Kaimana Wolff

The Full Nicaragua—Part II

Delightful as it might have been to bump our way straight back to Las Penitas after my survival of the El Cerro Negro torture test and sink, battered and bruised, into a sling chair with a cold one in hand, the stockings hung up on the beach chair with care and all that, Lenin the Superguide was not about to fall short on providing us with every last possible Christmas Eve adventure.

Out of the gate of the national park we bumped. Just as I heaved a sigh of relief at the thought of the “repaired road” giving way to something more navigable, Chinto took a sharp left onto another soft dirt road, boogying along at 60 kph or more where I would have been hesitant to gallop a horse or stand on the pedals of a bike.

Have you ever dreamed of going back in time to sail a Spanish galleon across the Atlantic? Tame wild horses of the American West? Chase Moby Dick? Hunt buffalo over the jump? Those experiences can be yours in Nicaragua if you merely shut your eyes as you take a trip in a four-by-four on secondary and tertiary roads a few weeks after the rainy season ends—but waves and earth seem to have turned to concrete! The ruts and rocks and branches are reality bites much harder than you could have imagined!

We lurched to a stop just feet short of a broken oxcart. The front shaft had snapped and the cart had keeled over, spreading thousands of cobs of the original red, black and gold American corn all over the road. The farmer had already hitched the longsuffering oxen to the other end of the cart, with a view to pulling it free of its heavy load and righting it. A woman stood alongside, doubtless thinking how late dinner was sure to be. We offered help, and I could envision flinging corn cobs across the earth’s surface for the rest of the afternoon. These hardworking people didn’t need us, however, and directed us to an alternate route.

I understood perhaps half of what the farmer said in his directions, enough to fill up my already shaky body with dread. A sensible person would, of course, have switched to horseback, but we were not sensible. So I hung myself up in the vehicle at 45 degrees for an hour or more, first one way and then another, using the grab bars with all my strength while thinking kindly on my travel companions who had to manage their unwieldy sacks of muscle and bone and water around the beltless, benchless back of the van.

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Merry Potentially Posthumous Christmas

What’s the perfect Christmas gift for someone who has lately been saved from cancer (not to mention the fact that she also lost her mother and a beloved dog in the same year)?

Isn’t it obvious? A trip to the lip of an active volcano in the tropics, complete with opportunity to sandboard down the mountain, swim in a volcanic lagoon, and view with her own eyes the remains of the wacky history of said tropical locale! Oh, yes, topped off with healthy snacks and a local specialty guaranteed to turn the tidiest guest into an unspeakable mess. The Full Nicaragua.

You will have guessed, correctly, that the wise old lady I have become asked all the right questions before deciding Christmas Eve would be the perfect time to conquer Cerro Negro, a black cinder cone some 400 meters above the plain which birthed it. Never having regained my pinnacle of muscular youthful perfection after a broken a leg twenty years earlier, and finding myself still waddling carefully around the many irregularities of colonial streets and devil-may-care beach towns so as not to bonk my bean or fall and break a wrist again, my extra poundage announcing my arrival six inches in advance, I did not allow visions of clearing volcanoes in a single bound to cloud my judgment. I wanted the easiest of the many volcano tours available in this steaming, rock-pimpled land, and that was Cerro Negro. You walk up, you walk around, and then you have a choice of taking a sandboard back down in just a few minutes, or walking down, which takes a little longer.

The entire volcano trip takes about three hours. How much trouble can you get into on a guided tour of only 180 minutes? After all, as an ex-Hawaiian I am well versed in lava, volcanoes, calderas, fumaroles, sulphur fumes, and what not to do around volcanoes. Besides, I had bought a small painting of Cerro Negro in all its fiery glory during its last eruption, and the thought of creating a connection with it by spending at least part of a day on the mountain attracted me.

For an extra five bucks, I was to be picked up at 5:45 a.m. right in front of my hotel. Good deal. I was more than ready, sick as a dog who has wolfed down a plastic bag of chicken bones, my own private plastic bag being beer, even one. Not that Nicaraguan beer is not good—Tona and Victoria and Brahva are all terrific, as is the world-class rum, Flor de Cano—but on the rare occasions I so much as sip the stuff, there will be a price to pay, and both ends of me were busy paying it as the four-by-four van arrived.

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The theme of the New Year’s Immanence:

Wal…ls?

“Something there is, that does not love a wall….”

Something, perhaps, but not humans. We love walls from Pyramus and Thisbe to Wall-E. We are the only large apes on the planet who build walls, as if we were frustrated ants or bees. Very strange, no doubt, in the eyes of an elk, salmon, or wolverine. Wolves, bears and rodents, on the other paw, probably spend quite a lot of time on boring winter afternoons thinking about how to persuade us to build their winter dens for them. Beavers no doubt think we’re the kitten’s mewl when it comes to building—there’s probably an entire graduate-degree track at Beaver U dedicated to studying and adapting human wall-building to beaverish agendas.

We are emperors of walls. Perpendicular walls, sloping walls, circular and spiral walls. Pretty walls, just for the hell of it. Protective or proprietary walls; dividing and guiding walls. The Great Wall of China, monument to a costly failure. “Chinese walls”—a set of protocols designed to protect the confidentiality of lawyers’ clients. Walls of thought built atop foundations of belief laid down by our ancestors, often centuries ago. Walls of strict discipline, erected to prevent the next tsunami of emotion from overwhelming our fragile hearts.

We love building walls! Take a stroll through Vancouver’s Yaletown, lifting your slack-jawed face in wonder to the tops of the steel, glass and concrete canyon walls, thirty or more storeys high. Not so high as Dubai’s wonders of the new world, of course, but then, construction on the planet’s highest erection has perforce been stopped. It seems our species had to play Jenga to a hundred storeys or more in order to manifest an obvious truth: building must end somewhere up in the uncertain air. One would think humanity had learned that lesson in biblical times: what was Bab-El, after all, but a set of over-reaching walls?

Will Yaletown’s toilets still be working perfectly in 2060? Will the fabulous sheets of glass still be up there as windows, or down on the street in shards?

Stroll with me a moment down a Nicaraguan street of walls.

It is the Latin custom to wall off family life from the street and neighbors, creating a convivial courtyard where one instinctively relaxes in the safety of home. Walls create privacy. In a Nicaraguan beach town, however, nearly half the walls are vestigial, never rebuilt after the wallop of a tsunami, the howling hurricane, or the terror of terremoto (earthquake). At the picturesque sight of a pretty bit of surviving wall, still idiotically in place decades after being struck by a “natural disaster”, we, the very animals who have lifted wall-building into a fine art we call architecture, understand, without a word being spoken, why the culture of Nicaragua is moribund. Fighting for its last breaths, it is unable to defend itself without walls.

For Nicas, at best it is a time of love among the ruins. Fractured gates, roofless houses, and broken walls are everywhere, taken over by rampant bougainvillea, feral cats and half-wild dogs. The streets are littered with awkwardly hand-lettered signs tacked haphazardly to what is left of the gates. “Se Vende” For sale. What am I bid for this fine ruin? As one frequent (Canadian ) visitor says, “I love it. But the country’s a disaster.”

Much of the time, it’s too hot in Nicaragua to think about re-building, even if you could lay your hands on enough materiel for the project—problems Canadians have seldom had. Nicaragua’s heartbreaking history of exploitation and chicanery has accustomed Nicas to the sight of tumbledown; they will be less surprised than we when economic and social walls begin to fail.

Let us aspire to a Nica level of graciousness in the face of downfall and disaster—like them, let’s not forget the civility and conviviality of courtyards, galleries and gathering places. More than that: when walls fall, let’s use all that privilege we’ve enjoyed all our lives as a so called First World country to re-build only useful walls, using two tools that will prove essential to recovery from cultural and economic disaster, flexibility and transparency.

Moonlight in Nicaragua

The moon is full to bursting as I take my evening constitutional at 9:30 p.m. The security guard knows what I do at this time of night, but stops me in friendly fashion anyway, to tell me the waiter Marco is looking for me to see if I want food. “Quiero caminar,” I tell him. I want to walk. Probably he thinks, Another weird Canadian.

Yeah, right. Marco knows darned well I dined and socialised as usual at the taco bar across the street, whose Canadian proprietor he has allegedly been courting. Hmm…the plot thickens, but that’s their world, not mine. I walk on, through the thick warm darkness, alternately admiring the odd stray lamp highlighting outrageously pink hibiscus or bougainvillea flowers and marveling over how quickly the stars bow out of the sky in deference to the fulsome moon.

Tomorrow night the moon’s going to get it, apparently. For the first time, allegedly, in about a thousand years, there will be a lunar eclipse on an equinox, from one a.m. until three. Okayyyyy…..! The salsa music will doubtless grind into existence again about midnight, and if I have any brains, which is doubtful at this point in the vacacciones, I will take a siesta tomorrow during the day in order to survive la noche.

I love my night walk at least as much as the dawn walk. Even Earth’s gradual acquiescence to the sun’s warmth cannot compare to the varied blankets of darkness that envelop the walker from one esquina to the next. There are few if any streetlights, although here and there a wealthier landowner has put up a light, or left the gate open an extra hour, or lit a commercial sign. Sidewalks are narrow where they exist at all, and exhibit interesting features, like holes, or depressions for the convenience of run-off, or sudden slopes into, not out of, private property. Cuidarse! Walker, beware!

Supposedly, night prowling is not safe, but hey, what can they take from an old plump broad with nothing on her but a pair of flop flops and an old Hawai’ian rayon tube dress? I mean, Hey, come back tomorrow morning and steal some English lessons from me—something worth stealing!

The surf is already pounding, but gently. As the night builds, so will the drumbeat of the surf. I have already dreamt of waking on a floating bed. It could happen—it has already happened, costing the hotel owners, a pair of fried ‘Murricans, an alleged $70K after the last hurricane. Every morning the hotel is situated on more of a cliff over the ocean. Apparently in January, the ocean will relent and bring back all the purloined sand—if the ocean is still sane, still the same as it was in the past—and no one is sure about that any more.

I remember with affection my geography professor who emphasised to us that lakes and beaches and other water features are all temporary phenomena on the Earth’s crust, but human life is so short that we perforce argue with that idea. The notion that we ourselves are temporary is unbearable, after all. Even a bloody-minded iconoclast can’t live with it.

Where are you, Ivan Smith? And why have you written nothing that stares us in the face? You were wonderful!

Along the way, stepping on and off the curbs to miss the broken pavement, purposeful holes, oddities, and dark soft blobs probably left by mammals besides ourselves, one meets dark, amorphous shapes. “Hola!” or “Buena noches” (not correct, but no one gives a shit here) turns a menacing lump into a fellow dweller instantly. Moonlight erases the differences so evident in daylight, and we are all simply human.

People are lovely here. Yes, apparently thievery is rampant, but less so here in the north—I chose well in choosing Leon. I’ve been careful and so far have met with nothing but kindness and friendliness, which I trust I have returned.

It is so quiet. The voices of individuals carry out on the staves of night, short melodies of content. I hear Wendy the Amazing Singing Dog produce one operatic line for the stars before, presumably, Max the Grouch shushes her. Two humans on one bike whush past in the soft dirt. A dog surveys an empty lot on the beach and digs itself a bed from a spot where it can keep an eye on the phosphorescent surf.

The mad, mad, mad, mad world seems a solar system away.

I come home to my tawdry hotel and sit down to write this with a glass of decent Chilean wine at my elbow. But the salsa music has begun now. It is time to dance under the shining moon.

After 48 hours’ grueling travel, gratia US Customs, I am delighted to sink into a tropical night in a hotel across from Managua’s airport.

Hotel Las Mercedes is designed like a clam shell, rays of one-storey buildings fanning out across gardens and pools. I get lost on my late-evening walk, and am delighted to be lost. I should have turned on the skrunky little TV in my room, just to refresh my idiot Spanish and see what propaganda is being pumped out to the middle class, such as it may be, but couldn’t summon the energy. My old friend would be here at nine a.m. to pick me up from allegedly dangerous Managua and take me to Las Penitas via the colonial city of Leon and his finca, where he is raising free-range cattle.

I awake in time for a short swim in the vast, cold, empty pool–there seems to be noone here–and a short rinse in the pusillanimous shower, nearly breaking my neck on the slippery tile floors to answer the phone. (This would never happen in the US or Canada!). My friend and I decide to meet after breakfast, which is included in the rather large hotel bill ($94 US).

A real omelet, with real eggs and three kinds of real fruit juice–yum! Although my appetite is small after last night’s incredible tostones (fried platanos, velvety black beans, deep-fried cheese and a cucumber salsa to die for–all for $5), I wolf it down and even deign to try the non-espresso coffee, which is actually not bad, if you like regulation semi-burned coffee.

A woman invades my space. I am surprised, but not unwilling. she must have a reason. She appears older than I, thanks to short-cropped gray hair and a tummy bigger than my own, but turns out to be somewhat younger, as do a disturbingly large number of humans nowadays.

She is fabulous. We have an astoundingly large area of common interests and expertise: law, medicine, human rights, education, elder wisdom, our PhDs, indigenous issues, women’s issues, croning…. She is here to study labor relations, especially as they relate to women.

In a quarter hour we solve the major problems of the world, theoretically, and I am sorry to have to terminate this conversation–for now.

My hosts could not be more gracious and welcoming. It wasn’t easy for them to pick me up. Yesterday, when my friend came alone, not having received my message of delay, someone stole the signal lights off the side off his truck while he was inquiring after my fate. Their replacement cost him $75 today. Today, his wife guards the vehicle while he gathers me and my stuff from the hotel.

I am very glad to shed the load of books I have brought him. I had asked what I could bring, and the answer was, "Books." This pleased me enormously, but proved bloody heavy to schlep around airports for two days. I can see where the request came from, however. Not a single bookstore do I spy, all the way through Managua and Leon. There’s no literature to speak of, Spanish or English.

I can completely understand how my friend fell in love with the farm. It is a bucolic dream. The cows are sweet, biddable creatures, and the dogs, all lovely mutts, are a laugh and a half. My host cooks up a beautiful, balanced lunch, served in the breezeway between the halves of the house, on one side the kitchen and on the other, the bed and bath, all erected with local brickwork. The monetary facts about the cows, however, are sobering: bought in the spring for about $100, they are fed on the scrubby land and given excellent care until the end of the year, when they are sold for $300-$400.

I look at these mild-eyed creatures destined to become first-class beef within the next 60 days, and think I’ll stick to those velvety beans and maybe cactus salad.

Rather quickly my GI system begins bucking. a fact I try to hid from my hosts. .There’s a taste to the pork which causes unease. It seems okay at first but rapidly becomes something I don’t ever want again. We attend a reception on the beach, and pork is served again. Same odd taste. I cannot force down more than a tiny mouthful. Remembering how my ex once told me that the year he fed his pigs apples, he had the tastiest pork on the planet, I ask my host what pigs eat here. The answer is something like "composite". I may be remembering the wrong word, but the answer is synonymous with "Who knows?"

I feel as if I’ve downed garbage., which feeds my apocalyptic vision of the planet. Let’s hope I didn’t eat more than the system can handle.

Eating. What a bloody problem!

At my "hotel", I dance to salsa on the tiles and on the sand, watching the stars and learning to breathe, once more, with the surf.