to do everything by hand, without the aid of computers.

As we waited, we changed our Lempiras into Cordobas, the local currency.  The money changers were there in full force.  They always take their 10% but you have no choice but to deal with them since there is an entry fee to be paid to get into the next country, in this case the equivalent of $13 US.  It’s quite a game! 

One hour later, we were into Nicaragua, and on our way to our destination.  Although the highways are good, traffic moves at a snail’s pace.  It’s very hilly country, there are vehicles of every description on the main road, and people walk and cycle everywhere; little children sit on the pavement in front of their houses for entertainment, and everyone seems to have something to sell.
 

Things were going well until we got to a place called Trinidad; a policeman was stopping traffic on the main road.  Our driver asked him what was going on, and was told there was some kind of a parade in the town and we’d be held up for at least an hour.  Great!  So, we got off the bus and I led the group in a forced march up the road.  Might as well find out what the hell all the fuss was about.  What we encountered turned out to be the highlight of the day: a parade of some 2,000 horses prancing through the town on their way to a national dressage event.

The horse flesh and saddlery on display were quite impressive.  Most of the animals were in top condition and had been groomed to the nines for the event.  Their handlers put on a show as they paraded along the main road and turned onto the main street leading to the fair ground.  The horses pranced and danced in place for the adoring crowds and seemed to be enjoying all the attention.  The locals were quite fascinated with us, especially the young blondes in the group, and the one girl who has red hair.  We spent a full hour watching the spectacle and thoroughly enjoyed this impromptu event.

There is something different about Nicaragua.  It’s supposed to be the poorest of the Central American countries, yet it doesn’t seem that way at first glance.  A couple of things tipped us off: most of the houses are painted and there’s far less litter around.  People seem to take more pride in their properties.  It reminded us of Prince Edward Island, where there’s more lawn per capita than anywhere else in the world.  It may only be because people like to drive lawn tractors but the result is pleasing to the eye.  It also shows that people are proud of what they own, however modest it may be; just like they are here.  The roadsides are not covered with litter as in the other countries we’ve visited so far.

It was dark when we arrived at our hotel in Granada.  It didn’t look like much from the outside but we were quite impressed when we got into the lobby and were shown to our rooms: king-size bed, air conditioning and a TV!  Next morning, we boarded a bus for an all-day tour of sites around Grenada.  We began by visiting the Masaya Volcano complex located in Nicaragua’s oldest national park.  There are several active craters and a couple that are dormant.  The one that’s spewing steam and gas in the photo is called Santiago.  We took a nice walk around the rim of one of the dormant craters.

Next, we drove to the town of Masaya and visited the market and, from there went to the nearby village of Catarina where we stopped for a breathtaking view of Lake Apoyo, a crater lake.  After lunch, we descended the winding, steep road down to the lake and went for a dip.  The wind was howling and I enjoyed the whitecaps; Elva chickened out and stayed on shore. 

We came back to Granada and drove through the city to Lake Nicaragua where we boarded a boat for a tour of several islets.  It was the highlight of the day.  Our guide told us there are 365 islands in Lake Nicaragua; many of them are inhabited, some by local people and others by rich outsiders who spend weekends and holidays there.  One even has a helicopter landing pad.  The lake is huge, the largest in Central America and the 19^th largest in the world.  In area, it is about 50% larger than Prince Edward Island.  Many of the birds we saw are migrators from the north; some of the great blue herons may even have been ours!  A surprise was the small islet that is home to three spider monkeys and a white-faced monkey.  They were placed there by a concerned veterinarian after being rescued from animal farms.

On our last day in Granada, we had a wonderful breakfast of waffles and pancakes, and then I decided it was time for a haircut.  We walked into a small salon and I sat in the chair.  The hairdresser didn’t speak a word of English and my Spanish wasn’t up to the task, so I just let her have her way with me!  First, she took the clippers to the sides of my head and buzzed me.  Accepting my fate, I watched the look of anguish on Elva’s face with some amusement.  Next, she trimmed the top pretty much the same way as my regular hairdresser does back home, and the end result was looking quite acceptable. 

But then she reached into a bin and pulled out a straight razor!  That’s when I started to worry a little.  She proceeded to scrape the hair off the back and sides of my neck and then did the same on my sideburns.  I was hoping like hell she knew what she was doing and I didn’t move a muscle until she was done.  Happy to see the straight razor back in its shield and to get up out of that chair, I asked her how much: $2 US she answered!  I haven’t had a haircut for $2 since I was a kid back in Wellington.

A ride in a horse and carriage was on Elva’s ‘bucket list’.  It happens to be one of the ‘must-dos’ in Granada.  We hopped on with three other members of our group and had a glorious ninety-minute ride through the city, complete with stops at points of interest.  It cost us $6 each!

From Granada, we drove to the ferry that was to take us to Ometepe Island, in the middle of Lake Nicaragua.  Elva remarked on the way how much she’d enjoyed all our boat rides: small outboards, lake boats, ferries large and small, and water taxis of all sizes.  She was not to enjoy this one however.  We boarded the little ferry just before she pulled away from the dock, and found her chock full of passengers, freight, motorcycles, luggage, and what must have been a week’s supply of eggs for the island.  We soon encountered three-metre waves on the big lake, and the poor little craft tossed around like a cork.  The ninety-minute ferry ride turned out to be quite the adventure.  Some of us loved it and others couldn’t wait to get off!

After a short ride along the island’s coast we arrived at our destination for the next two nights: Finca Venecia.  I thought: “Great!  Here we are: in the middle of nowhere; on an island in the middle of a lake, in the middle of nowhere; with an active volcano towering over us.”  Our guide had promised us nice rooms on the edge of the lake, and he delivered.  The place was quite charming. 

The next morning we boarded a bus for a guided tour of the island.  Ometepe Island is about 25 x 10 kilometres and is shaped .like an old-fashioned barbell.  The two mountains form the weights, bridged by an isthmus which acts like the handle that holds them together.  We were surprised to learn that 30,000 people live on the island and that most live from farming and tourism.  They’ve lived there for a hundred generations or more and have grown accustomed to the threat posed by the volcano called Concepcion.

We climbed part way up the smaller Mount Maderas and took photos of the isthmus and Concepcion in the background. On the way down, we encountered a lone howler monkey that shouted loudly to let us know we were in his territory.  After our walk and a delicious lunch, we visited a natural spring and enjoyed cooling off in the crystal clear pools.  (The temperature has been about 30 degrees C here for the past few days.) 

The second highlight of my day, after Heather Moyse bringing home Gold for Prince Edward Island, was my first sampling of live termites.  Our guide showed us how to tease the critters out of the nest and onto a stick, from where we licked them off, crunched them, and swallowed.  He told us they would taste just like carrots and, to my amazement, they did!  I had seconds, and thirds, before moving along the trail to the next stop.

The next morning, we got up bright and early and boarded the ferry to the mainland; this time, we had a proper boat, not the little scow that brought us over to Ometepe.  I enjoyed the ride so much that I fell asleep on a bench under the sun on the upper deck.  On our way to the Costa Rican border, we passed extensive wind farms along the shore of Lake Nicaragua.  The turbines were as big as the ones we have back on our island.

We arrived at the border mid-morning and went through the usual shenanigans to get across.  We boarded our bus and stopped for lunch in a town called Liberia.  Seeing a Burger King nearby, we dashed across the street and got our fix.  I looked at the local weather: it was 36 degrees C!  Three hours later, we turned onto a dirt road, bound for our destination, Monteverde, 35 kilometres away.  The poor bus struggled up hills and around hairpin turns on a dusty mountain track that made the Cannontown look like the Trans-Canada Highway!  Once again, we wondered where they the hell we were being taken.

Monteverde is a small town, high in the mountains, in a climate zone known as ‘cloud forest’.  It reminded us of a ski resort.  Moisture from the almost-constant cloud cover creates conditions favouring the growth of vegetation and provides ideal habitat for a variety of plants and animals.  After we’d checked into our cozy hotel (no kidding!), some members of the group took a guided ‘night walk’ in the forest where they saw a two-toed sloth, monkeys, coatis, kinkajous, an armadillo and, of course, poisonous snakes.  We opted for a walk through town.  Despite its isolation, we found the place to be crowded with tourists from all over the world.

Friday was adrenaline day!  Eight of us booked a trip to the 100% Aventura Canopy Tour.  After donning our harnesses and helmets, we started on an easy zip line.  Then, they got more exciting as we made our way through the forest canopy.  We crossed a rope bridge between two zip lines and then took off on a long cross-valley line that must have been one kilometre long. 

Next, we had to climb up the hill for ten minutes to get to the launch platform for the ‘Superman’ style cable.  On this contraption, we were clipped to the cable by two pulleys fixed to our backs so that we lay on our stomachs with our hands free, flying like birds!  This particular line is billed as the longest in Central America at 1,590 metres.  What a view we had of the valley below but, as I neared the end of the line, I feared I wouldn’t stop in time.  But I did.  Elva came next.  I could hear her screaming as she approached the brake mechanism at the end of the line.  This picture shows her ‘coming in hot’.

Finally, we came to the pièce de résistance, the Mega Tarzan Swing.  To do this, you walk to the end of a bridge that hangs out over the valley in mid-air.  The vertical drop is almost 150 feet.  After hooking you to a rope and telling you to “hang on”, the operators open a gate and say “Bye!”  Holy Jesus!  What a rush!  I was glad when I felt the rope start to catch me as I was catapulted to the other side of the valley.  I swung back and forth across the valley floor a couple more times before the guys on the ground caught my rope and eased me to the ground.

Elva was next.  She’d said before we ‘walked the plank’ that she didn’t think she could do it.  I convinced her it was “Now or never!”  So I watched from below as she dropped off the platform and swung through the air, screaming like a banshee as she too went back and forth across the bottom of the valley.  The picture shows her at the moment she 'fell' off the platform.

She had a smile on her face as she was unhooked from the rope at the bottom.  That’s all that mattered to me.  It’s the best $100 (for the two of us) we’ve ever spent on an adventure.  I’m just not sure what we’ll do for an encore.