Of Bandits , Volcanoes, and Waves

I have added a few more pictures of Leon to this post...take a look!












I will begin this post by addressing a few questions posed by my father. The Central American countries are definitely “developing.” It can be deceiving because, in the big cities, you see modern buildings, nice cars, and good infrastructure. Free trade in the Americas has sped up progress in certain ways, and lots and lots of people are benefiting: mainly those that were well off to begin with though. The poor just find themselves now in a world where things are just as expensive as they are in the US, except they earn $1/hour here. So, as the old saying goes, the poor are poorer and the rich are getting richer. Disparity is very obvious here. That is not to say free trade will not – eventually – contribute to improving the lives of poor Central Americans. As the rich build more factories, and open more businesses, more and more of the poor become employed. This raises their standard of living, affords them better education, and education contributes further to better economic conditions. Unfortunately, it also contributes to urbanization, which is another problem. Fewer and fewer remain in the countryside, sustaining agriculture, and thus, affordable food for the poor.

Poverty is most evident in the countryside in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, but is also evident all over in Nicaragua. When we hit the Honduras/Nicaragua border late the other night, the road changed from pavement to potholes. The border guards told us not to continue as there were armed robbers taking advantage of the poor road conditions and ambushing vehicles. They suggested if we were to continue our journey we had better hire someone with a gun to accompany us, or wait for a guard change at the border, and follow the off duty guards. It was 12:20am and too far to go back, so we ventured forward alone. We decided taking an armed guard with us would simply provide reason for robbers to shoot, and no one really wanted to get caught in crossfire, so after much discussion and a group vote we decided to move forward, one slow agonizing and terrifying kilometre at a time, to the nearest town where we rented 4 hotel rooms to share between the 15 of us (all they had). The room had beds, no sheets or blankets, sinks but no water...and an ample supply of bugs. We cared not, for what it had was a high security gate within which we could park our van.

The last few days we have explored the Spanish Colonial towns of Leon and Granada, and were impressed with the stature of the old buildings. In particular, Leon was interesting ecause of the many murals painted on the sides of the buildings: telling stories of the several wars they have had there. We stopped by one and met a man who was one of the student protesters in the 70's. He relayed his stories and showed us photos, and explained the murals on the walls. It was very enlightening to hear the story from his perspective. In Granada, we took it easy, both Joel and I were not feeling well, but we did save up enough energy to take a night walk up the local active volcano.

Masaya Volcan is the most dangerous of Central America’s volcanoes...regularly spewing noxious gas and ash. The pictures do not begin to capture what we saw unfortunately. We also went into a cave full of bats formed by the last eruption, and complete with gas masks, hung over the edge of the volcano to see glowing red lava 220 meters below. It was really quite a sight.

Next we traveled to a small island called Ometepe, on Lake Nicaragua. Here we are staying on a beautiful sandy beach, with thatched cabanas and plenty of hammocks. The ferry ride here was an adventure, as the usually calm lake was alive with whitecaps. The first day the wind blew hard and the sun was far behind a blanket of low gray clouds. So much for lying on the beach; the waves did not seem to bother Joel, who after an ample supply of local rum went swimming – fully clothed – with a pharmacist from Toronto (the girl seen in several of the photos here) he seems to be spending a lot of time with.

Today the sun came out and I layed on the beach all day. I will post more photos later.

Tomorrow we head off by boat, bus and horseback for the border of Costa Rica on way to Monteverde where we will try our hand a zip-lining through a series of cables that run for kilometres through the rain forest.

Stay tuned and enjoy the photos (all mixed up and out of order).

Nicaraguan traffic (above)