Village life

On our way to Jinotepe, we pass through Masaya, a town known for its artesanry and market. We only plan on spending a couple of hours here so we ask a woman at an internet cafe if we could leave our backpacks there for a bit. "Sure, if you trust me," she said, and I just replied, "Of course!" and we threw our bags down. We walked around the town from the basic goods market to the artesan market, getting a little mixed up after we wound around through the latter. So when we tried to get to the lovely lookout point our very out-dated guidebook mentioned, we ended up walking down some dirt residential streets, soliciting some strange looks and a couple hellos from small children. We did find the lake but had to look at it through our stinging eyes and with smoke that was rising up off the hillside of burning trash. Lovely, eh. On the way back we passed a dance troupe in the streets performing a sort of satirical play and dance that featured politicans, baby dolls and drag queens.

In the late afternoon we find our bus to Jinotepe. It takes much longer than we anticipated because it winds through all of the Pueblos Blancos, the White Towns, before looping back around to Jinotepe. The Pueblos Blancos are a bunch of small towns, clustered near each other, and get their name from the white paint that they all use on their buildings. One of the towns that we passed through, Niquinohomo, was the hometown of Gen. Augusto Sandino and in a letter that we saw in the city government office in Masaya, I read that Sandino was very proud of his small town birth. Nice to know I share such a sentiment with such an admired revolutionary. This country is so beautiful, it's hard for my heart and mind and eyes to take it all in in such a brief period of time. I love how people refer to each other casually and incessantly as "amor", "love", and how everyone teases each other and makes jokes and laughs endlessly. Everyone seems so happy and warm, even with a terrible war so recently behind them. And, for now, I won't even get started on the food.

Laguna de Apoyo

So, we moved from the "Bearded Monkey Hostal" to the "Monkey Hut" (owned by the same folks) at la Laguna de Apoyo, about a half an hour from Granada. Nicaraguans refer to both places as "La Barba del mono." The Laguna is a huge crater lake formed by a volcanic explosion many, many, many years ago and is incredibly blue and beautiful and only slightly salty. But we didn't make it there before I had to make a quick visit to the doctor (nothing serious).

La visita I won't go into details about my symptoms, but I finally decided to go to the doctor after a few days of resisting. I'm used to taking other folks to the doctor (mainly Abigail, in Mexico), but I never really consider going myself no matter how sick I feel or think I am. Still, I thought it would be a good idea and we had about an hour and a half before our transport to la Laguna would leave, so we went to the nearest farmacia for a consulta. It's very common in Mexico for pharmacies to have doctors on hand for quick and cheap visits and I was glad to find out that in Nicaragua this is also the case. At the first pharmacy we stopped at, we sat down in the open patio in beautiful, wooden rocking chairs but then were informed that there would be a bit of a wait because the doctor was doing a surgery (in the pharmacy.) So we walked a few more blocks to an actual doctor's office and began to wait there. After about 20 minutes I asked the secretary how much longer it would be. He said a couple of minutes, I looked at the clock and then at him again, and he said "I'll go check." A couple seconds later he poked his head out of the room the doctors were in and waved me in. First, the woman doctor insisted on giving me an ultrasound (apparently this is what the office was for) and finding nothing, refered me to the other doctor. I stepped into his office and he gave me a quick check-up before essentially repeating the same thing the previous doctor had told me. Behind his desk a picture was hanging of him with his small son on his shoulders. At first I thought, "How cute," until I realized that the doctor was displaying an incredibly lewd t-shirt (and a big grin) in the photograph. Next to the picture, a carved, wooden Virgin Mary prayed above his desk.

The visit cost quite a bit more than the visits to the pharmacies that we made in Mexico. It felt a little silly after going to get a check-up for Abigail in San Cristobal, which even ended in an injection of penicillin, and then only handing the doctor 25 pesos. Imagine giving a doctor back home your pocket change in exchange for a visit- collection agencies would be after you in no time.

La Laguna We missed our transport to the laguna due to all the delays with the doctor and later the pharmacy. But as we were leaving the hostal we saw 3 people also looking for a way to get to the laguna and we all jumped into a taxi, convincing the driver that if we got stopped one of us would get out of the car (only 4 were supposed to be allowed at a time). During the ride we found out the gal was from Canada and the guys from Australia, though they both teased each other back and forth about being from the states or from New Zealand (jokes that made more sense to them I suppose).

But as soon as we started descending on the laguna, it was all we could focus on. It was a lot bigger that I'd thought and sparkling blue, completely surrounded by forest with only a house here and there showing in the trees. It only takes a few minutes in a place like this to forget that cities exist.

We throw our bags in the dorms and head straight for the water. It's warm because of the sun but also because of the thermal waters that flow under the lake. We grab inner tubes and splash around like kids and spend the day cooking, laying around in the sun and breeze and taking some kayaks out as far as the wind and waves would let us. From the middle of the lake we could hear howler monkeys start to make loud, roaring noises as the evening set in. I told Abby, "Ok, this is great but soon we have to see Nicaragua too, you know." It didn't feel real or perhaps it just wasn't what I'd imagined before coming to Nicaragua. Being surrounded almost completly by white folks speaking English greatly added to this sentiment.

After a couple nights in the hostal, my patience was waning with the "backpacker" community. True, I have a backpack too, but I mean this group of folks that travel in countries for the sole reason that the places are cheap, this apparently allowing them to indulge more in drugs and alcohol and guided tours and easy transport. I don't want to generalize but I've seen so many of these folks that they really could be classified as a distinct class of tourist. They want things to be "safe" so they stay in hostals owned by foreigners where everything from movies to food to drinks to internet are available and in essence they never even have to leave the hostal. Usualy around 9 or 10 am, after we'd already been awake a few hours, these folks would stumble out of their beds, groggy and hungover. I can't say I never traveled that way but I just can't imagine doing it now. Travel through Nicaragua without interacting with Nicaraguans? Too strange for me.

So after spending a beautiful day and night at the laguna, where we pretty much kept to ourselves, we jumped on a bus to Masaya to check it out on our way to Jinotepe, where we would be staying with a family through Hospitality Club.

Nicaragua is Hot, pt.1: Granada

Finally, after much talk and much delay, we made it to Nicaragua. Our Tica Bus brought us all the way to Managua, but rather than stay in the huge, uninviting capital, we decided to head for Granada. As luck would have it, we found a nice fellow from El Salvador who was also headed that way and he accompanied us, even loaning us cordobas along the way (we didn't plan our money situation well, obviously). We got to Granada, checked into an overpriced but comfortable hostal, and got some pinto gallo. Our hostal is the typical backpacker, happy hour and cheap vegetarian food, folks from all over the world and everyone speaks english, movie hour and hammock type of place. I haven't stayed in a place like this since Livingston and before that, I can't even remember. Still, it's relatively cheap and eh.

I woke up early and we got out of the hostal to explore this new place. Granada is beautiful and bright in most places and fading and crumbling in others. According to something written on a concrete wall that I saw when we were entering the city, it's the oldest city on the American continent, but I'm sure that's disputable. And most of it had to be rebuilt after William Walker burned the city to the ground when they threw that overly intrusive yanqui out of his self-proclaimed presidential fantasy.

In the morning we found a little cafe where we could eat outside AND where the owner walked up to us carrying the largest guanabana I've ever seen in my life. He was impressed that I knew what it was, but I just couldn't get past why he wasn't offering me a piece yet. Finally I just asked for a little dish of it and ah, it was beautiful and brought me back many memories of one summer in Chiapas.

In the afternoon we got on some rusty bikes and rode all over the city. To our credit (amazement?) we only had one semi-close call with an oncoming vehicle and it really wasn't even that close to get worked up about. We rode to the Lago de Nicaragua (or, Lago Cocibalco), a brown and smelly thing but also an enormous freshwater lake home to many little islands and even sharks (the only freshwater lake sharks, apparently). We rode a couple kilometers along the lake, down a road that was lined with so many rusty and empty playgrounds (why?) and towering, sweet mango trees. Mangos were literally dropping in our path and squishing under our tires! People were laying on the side of the road on big sacks of mangos! This city is just dripping with small green-orange-red mangos, how lovely. There were also trees covered in red-orange flowers, trees that looked like squatting oranguatans, trees with broad, bright green, shining leaves, trees with enormous roots jumping up out of a lily-covered swamp. And all along the way, the birds sang like crazy and the breeze pushed us along.

Later we rode to the old train station, through the wild, narrow-streeted market and on to a fort where Somoza used to interrogate and execute prisoners. Climbing up a wobbly wooden ladder in the fort we could see all across Granada to the lake.

The Pan-American

Leaving San Cristobal was difficult for many reasons, mostly because I'd gotten so used to it so quickly and so comfortable. And well, there are other reasons but they're small, silly things.

Somehow we made it on a night bus to Tapachula and just as our bus was pulling in, the bus next to ours was pulling out for all Central American cities. Without hesitating, we threw our bags on the bus and jumped on. Our first stop was Guatemala City. It was hot and I was slightly delirious from the travel. We stopped in a parking lot outside of a small strip mall, fast food restaurants and car dealerships lined the streets. Breaking with my tradition of not patronizing U.S. companies while in other countries, we found that we were both starving and without cash so I had to swipe my American Express at the Subway, and we got back on the bus.

I spent the next few hours falling in and out of sleep, falling into and bouncing off of the window, watching movies while the sound went in and out, the subtitles making me slightly nauseous. The countryside was beautiful and I felt a little bad for just racing through these lands, my heart set on a distant other land, but "next time," I remind myself.

Our bus stops again as the sun is setting. San Salvador, El Salvador. The bus station is conveniently located inside a cheap hotel so we throw down our bags and prepare to rest. But, that money thing again. We haven't got a dollar, a quetzal, or even a cent in any currency (besides pesos but they don't mean a thing here). I attempt to walk a few blocks looking for a ATM machine in this strange and unfamiliar city. After a couple of blocks of completely dark, completely empty streets, lined only with funerarias (casket stores and funeral services, some with 24 hour service), I am sufficiently creeped out enough to just head back to the hotel. Later one of the hotel employees walks us to a nearby gas station and finally we've got some cash.

I shower in the smallest bathroom I may have ever witnessed in my life and then commence to repack my bag and sleep, though not very well, until we're woken up by a loud knock. "Managua!" they shout and we're up. Back on the bus for a day full of riding, the entire Bourne film series, and endlessly beautiful forests, mountains, volcanoes, rivers and green-yellow grasslands.

The Return, Pt. 5: Finally, San Cristobal de las Casas

It is such a lovely feeling to step outside of one's own room, into the sunshine, in bare feet, and into one's own kitchen. To make a cup of tea and enjoy it in the sunshine, to say "Hm, what should I do now? Suppose I'll lie in the hammock a bit." This is what my mad rush down through Mexico brought me to and now I can appreciate every second of the return to the far south.

The first week was a bit rough as all of my previous plans regarding San Cris fell through (well almost all of them), but luckily they were quickly replaced by serendipitous happenings, thanks to God. A quick trip to the beach, ah lovely lovely Boca del Cielo, helped me to get my thoughts in order. I ran into an old friend from Mexico City and we spent the whole week catching up and engaging in extravagant time-wasting activities while he told me story after story about his recent trip to Cuba. And just as I was about to be homeless once again, a friend of this friend graciously and unexpectedly offered me a room in his home, free of charge.

I have to say thank you, thank you about a million times a day. I've been so very lucky.

Also in these past couple of weeks Abigail has arrived, just in time to give me some additional perspective on the madness and beauty that surrounds us. We worked in the Casa del Pan organic garden once again, where we worked alongside a beautiful Canadian family and a new garden worker whose interests range from compost to windsurfing to therapeutic massage.

It's amazingly easy to spend an entire day just seeking out ingredients for and making no-bake cookies. Vanilla was the hardest, "Oooh" A woman who runs an herbal stand in the market tells me, "That's very hard to find, I don't think anyone will have it, try the other herbal stand around the corner." Well, we couldn't find that stand but indeed, around a different corner, after asking several more people and receiving similar responses, we finally found a little bottle of vanilla essence, made in Veracruz. The cookies turned out beautifully, a friend told us they looked like they came right out of a magazine and that we could make some good money selling them around town. Hm.

The Return Pt. 4: Oaxaca

I wake up confused because I do not recognize this bus station. A fellow from Hospitality Club is supposed to meet me so that I can leave my things at his house during the day. I’ve decided to just take another night bus from Oaxaca to San Cristobal, just to get somewhere where I can actually put my bags down and rest. But I can’t bear to pass through Oaxaca without at least getting coffee with my dear friend Leo, a wonderful and talented musician whose secret weapon is his incredible laugh. I realize this bus company doesn’t drop me off at the main bus station but instead some little shack-like station outside of the city. So I get in a cab, hoping I’ll find my host soon.

And I do. He shows up and helps me carry my oversized bags on and off a bus and up a street to the gym where he’s going to work out. I put my bags in the gym and decide to walk around the city while I wait. Though I am slightly delirious from the bus ride and the hour of the morning, I manage to remember the layout of the city somewhat. I try to go to the organic market at el Pochote but it’s not open yet. So I walk and walk for an hour and a half, surprised at my ability to just keep wandering despite my exhaustion.

My HC host then takes me to his house where I get to meet his whole family and his mother invites me to eat breakfast with them, very sweet people. I realize I’m already late to meet Leo but I have to wait patiently for my host to shower and get ready for work (he’s already an hour late too, but I guess it’s no problem?). But despite all my panicky fears that the one reason I’ve come to Oaxaca will disappear, Leo is waiting patiently for me at Santo Domingo. Happy laughs and hugs and all the tardiness and waiting mean nothing.

We go to have a coffee and tell each other stories for a couple hours, catching up and also stories just for the laughs of them. Leo is teaching classes now in an institute run by the city government of Oaxaca and he loves it, though now he can’t drink beer anymore, he laughs loud at this. “No more Coronas!!!” He exclaims and he laughs and laughs.

In the afternoon I buy my ticket for San Cristobal, very eager to just arrive and sleep. The afternoon is sunny and breezy and we go to a place where Leo usually plays, a sushi restaurant outside of the center of the city. Leo is supposed to play today but we show up and he whispers to me, “I didn’t even bring my guitar!” and he laughs and laughs. We’re just here for the sushi; he knows how much I love it. Salmon, aguacate, cream cheese, yum.

The day is winding down when we head up to the mirador a look-out point just past the luxurious home we enjoyed for a couple of days back in November, the Hotel Victoria. We chat and laugh and via text message I set up a quick coffee date with another Oaxacan friend. He texts me a bit later saying he'll be 20 minutes late and I am really in no rush, though my bus does leave at 9pm that night. Eventually we ease up from the concrete slab we'd been occupying and head for Leo's red bocho (his old beat-up VW beetle that recently started to smell nauseatingly of gasoline, "At least it covers up the old smell of beer!" I tell him and he laughs and laughs). As I put my hand on the door handle, I hear a voice "Oh my God." It sounds familiar but not until I look up do I see our dear friend Beni! Beni's a young German kid who was sharing the house with us in San Cristobal in December. I had been disapointed when my trip got delayed to the point where I wouldn't be able to see Beni before he left Mexico, but thanks to God we found each other on some little mountain in Oaxaca.

Late again, I meet my friend at Santo Domingo and we head for a coffee shop near the park where I'm set to meet my host in an hour. Mostly I listen sympathetically to him tell me the great saga of some problems he's been having with a radio project. He always has wonderful stories and I never have enough time. Rushing again to another bus, it's very easy for me to fall asleep as soon as I board.

The Return Pt. 3: el DF y Texcoco

It was early evening when I got to el DF and getting dark by the time I had pulled my bags up and down the stairs of several metro stops and was looking for my friend’s apartment. I was exhausted. I had met this gal through the Mexico City couchsurfing community and found her again. I’m glad I did because she is such an interesting and sweet person to be around. She quit school when she was 14 and traveled all around the world, working on and off, and is now working for a couchsurfer that contracted her, while she saves up money for her personal dream: a traveling culture bus.

So the real reason I’d even stopped by Mexico City on my way down was to see the wonderful banjo player and our friend Andru Bemis play. It was just too lucky to be passing through at the same time he’d be playing so of course I had to stop. Unfortunately a friend who lives just outside of Mexico City changed his mind about coming with me and the friend I was staying with was too tired and broke to want to go. I was a bit disappointed but we decided to just play cards and go to sleep. As we’re getting close to the end of the game (thank God because I’m losing horribly), another couchsurfer calls. My friend thought she was getting in the following day and now has to go meet her to give her the apartment keys. Turns out this woman’s hostal is only about 4 blocks from where Andru is playing. So, we decide to walk over and perhaps just go for a little bit, until we find out that the cover is 150 pesos. Eh. I decide to just go in and say hi to Andru but he insists we come in and we do, thanks to his utter generosity. We end up staying the entire show even to the very end where Andru got up on a table, stomping his feet, even getting guys in suits who had just finished their extravagant dinners and several bottles of wine to bark and howl like dogs along to the music. I’d never seen Andru play in a crowd like this but as always people shouted and clapped and wanted to hear more.

The next morning I went to visit my friend in Texcoco, an hour outside of the city, where he goes to an agricultural/forestry-based university. He studies tropical forest systems but is currently finishing his thesis on organic agriculture in Mexico, so of course we hit it off immediately when we first met in Chiapas a few months ago. Some friends of his had told him that it was going to be the free pulque day of the Pulque Feria, taking place in an even smaller village 15 minutes from Texcoco. Along the way we meet several people who tell us that this is false information but the sun is shining so nicely and the breeze blowing so sweetly that we decide to go anyway. It doesn’t take long to get there and find the pulque, a sort of sour fermented cactus drink that goes down easy and then gives you a good smack when you’re not looking. First we are buying pulque in a little stone courtyard from a fierce woman who serves pulque and insults with equal efficiency. I start out with mamey-flavored, which is very sweet and a bright sweet potato color. Later I drink a cup of guanabana-flavored and later we all move on to the good and simple “natural.” We also move on to some straw bales down the road under a tree where a man serves us pulque messily by dipping a big ladel down into a large metal vat.

We are me, my friend, a friend he knows from school, and a friend of his friend’s (who I later find out is named “Funny” and this gives me great amusement especially after a few liters of pulque). Our conversations range from school to homosexuality in Mexico to politics to whether Lala actually does rent their entire fleet of trucks. Our pulque server can’t help but listen as we’re sitting only a couple of feet from him and he occasionally smiles saying to us once “Well you certainly have interesting conversations.” The day starts to fade and so do our individual grasps on reality. Pulque can be quite strong, though it seems like it’s only a slimy juice. At some point we realize that the court yard pulque must have run out because young kids are coming to our (“our” because we had been there first and had nearly exclusive access to this pulque for several hours) pulque stand.

Some cowboys stumble up and say hello, one repeatedly refers to me as “clear eyes” and he later tries to give his white sombrero to my friend’s friend. He says he can give away the hat but not the band tied around it because that’s from his girl and he loves her so much she’s really the sweetest girl and he loves her so much so he can’t give away the band but he really wants to give the hat way because you’re good people and it’s a good hat but he can’t give away the band because he really loves that girl. At one point he is standing directly in front of me, shouting, God I wish I could remember what he was saying, only I don’t think I was even listening because all I remember now was thinking was, “Is this God? the devil? What is happening here?” It seemed he was accusing me of something, maybe of being clear-eyed and sitting on a straw bale somewhere in the center of Mexico, who knows.

Sometime after the sun sets we get back on a bus for Texcoco. Then there is confusion and we are jumping off the bus on a very dark stretch of road, somewhere outside of the village where there are only high weeds and fenced pastures. We start walking back and only after we are walking for several minutes do I find out why: Dario lost his backpack. Well, we somehow find our way back to our pulque stand but never find his backpack. It’s around this time that I realize it’s 9pm and that I’m not going to attempt the Mexico City metro system in this state. So I just crash at the house where my friend lives, a house for students but most are out of town right now, and I want to go right to sleep but not before, of course, we attempt to drum on a water jug. My friend’s roommates come home and find us silly and drumming and loud and for them it is just a quiet Thursday night to come home and study. Oh, dear.

The next day we get a cheap breakfast of eggs a la Mexicana, perfect for a morning following a day of pulque, though I eat so slowly that my friend eventually asks if I can just eat the bread while we walk. We take a walk around the university and he explains to me how it functions. Basically it started as a university for the poorest of the poorest students in Mexico, to offer them a place with free (or heavily discounted) tuition, but not only that, it also gives the very poorest of its students free clothing and shoes and haircuts, nearly any basic necessity. There are also dorms on the campus (very rare for a Mexican university) and cafeterias where students can eat for free. Though my friend is skeptical as to how much longer this will last due to the push for privatization and social cutbacks taking place all over in Mexico, in which the higher education system is getting hit with enormous and detrimental changes. He said it is already affecting the scholarships that he receives and that his university is one of the only of its kind so it’s especially terrible. But for me, I just keep thinking about the fact that they give out clothes and shoes. “What kind of shoes” Are they good clothes” I ask. For me, coming from the most anti-communist, individualistic place on earth where the only footwear associated with one’s economic state is “boot straps” all I can imagine is a large warehouse of uncomfortable black shoes that all look the same and if they don’t have your size you just have to make do. He admits that most students don’t actually wear the clothes that they are given, except for to work, but that the shoes are pretty decent. And no, they’re not all black.

In the afternoon we crash a luncheon hosted by my friend’s department. We aren’t fully “crashing” it; we signed up the day before, but it’s mostly a function for faculty and overly ambitious students so we just show up, eat, and leave. Turns out that most, if not all, of the professors also live on the campus and the luncheon is held in the backyard on of these houses, which is actually pretty nice. I can’t imagine what kind of houses they would have to offer to Western’s professors to get them to live on campus.

In the evening we head for el DF as I’m aiming to catch a bus for Oaxaca in the night. I bought my ticket for midnight which would put me in at dawn in the city of Oaxaca. Then, we decide we have just enough time to go and crash another party in a suburb of Mexico City. It’s the birthday party for a gal that my friend met in one of his classes. He barely knows her but hey, in Mexico everyone’s welcome at a party. Again we show up, have a couple of drinks, eat, make small talk, and then ease out of the party and head back for my things. We have to rush a bit and take a taxi to the bus station but I make it to my bus just in time.

The Return Pt. 2: Guanajuato

The first night I stayed in a hostal but the following nights I slept on a thin mattress with a thin blanket on the floor of Bar Fly. This time I won’t pretend that it was, in fact, a learning experience to view this social underbelly of Guanajuato, this group of close friends and travelers who love each other dearly but always know that good byes are coming, this constant, gossipy, festive, directionless swirl of partying and meandering people. Truth is, I like these people. They make me feel at home every time and we all share a unique love for life and each other. And, of course, they give me a free place to stay anytime I’m in town. With these folks I can even tolerate the terrible nickname given to me when I first came to Mexico which follows me ever since, even when they slap their hands on both sides of their face and shout “Ahhhhhh!!!” (again, think Home Alone) when I walk into the room. Everyone is mildly frustrating and completely endearing and you can’t help but get the feeling that if you double cross even one of them, you’ll get run out of town.

So, I swung back into the rhythm of this tight-knit bunch, parties, food runs, dog walks, coffee breaks, drama, belly laughs, confusion, familiarity and all. Again I found myself pushing back my trip to Mexico City day after day. It was a combination of really loving where I was at and really dreading getting back on a bus anytime soon. I mean, why not spend an entire afternoon at Café El Santo, drinking coffee and chatting with a Norwegian lady that had decided to make Guanajuato her home? Or, going to get pizza at the mall (I’m still not sure why we went to the mall) and then playing for hours in the parking lot with dogs and shopping carts and escalators? Or walking all around the twisting, rising, falling streets with a Canadian traveler who shares my affinity for taking pictures of doors? I had no real reason for staying in Guanajuato other than I really was enjoying my time (Heaven forbid), but one morning I woke up feeling so great that I packed up my things, asked an Italian couple on the street corner if they were also going to the bus station and wanted to share a cab, and a bit later I got on a bus for the monstrous and beautiful city of Mexico.