Postcard from Managua Nicaragua

The day I arrived in Managua went from one disaster to another all day long. First, I had bad information about the availability of a deluxe air-conditioned bus north from Granada and had to take an old rattletrap school bus up to Managua. Then, looking for the major international bus terminals in the "other" city center on a public bus I got robbed! I knew the guy was up to no good and kept a close watch on all my valuables. Even with all that heightened awareness, he managed to get the folded money out of my right front pocket, about $110 in US and Cordobas bills. To be honest, I may have made it easy for him by exposing the wad when I fumbled with the coins in the same pocket to pay the bus fare.

Next, all the deluxe bus terminals in Managua had only Spanish speaking staff, and getting schedule information proved to be almost impossible. Fighting my way in and out of the offices meant running the gauntlet of obnoxious hotel and taxi touts, some quite persistent, even threatening. As I hoisted my backpack and headed back toward a barely acceptable hotel I'd seen earlier, it began to rain. I hopped from the leaky shelter of one tree to another until it really started to come down. Stranded under a leaking tree that became increasingly porous, I quickly got soaked. Eventually, a Special Forces soldier poked his head out of a white tent nearby and motioned me to join him under his shelter. Inside were three of the most heavily armed and armored combatants I have ever seen. Clad in black, they seemed to be a riot squad or anti-terrorist force waiting for something to call them into action. When the rain finally paused, I dashed the five blocks to my $40 hotel, both my clothes and backpack completely soaked. So much for Monday. The next day things brightened up considerably, and my third day was great. I walked five hours from the hotel down to a spot near Lake Managua where archaeologists have excavated a layer of rock containing footprints of twelve individuals who walked on wet volcanic ash six thousand years ago. The record of ancient footprints at Huellas de Acahualinca is impressive, clearly the highlight of my visit to Managua.

My present hotel is not bad, not an excellent value at $68, but not bad. The breakfast is mediocre at best, but I am only about a five-minute walk to a modern shopping mall with an extensive food court. Give me a Big Mac or some KFC chicken and I will tolerate most other irritations without exaggerated complaint.

While having lunch there one day I noticed all the fast food counters serving chicken had signs featuring pictures of happy fowls. It struck me as ironic that pictures of smiling chickens would be used to encourage people to eat them. I’ll bet the chickens weren´t consulted in this matter.

Managua has no conventional city center any more; the earthquake of 1972 destroyed most of the central business district and killed thousands. Today, commercial activity and shopping are clustered around a series of small to large shopping malls scattered around what used to be the city center. The new capital complex has been built on the previously devastated area; only the ruins of the cathedral remain of the original buildings.

Everyone seems to use taxicabs if they can afford them. The buses are old dilapidated decommissioned American school buses. The same old yellow buses are used all over the country for public transport, so someone must have made a killing on old American school bus trade-ins a couple decades ago. Some still sport the fading names of the original school district painted on their sides.

An important purpose of ceiling fans down here seems to be mosquito control. One local told me the moving air makes it difficult for the little flitters to navigate with the precision needed to target tasty human hot spots. I can’t confirm that, but it sounds reasonable.

One sees seriously armed private security agents everywhere there is anything of portable value. Some of these guys carry military type automatic weapons. Local attitudes toward the reality of danger from common criminals or gangs of criminals vary considerably. The US State Department leaves no doubt they consider the dangers real and caution every American traveler to take extraordinary precautions. Except for my encounter with the pickpocket on the crowded bus, I have seen nothing that would alert me to anything more dangerous than one might face in some parts of Los Angeles.

Printed time schedules and fares at bus stations, even the deluxe services, are closely guarded secrets. Rarely does staff in these terminals speak English, and potential passengers who fail the language test are pretty much ignored. Ask for information from one staff member on Monday and get a different answer than provided a day before by a different employee the next day.

The previous president, Arnoldo Aleman, who "served" from 1997 to 2002, was convicted of diverting a hundred million dollars to a bank in Panama and received a twenty year sentence, which the government later commuted to confinement under house arrest last year. His party has forgiven him and is working for a pardon so he can run again in the 2006 presidential elections. The old Sandinista Marxist, Ortega, is being challenged by another Sandinista turned capitalist, Herty Lewites. Interesting politics in this country.

No one with who I spoke had anything bad to say about the American involvement in the revolution back in the 1980's. The current generation hardly seems to remember there was a war at all. It reminds me of the conversations I had with people in Vietnam during my travels there a couple years ago. Painful memories fade fast for the majority.

Short stay in Managua; short postcard. For a well done collection of professional photos take a look here. My photos can be seen here.


PS: I see Britain is debating the advisability of restricting the freedom of firebrand Islamic clerics to preach violent Jihad. Western governments would do well to reconsider the strategy adopted by the People's Republic of China, examples of which I observed during my visits to predominantly Muslim cities in western China. Instead of knee jerk reactions to anything associated with "godless Communist" regimes, the successes of China's clergy licensing policy might well serve as an example for the West as it struggles to understand and control the religious extremist elements in other parts of the world. We widely use government licenses to confirm an individual has the training, experience and ethical attitudes to serve clients in the public interest. Physicians, attorneys, engineers, psychological councilors, even fortune-tellers are subject to government regulation and/or professional association board certification. Religion alone has avoided public oversight. Clergy, guilty of sexual exploitation of the vulnerable, historically have been subject to different controls than other members of society. American laws prohibit inciting to riot, but any crazy zealot can preach hate under the guise of religious freedom. Freedom of speech does not give you the right to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes astutely observed, even if your religion demands it! FB

Postcard from Granada Nicaragua

Three days after arriving in Granada, terrorists attacked London, a horrendous event that went all but unnoticed here in this small Nicaraguan tourist town. CNN and BBC devoted full time coverage to the atrocities. Some twenty-five years ago, I conducted an open literature search for an organization developing anti-terrorism training programs for American municipalities. The cast of characters has changed, and the scale of destruction has escalated, but the causes and effects are similar. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network are now our prime suspects. Lost in the outrage and calls for intensified efforts to "combat terrorism" are the root causes behind radical Islam's answer to perceived Western oppression. Bin Laden discussed his motives for launching terror attacks against the United States and its allies in a recent speech. The full English transcript of Usama bin Ladin's speech in a videotape sent to Aljazeera on 11/1/04 may be seen here. Every thinking Westerner deserves to know what he has to say about the root causes of the present conflict.

Leaving San Jose on 28 June for Playa Hermosa, I expected a quiet few days by the beach in one of the many beachfront hotel listed in the websites. As the bus neared the Pacific, we moved every more deeply into the jungle, finally stopping near a sign announcing we had arrive in Hermosa Beach... and the end of the road! Bewildered, I hefted my pack and began the exploration process... after confirming the bus would retrace its route back in two hours. Down a dirt road towards the water, several resort motels offered accommodations for as little as $50. The road ended in the sand, the beach beyond. No wide tree-lined boulevard with sparkling glass enclosed hotels facing the sea. Instead, I found about a dozen widely separated resort complexes nestled in their own piece of jungle, though easily walking distance to the deserted beach. The most luxurious, Villas Sol offered me a one bedroom apartment for $70, somewhat below their $98 rack rate. Perfect for families or couples wanting a lot of privacy (or someone hiding out from Interpol), it proved a bit too remote for my current preferences. However, the Gray Line reservation desk is located in the hotel's lobby and the return trips start from that hotel.

Two hours after arriving I finessed a ride back to the first town of any size, Liberia, that is on the main highway to Nicaragua. A Best Western Motel sits at the junction. As rain had been pouring off and on, I ran across the street to a Subway restaurant where I reluctantly ate a sandwich made with wilted vegetables and discolored meat. The lackadaisical attitude of the boy at the counter and the odd flavor of the sandwich made me wonder about the advisability of eating it. But, I'd had nothing since seven that morning and gobbled it down. Twenty hours later the first symptoms of a serious respiratory infection made its appearance; I have to wonder at a possible connection with that sandwich. The next morning I discovered the terminal for the Central Line international bus service. An hour late, the deluxe bus left heading North for Managua, only half full and a $10 fare. The on-board staff handled our payment of the Costa Rican $8 departure tax and all of the customs and immigrations details. On the Nicaraguan side we all hauled our baggage to the Nicaraguan dog sniffing room for an interesting going-over by a wiry Beagle which obviously had drunk too much coffee that morning. The K9 cop lingered over the daypack of another young American I had befriended, poking its nose in every crevice and sniffing loudly, finally giving a little bark and moving on. The young man told me later he had spent the previous night in a hostel where some of the other residents might have been smoking marijuana... ha. While the little circus dog entertained us with it frenetic jumping, bobbing and sniffing, our cavernous bus received similar treatment by a team of five other hounds and a squad of American trained customs officials. Forty minutes later the inquisition ended and our luxury behemoth continued its noiseless trek northward to Granada. Lake Nicaragua, a block the east of our highway looked like an ocean, the far shore well below the horizon. Westward the landscape presented an endless array of pastoral shades of green, broken occasionally by an isolated structure like a punctuation mark in a line of poetry. The bus paused briefly in Rivas, but I'd already chosen Granada as my next focus. A half hour later we arrived in an area of increasing habitation and finally stopped in what appeared to be just another street intersection in the outskirts of a small town. "Granada" our conductor called out, and several people prepared to get off. Ben, the young American with his suspicious day pack and humongous Sierra backpack, maneuvered himself and cargo off the bus just ahead of me. "Where are you going?" I asked.

"Centro Hostel, somewhere near a big church in the center of town. How about you?" he queried.

"I have no idea. I'll look for a good value hotel when I find the city center," I offered.

"Donde está el centro?" I inquired of a local young lady walking in our general direction. Her response included so many Spanish words spoken so fast I could understand none of what she said. However, as is always the case in every strange land I've visited, she pointed and gestured directions, turnings, even distances. When she had finished, I knew we had to walk some distance East and then turn South a few blocks. Ben's Spanish is not even as broad as mine, so he gladly let me take the lead in our explorations. During our walk, I learned he expected to pay between $7 and $12 per night for his accommodations. Reluctantly, I confessed I expected to pay somewhere in the range of $40-60, a revelation which led to inquiries about each other’s ages and life situations. Hefting my thirty-pound back pack and stepping lively at his pace, Ben, a third my age, expressed surprise anyone as ancient as I would voluntarily choose such a strenuous mode of travel.

Granada Centro is difficult to miss as it is marked by a Plaza park bounded on the East by a huge cathedral, but we missed it several times before spiraling in on our target. Opposite the cathedral on the other side of the park is one of the three "best hotels" in town, the Alhambra. After merely walking by the other two for a quick look at the exteriors, I took a first night room in the Alhambra, tiny with noisy air conditioner, but a new modern well-lit bathroom, and cheap at $40 per night. The hotel's sidewalk restaurant turned out to be its best feature.

After lunch, the exploration began using my "first night" room value as a benchmark. Just around the corner sits the Hotel Colonial, and at $50 is a dramatically better value, so I booked a room starting the next day. By this time symptoms of my respiratory infection were beginning to make it obvious I needed to tend to my body's healing demands. For me that means lots of water, sitting in the lotus position and zoning out, meditating, interspersed with occasional periods in a horizontal orientation until pain again forces me vertical.

While far from luxurious, the simple room in the Alhambra proved fine for recuperation, and I spent the next 18 hours in that tiny cell. During my time cloistered there, I did not get any better; I got progressively worse. The tickle on my left bronchi grew into wild demands for explosive coughing, a retching so violent muscles in my back hurt with the effort. The next day I moved to the better Hotel Colonial to continue convalescing. 48 hours and three doxycycline capsules later I began to feel partially human again. During the intense healing period, uncertain balance, neurological anomalies and the full range of severe flu-like symptoms convinced me I had contracted something beyond my body's usually amazing ability to conquer, and the closest modern medical facilities would be an hour away in Managua. Alone in this alien land where I do not speak the local language fluently, with strange physical symptoms, made me wonder for a while if my foolishness had ventured one step too far. Victorious finally, I discovered all of my reserved days at the hotel had elapsed and the hotel needed my room.

So, off again I went is search of a new abode. My good fortune brought me to the obscure entrance to El Casone de los Estrada - A Small Luxury Hostal. This little boutique hotel is a gem: six rooms, each with a unique configuration. Mine is like a Master bedroom suite, and the rate including taxes and a gourmet breakfast is only $65 or about $50 before included add-ons. Polished light wood floors and an oversize heavy log king-size bed with the mattress sitting three feet off the floor create an unusual feeling, kind of like being six years old again.

I have seen no touts at all, and most of the vendors have been polite. A few kids more playful than obnoxious have required several "no's" before they lost interest in the game. One kid hung around the outside the iron grillwork next to a table where I finished off a small pizza and bottle of beer. "Muy malo," he repeated pointing at my Cerveza Premium.
"Un poco es bueno," I replied.
"No! Muy malo," he repeated.
"Para usted," I rejoined.
"No, para usted!" he repeated. Hey! The kid and I actually had a conversation. I suspect I mangled the Spanish, but we exchanged ideas. I may be speaking Spanish fluently by the time I return. The encounter made me wonder if the kid's father drinks a lot and then abuses family members. However, I've seen no public drunkenness.

Every morning and throughout the day the church bells sound a peculiar varying pattern: single, single, 30-50 quickly repeated, single, single, etc. No one seemed to know the significance of the strange patterns until I pressed the receptionist at my hotel to investigate. Asking one of the Catholic hotel maids, she learned one pattern announces an ordinary Mass, another funerals, and the third weddings. Why such a complex set of patterns has been selected is lost in history.

Most days I hear strings of firecrackers being set off... more like small bombs, actually so loud they always trip multiple car alarms. When asked the reason for these noisy celebrations, I learned they were the way devotees celebrated their favorite saint's day. "Nearly everyday?" I asked. "There are a lot of saints!" my respondent replied. It reminds me of India where thousands of Hindu gods each have their devoted followers.

I've spoken with representatives of three medical missions to Nicaragua during the past week. All have been supported by fundamentalist Christian churches in America and/or by the participants themselves in at least one case. "Any malaria?" I asked Fr. John Warwick III, an urologist at the end of his two-week mission. "No, but we did treat several cases of Dengue Fever." he replied. I've seen only a few mosquitoes while here; all bit me. The ones I saw I could not hear! My aging sense of hearing has now made it impossible to hear the annoying high pitched whine of impending attack. That's both good and bad. In former years I can remember staying up half the night hunting down the last little beasty before feeling safe enough to sleep. Now, it is live and let live... after slathering on mosquito repellent and taking my weekly dose of Chloroquine religiously!
Internet access costs less than a dollar an hour. Some of the cyber cafes offer international telephone service to the US for about $4/hr or about six cents a minute. My wondering about the advisability of getting one of the lifetime pneumonia shots drew responses from nearly a dozen friends: consensus is that it is indeed a good idea, so I'll start looking.



Photos taken since leaving San Jose are available here.
This postcard has been added to the Latin American website.