Granada, Nicaragua...

After spending a few days in Isla Ometepe I jumped back on the ferry and crossed back to the mainland. From there I went to the bus station for Granada. The bus station was filled with vendors hocking food, candy, drinks, toys, and watches. Vendors shoved sticks with merchandise into bus windows and yelled the names of their goods in mechanical fashion. I tried calculating how many times they repeated those words everyday. The numbers became difficult to multiply in my head.

The packed bus rolled up the Interamericana towards Granada, the oldest European settlement in the Western hemisphere. We arrived about an hour and a half later and tried to get our bearings at the gas station. We walked through street markets down to where we were planning to stay.

One of the volunteers has a friend of a friend who bought a huge Spanish Colonial mansion and is working on converting it into a hotel and spa. Construction is proceeding slowly as everything does in Latin America. (Romance being the only exception.) We were able to stay for free and enjoy what was already completed. The gardens were beautiful, rooms of palacial dimensions, and the pool very relaxing. Of course, keeping our travel experience always a touch surreal we also had to fill the toilets with water on occasion, be mindful of the bats, and walk around in the dark a lot. We are road hardened volunteers who turn our noses at the thought of too-much luxury.

I spent most of my time in Granada eating. Granada has a plethera of excelent resturants and I spent a good chunck of the Bush Economic Stimulus check I recieved on fish, burritos, waffels, and sausages. I did my part to stimulate the economy. Of course it was the Nicaraguan economy.

Kate, a fellow volunteer and photo addict, and I went on a trip to one of the untouristed and slightly seedier sections of Granada. I shot a few okay pictures but it is hard to get anything really telling when you are just passing through and can´t invest yourself in a community. Everyone we encountered was very polite. The kids were very curious about the gringos as I imagine they rarely venture into that part of town. Of course, it is these parts of town in which one actually gets a taste of a country, not in the hotel lined plazas.

After a few days in Granada I went to an organic and completely self-sutaining coffe farm called Selva Negra. The drive out was beautiful and reminded me of a green American Southwest. The actual farm was up a mountain and in a lush cloud forest. The temperature was about thirty degrees cooler which was somewhat refreshing. We were given a tour by the owner, a desedent of the original German settlers who started the farm over 100 years ago. The trip was very relaxing and the coffee was fantastic.

Upon returning to Costa Rica I felt like I had a better understaning of both countries. There is a great deal of antagonism between the two countries and down-right racism in Costa Rica. Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America while Costa Rica is one of the most well off. (Per-capita income) As a result illegal imigrants from Nicaragua are flooding into Costa Rica. The average Costa Rican when asked will go on a long diatribe about how awful Nicagrauans are and how they cause most of the problems in the country. (Mexicans and Colombians causing the rest of the problems in their opinion.) When I told people that I was going to Nicaragua many Ticos advised me to be very careful. One told me that Nicaraguans all run around with machetes and hack at any passerby.

I came back with all my apendages in tact and found most of the Nicaraguans I met to be perfectly nice and the Tico´s horror stories unjustified. And while I certanily tire and disagree with the Tico`s prevailing aditudes towards their northen neighbors I do feel like I gained an insight into where these feelings are based.

Costa Rica is a success story in Latin America. There one and only civil war was eighty years ago and lasted for two weeks. (People started dying so they decided they should stop.) Since then they have had uninterupted democracy and a growing economy. Tico´s take great pride in this and many times it becomes downright arrogance. However, despite their somewhat snobish attitude Tico´s don´t beg. In almost seven months of living here I can count on one hand the number of times someone has begged for money from me. Tico´s have too much pride to stoup to begging. In Nicaragua on the other hand they have had thirty years of everything going wrong and an incompetent governement that bribes votes through handouts. As a result I could rarely walk more than 200 meters without someone hitting me up for money. (Which I never gave.) Given this culture difference I could start to understand where the Tico arrogance I so frequently was encountering came from.

Overall, I did enjoy my vacation in Nicaragua but was happy to come home when I did. Coming home. This was a very odd feeling. When I crossed the border into Costa Rica I had that feeling of anticipation that I always recieve when I come back from a trip abroad. This time, however, I was not returning to the United States but to another country. It is a very odd experience to feel like you are going home when you are in another counrty away from home. I still haven`t really sorted this out in my head.

posted by k meadows @ 1:15 PM