I first just want to apologize for taking over a week to let you know what has been going on, but after I left the Island of Ometepe I began this marathon week and half long blazing trail through the rest of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. I will now try to retrace my steps over the last week and half and clue you in as to what has been going on in my life.
After the relaxing night's stay in the Finca Santo Domingo, I woke up early to catch the 7:00 am bus across the island to Moyogalpa, the big city on the island (pop. 3000) where I was going to catch a Lancha across the Lago de Nicaragua and then continue north from the mainland. The road to Moyogalpa wasn't more than 20 miles, and yet the trip took 1 1/2 hours, and yet again we have another anecdote about traveling by bus in Central America. From the signage on the side of the bus I was riding, I could tell that at one time (probably early 1970s) the bus had belonged to the Rochester District School System. This beast of a bus probably spent many years ferrying little American kids to and from school across icy salted roads in upstate New York. Then many years later, probably in the late 1980s, the school board decided that this bus was unfit for further service and unsafe to transport kids anymore. So what do they do? Sell the bus of course to the government of Nicaragua where they don't value their lives as much as we do and don't have "inconvenient" safety standards for public transportation. And here the bus has worked for the past 20 years, overtime gathering colorful ornamentation endemic to central America such as 6 foot tall 8" diameter chrome tail pipes, pink carpeted ceilings, lawn chair driver seating, bright purple tassells, and custom graffiti grills.
During the hard service in Nicaragua over the last 20 years, the bus had somehow lost all of its gears except 1st, and so I sat on the bus breathing in healthy exhaust in the hot Nicaraguan sun as we roared along at 7 mph. For 2 hours.
There were two options to get across the lake from Moyogalpa, a large comfortable ferry that crossed 3 times a day taking cars, people, and a full service bar for 5 dollars, or... The hourly infamous Lancha. I had heard stories, detailing the necessity to wrap you entire bag in plastic because it would surely get wet, and then a burlap bag around that to make it less enticing to steal by the hoards of people who crowded aboard this 50 year old 40 foot relic of a boat. I took my chances and did none of this as I got on, but I was able to put my bag on the deck and got a small seat up top where I could watch the bag the entire time. The trip began fine, but as we got away from the island the waves got choppier, and captain was choosing to take these 8 foot swells from his broad side. The boat rolled, ohh did it roll. I firmly clenched my seat not out of fear, but to avoid falling across the deck of the boat and into the water as we heaved back and forth 30 degrees at time. Smoothly but precipitously this boat rocked from side to side, each time bringing the top just a little closer to the water that was surely going to be our doom. My bag was fortunately strapped down or it would have met the same watery fate I foresaw the boat doing if we didn't turn into the waves. Not a moment too late, our captain turned into the waves to catch a 12 foot rogue and we made it safely to San Jorge, where I shared an hour long taxi to Granada with a 7th grade science teacher from New Hampshire taking her spring break.
Granada is the jem of Nicaragua, like a island of colonial peacefulness amidst a very poor and undeveloped country. Set on the northern shore of Lago de Nicaragua, Granada has been a cultural capital of Nicaragua since the first Hispanic invaders came in the 1500s. It is uniquely located in the western half of Nicaragua, and yet via the Lago de Nicaragua, and the river forming the border with Costa Rica, you can actually reach the Caribbean by boat. This strategic location made it a prime location for lucrative trading and a prime target for English pirates; the city was sacked several times during the 17th and 18 century. When central america won their Independence from Spain in the middle of the 19th century, there were two cultural centers in Nicaragua: one at Granada, and 2 hours to the north in Leon. These two cities both wanted a piece of the pie, and the situation ended up the way so many do in Central America, in a civil war. After much fighting and bloodletting, they gave up and picked a random small city about half way between the two to be the capital. That capital city today is the largest city in Nicaragua; Managua is an hour north of Granada, but not high up on the list of any body's travels, because a massive earthquake in 1976 leveled the city entirely.
Granada (pop. 80,000) retains a bunch of its colonial charm, along with a good schmattering of tourism and wealthy Nicaraguans. Poverty still abounds no less than 7 or 8 blocks away from the center of the city, but the 10 by 10 block section of the center is a beautiful pedestrian friendly gem of a town. Most of the small 200-300 year old buildings are one-two stories tall, and are all edged with vibrant red clay tile roofs. Each one of the original colonial structures has a beautiful courtyard of some sort, creating little havens of residence among dirtier and noisy streets. The town square is about 100 yards in each direction, and covered by tall leafy trees.
The instrument of war that killed tens of thousands in the civil war 20 years ago is now cutting prices!
For 8 bucks I found the nicest hostel I had ever stayed in, with giant Sandinista murals, decor resembling that in the movie Casablanca, a giant leafy courtyard, hand carved wooden columns, red clay tile roofs, and a custom tiled pool built into a rock wall. There I ran into two guys , Nathan and Dwight, whom I knew from the Finca Magdalena on the Isla de Ometepe. These two 30 year olds had both said to hell with life in LA, and were traveling around trying to find the right place to open a bar. They were both also over 6', which was great walking around so I didn't feel like so much of an awkward giant down here.
Here's one way to chill out...
I have really enjoyed running every morning for several reasons. One it keeps me in shape and provides some regularity to days spent in different cities. 2nd: I run with nothing on my but my shoes, shorts, and a shirt, i.e. nothing to steal. So through this I am able to run in some of the shady poorest neighborhoods and not worry about loosing anything of value besides the clothes on my back. These are places that everyone tells you not to go, but these are the places where the people of Nicaragua live and as such I think is a necessity of responsible traveling to see them. I don't have my camera so I cant capture the experience through this medium, but I can relay to you though writing the utterly basic the living conditions of many. Most of the"houses" in these shanty towns have a roof pieced together from various scraps of tin, and in the "richer" neighborhoods you find block concrete walls with metal bars for windows. In the poorer neighborhoods, you have nothing much more than a dirt floor and walls made from wooden scraps. In these shelters people live, hard working equally intelligent (usually less educated) individuals. Babies sit outside the houses in the dirt and stare at me as I run by, dogs bark from behind the barbwire that delineate the 20 foot square piece of dirt that is a yard. Each of the streets are lined with trash two or three pieces deep, blown off the road and there to remain for many years as the government doesn't care to take care of trash in the poor neighborhoods. If the families are lucky they will have a tree hanging over their piece of dirt that gives them some shade during the day, and an area to cook under. If not, then it is the hot sun and brown dust blown off the dirt road that coats everything they own.
Granada has its fair share of these shanty towns, and I keep my wits about me when I'm running through them. The other morning I was walking after a run and noticed a ratty looking guy about 25 who I had seen behind me three times during the walk at different locations, obviously following me maybe just out of curiosity. He had something in his had, but I couldn't figure out what it was. He would take the jar up to his nose and then bring it back down. Then I realized that it was jar of some kind of green glue or petroleum product, and he was sniffing it to get high. I went back to running.
Drunk old men... at 8:00 a.m.
I ran down to the beach on the giant lake of Nicaragua, and realized that I had never really seen a polluted beach up until that point. There was a giant park the city had built all along the water front, and families would come out there on the weekends to set up a picnic underneath the giant trees lining the sand. And here's the kicker: then they would all go swimming in the lake, but they took their sandals with them. Why? Because there was so much trash: metal, plastic, glass covering the beach and underneath the water that they would surely cut themselves if they didn't.
Where does it all come from? A day does not go by down here that I don't see someone their car (maybe even stopped at a light in the city), open their window and just drop whatever trash they have on the ground. Not small plastic wrappers, giant Styrofoam to-go boxes, bottles that break, plastic cups, everything. It approaches the point of ridiculousness, all out the window and onto the street where the government cant afford to pick it up.
I caught an early bus out of Granada to Managua about 1 1/2 hours away, and after a sinfully delicious and expensive ($8) breakfast at the Cowne Plaza of Managua, I was on a 8 hour bus to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. While on the bus, we made a brief 1 hour excursion into part of El Salvador, so I can check that off the list of countries I have been to, right? The bus arrived at Tegucigalpa at 10 at night into a neighborhood that the US Embassy describes as only slightly safer than a dark alley in Baghdad. So I got a taxi driver to take me as far away as he could from there, and got a hotel room in a real hotel for one night because I was going to be out the next morning bright and early headed west across Honduras. I ended up getting a room in a hotel called Gateway to the Angels (translated from Spanish), haven forgotten how nice it was to have amenities like an ice machine, television, curtains, a desk, private bathroom, and a mirror!
Navigating my way through the narrow allies the next morning and trying not to look to conspicuous (get mugged) with a 30 pound backpack, I found my way to the bus company's terminal. If I have not said it before, most of these cities do not have a actual "bus terminal" like we would think of with a train station or airport in the states. Instead you have anywhere from 10-30 different companies each going to different routes, each with unpublished departure times, and each with their own terminal located in different parts of the city. Needless to say, acquiring a bus can be quite an ordeal. As luck would have it, I missed the direct bus by 30 minutes that was going to take me all the way to the other side of Honduras to the town of Copan Ruinas. This was the only company that went there, and they only had one bus a day! Not wanting to waste an entire day back in Tegucigalpa, I pulled out a map and picked the next biggest city, asked if they had a bus, and bought a ticket getting in at 10 that evening after a 9 hour bus ride.
I had chosen to skip much of Honduras due to the fact that I had overstayed my welcome in Panama, and get a head start on Guatemala then Belize. Traveling northwest through Honduras that afternoon, I got to catch a good glimpse of the countryside from the seat of my bus, in the place of actually visiting the different towns. We were just east of the major mountain range that runs through Honduras, in an area not unlike northern New Mexico with dry stubby shrubs, sporadic rain, and a overall dry cowboy climate. Small sheds that dotted the roadside served as ever present reminders to the oppressive poverty plaguing this country. Peace core volunteers served as sources of information instead of other travelers, as there is precious little tourism to support this country's struggling econonmy that was devastated by a hurricane several years ago.
I also saw something that I hadn't seen to date since I left Peru... Pine trees! I really was coming home! I did a little wikipedia research having never taken a forestry class at Sewanee, and this was no figment of my imagination; it turns out the furthest south pine trees grow natively is 12 degrees north in latitude, or just at the Nicaraguan Honduras border.
The town I wound up in that night was called Santa Rosa de Copan, and it was 2 hours away from my final destination of Copan Ruinas. Santa Rosa de Copan was a town of 30,000 people, at the western foothills of the Honduras mountain range, and with an altitude of 4-5 thousand feet, I was afforded another night of cool weather before I sank into the jungle the following day. It was a small colonial town, and it reminded me of how nice it was to visit cities off of the tourist radar, or for that matter off anyone's radar. Santa Rosa de Copan was a traditionally built colonial town with foot tall sidewalks, narrow single lane cobblestone streets, blind corners, and a large leafy central plaza. That night I discovered their main industry was cigar making, and here is where many refugee cigar rollers escaped when the communist took control of Cuba. The town exports nearly all of their product, but that night I got to grab one while sitting at a bar just outside the colorfully lit colonial square and white plaster church.
It was here in Western Honduras that I first began to notice a perpetual smoke that limited visibility and filled the air with the slight scent of a campfire. I would see it in several cities that followed, but it seemed to be constant across the entire country and into others as well. I have since come to find out that I was traveling just during the beginning of the burn portion of slash and burn agriculture. I had heard the term countless times during my environmental studies classes, known it to be a pervasive form of forest degradation, but now the reality of the problem no longer seemed so far away as it once had. This was not in a jungle in some far off South American country; the problem was right here, and I was literally breathing it in everyday.
I left Santa Rosa de Copan early the next morning after a jog and a little street breakfast (hot dogs with mayonnaise). Two changes and three rickety bus ridden hours later I was in the town of Copan Ruinas, in time to throw my stuff down at a hotel and walk the 1 km outside of town to the massive complex of Mayan ruins that dot the valley all around Copan. Begrudgingly paying the 20 dollar entrance fee, I was off into the middle of the jungle to explore the first Mayan ruins I had ever seen.
The Mayan empire was in fact not one empire in the traditional sense such as the Roman Empire, or Austro-Hungarian empire. It was actually a collection of different kingdoms each ruled by a different king, and they were often at war with one another towards the later half of the Classical Mayan period (200AD -900AD). They did share a common culture, scientific advancements, and similiar geographic location. They spead from what is now southern Mexico and the Yucatan Penninsiula, to Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. The civilization first began to spring up and form rudmentary cities aroun 800 BC, slowly growing until around 200AD when there was an exponential growth in the sizes of the cities and their dominion. Then around 900AD there was a sharp decline in the sizes of all cities, and the people just dissapated with the great cities and temples becoming building material for new houses. Most archeologists point to several years of intense drought, and a unsustainable growth in population.
Copan was not the largest of any of the Mayan kingdoms, despite a huge fertile valley, relative isolation from other kingdoms, and few natural disasters. It also does not have the huge temples constructed at places like Tikal, Guatemala. What Copan does have is the most amazing collection of sculpture and intricate carvings out of any in the Mayan world.
I walked into the main plaza and you could tell that much of the 20 dollar entrance fee had gone into the upkeep of the grounds, because spread out before me was a giant green blanketed lawn of finely cut grass unlike any I had seen in all of central America. United Statesians tend to care more about their lawns and grass than just about any other country in the world. Set on this plaza of grass were 12-10 foot tall square statues called stellae, and each one depicted a story or a great king of the Copan Empire. It was late afternoon by this point, and most of the other tourists had left for the day, leaving me standing here alone staring at the shadows from these giant creatures cast across the ground. They were 1400 years old, mementos of a culture long ago destroyed and left abandoned, all writing burned by the spanish inquisition. The plaza speaded out south, featuring a 6 story stairway with each step comprised of 40 hyroglyphic pictures showing the story of the great kings that ruled Copan. Large portions of the entire structure were covered with trees, dirt, and vegitation. It was still a work in progress, and there were parts that were actively being excavated from the massive forest around the ruins. Despite the thick jungle that surrounds and encumbers the ruins and the entire valley, at the time of the Mayan empire there was not a single tree standing in many square miles. The size of the city demanded an intense amount of food production, and they had to farm many miles around the city to supply the needs of the population. Without cheap and reliable energy like we have today, there remained a limit as to how far out the city farm and still collect the crops. This is one of the suspected reasons for the dramtic decline in the 10th century; they had simply gotten too large.
Being so close to such tangible pieces of ancient history was a dramatic experience. With enough imagination you could close you eyes and picture what the city would have been like in its day. I knew I was standing exactly where the people of that generation stood, touching the exact same pieces of stone that they had painstakingly carved out thousands of years ago.
I spent one more day in the city of Copan Ruinas, a village of about 3,000 people, and a good mix of travelers and ex-pats that chose this little highland nook as their home. It was a comforting welcoming place, yet with a distinct foreign/tourist vibe much different than similar sized cities off the gringo trail. These things might have changed it from its traditional base, but it still very much retained significant character, along with good restaurants and museums.
Barbwire Laundry
After a day of rest, it was back on the road headed west this time towards Guatemala, Guatemala City, Antigua, and the Tikal ruins. Im hoping to get that entry up soon, so stay tuned!
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