Nica-ra-gu-a!

(Note: Feel free to double click on images to see larger versions).

Liz and I traveled down to Nicaragua as part of a scouting trip. I’d been angling to plan a Study Abroad for students to replace this past summer’s rather carefree field jaunt through Peru. The 2010 strategy is to embed students in the community, make them a wee bit uncomfortable, and hope that nothing goes awry. The upshot is that Nicaragua is both beautiful and inexpensive, largely because it hasn’t succumbed to the same green-washing that’s taken place in ecotourism-hungry Costa Rica. The other angle is that Nicaragua, until recently, had been one of the Cold War’s global battlefields, making for an exciting research site where you can expect the unexpected. Here, it’s not unusual to fall into a spirited conversation about Sandinista President Daniel Ortega with a Canadian traveler or someone in the market. Last week, Ortega distributed food to the people in a show of socialist generosity, but he and his family also own an overwhelming amount of stuff (including a posh house in Las Isletas) that would win him top awards for capitalism. We have the same contradictions in our own country, but it’s always interesting to see these politics play out on a new canvas.

We’d planned on touring much of the country but eventually decided to use the colonial city of Granada as our base, where there are several language schools and ongoing community-based projects. We day tripped over to Masaya Volcano, an active shield volcano that still spits sulfur dioxide into the breezy, tropical air. Signs warn visitors to back their cars into the parking lot in the event of an explosion, enabling for a quick getaway, though strangely the parking lot leads right up to the volcano’s edge. We also visited los mercados in Masaya, a virtual Mecca for those interested in small handicrafts, from balsa, to woven dolls, to beaded bracelets and cartooned piñatas. We made friends with some handicraft vendors over the course of the week, even practicing choppy Spanish over a late dinner with a few hammock sellers.

We met a German woman in Granada who traveled with us for a few days. Perfectly nice, but she seemed to dislike Nicaragua for a crime of complacency. The locals were conspiring to fleece her out of her hard earned cash, she believed. Plus, they were disorganized. They didn’t “get tourism”, let alone the concept of capitalism. At one point, she returned the pizza we ordered at Lake Apoyo, arguing that it wasn’t nearly as good as the one atop the nearby table, and thus she refused to pay for the slices we’d eaten. I’m still mortified by the exchange, and made a point of repeating “Lo siento, I’m sorry” to the server while Liz paid for the pizza on the sly. I was reminded of how Casey once said that some people can travel the world and not learn a thing.

The highlight of the trip, of course, was meeting Camilo, a tour guide who’d lived in Louisiana for part of his life , an unapologetic Sandinista who’d put any history major to shame with his breezy knowledge of domestic and foreign politics. Camilo was not only smart, but kind. We spent one evening with him eating fried plantains and gallo pinto and drinking Frescas at a restaurant in his corner of Granada. Walking the dirt streets past homes adorned with Christmas lights, Camilo pointed out the chicken factory, and the extraordinary youthfulness and poverty of Nicaragua’s growing population (did I mention that someone tried to grab my bag?).

In contrast to Granada, Managua is more difficult to embrace. It’s big, crowded, noisy, hot, an urban heat island at its worst. Machismo is high, the friendliness index low, but the day was saved by Manfred, our German host at La Pyramide hotel. He landed here in Nicaragua 25 plus years ago as part of a German Peace Corps program and never left. His hospitality would ultimately make our 3.45 am wake-up call to catch a taxi almost worth it. Dinner with a Canadian man named Glen was an added bonus – he’d spent most of his time in Nicaragua on the fabled Miskito Coast, where drugs, lobster, and reefs form an uneasy economic core.

Karma must have been on our side. We had the full length of the emergency exit row for the flight home, perfect for spreading out final exams to grade. En route, Umberto, the flight attendant, former military captain and overall nice guy sat down with me and waded through the exams, making comments here and there, discussing the work of Jared Diamond, making me wonder how off the mark stereotypes usually are.

Home now with Casey and Kiwi, I’m already grumbling about the cold I caught. When I wallow in self-pity, I think of him: the milky-eyed old man in Granada selling tiny bags of peanuts on a wire coat hanger. The students need to see this world. And I can fill out these damn Christmas cards without another peep.