Our Central America tour (18): Quirigua and Livingston
February 9th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
After the ‘luxury’ of two consecutive nights in the same hotel in Honduras, on Saturday things became more ‘spartan’ with us reduced to an overnight bag for our next hotel somewhere up a river in Guatemala. Meanwhile our luggage went who knows where.
It was a short journey back into Guatemala where the whole of the remainder of our holiday is to take place. It took no time to cross the border where we headed north and then turned north-east to make our way to Quirigua. The climate here was different: cooler, more humid, and – for a short time – drizzly.
The little-visited Mayan ruins of Quirigua, now a World Heritage Site, have some of the finest carvings in the country and the site is particularly famed for its intricately-carved large stelae. Quirigua was a dependency of Copan for much of the classic period but, in 738, the local leader, who had the catchy name of! K’ak Tilaw Chan Yo’at (known to historians more colourfully as Stormy Sky), kidnapped King Rabbit 18, had him executed and made Quirigua independent, leading to the flowering of the work of the stonecutters.
The site has a small museum with all the descriptions in Spanish (Sandra explained it all). As well as other structures, there are eight major stelae located where they were found and covered for protection. Stella E is the largest Maya stela known: it is 8 metres above ground, almost 3 metres below ground, and weighs an incredible near 60 tons.
We were at Quirigua for almost two hours before setting off again. We were now in a corner of Guatemala called Izabal sandwiched between Belize to the north and Honduras to the south. It is here that Guatemala has a short stretch of coast on the Caribbean Sea (in the south of the country, Guatemala has a lengthy coastline on the Pacific).
We journeyed to a town called Fronteras where the Lago de Izabal joins the Rio Dulce and here we stopped for a light lunch at a place called “Ristorante Hacienda Tijax”. Then we boarded a fibre-glass motor boat for our trip up the Rio Dulce. It is called a river but really it feels more like a lake because of its width and islands. This is humid tropical rain forest territory, so very atmospheric.
It was now overcast and, as soon as the boat picked up speed, rather windy and splashy, so Vee & Roger were pleased that they had brought along their kagools. From time to time, the motor was stopped and we glided by islands observing local water birds : more ospreys, more egrets, more cormorants, and this time pelicans. When we stopped to observe birds at one of the inhabited islands, young girls paddled up to us in small canoes and tried to sell us trinkets.
It took us two hours to reach our destination of Livingston on the Caribbean coast. The town is named after the American jurist and politician Edward Livingston who wrote the codes that were used as the basis for the liberal government of the United Provinces of Central America. Livingston is known locally as Buga which means mouth in the local Garifuna language. There are some special characteristics of Livingston. First, it cannot be accessed by road so life is based on boats. Second, it is noted for its unusual mix of Garifuna, Afro-Caribbean, Maya and Ladino people and culture.
Our accommodation for the night was Hotel Villa Caribe – an upmarket version of the chalet-type living with which we have become so familiar. Outside the sliding glass doors making up one wall of our room, we stepped out on a veranda overlooking a large swimming pool, palm trees and then the Caribbean – sheer magic.
At Livingston, we all chose to have dinner at the hotel where we found ourselves entertained by a group of eight musicians and dancers who were as black as any West Indian, sang in the local Garifuna language, and shook their derrières vigorously. In the night, it crashed with rain for hours.
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Our Central America tour (17): Guatemala
February 8th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
The country’s name comes from the Nahuatl language and translates as “place of many trees”. A Spanish colony from 1524, Guatemala became fully independent in 1834.
From 1960-1996, the country was ravaged by a 36-year long civil war which pitted four groups of Leftist, mainly Mayan, insurgents – who came together as Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) – against the US-backed army. More than 200,000 people – most of them civilians – were killed or disappeared.
In terms of both size and population, Guatemala is easily the largest of the five countries on our tour of Central America. The population is 15 million (over a third indigenous Maya) and the capital is Guatemala City.
Life expectancy remains among the lowest in the region and the country is plagued by organised crime and violent street gangs.
The current president – elected in November 2011 – is Otto Perez Molina of the Right-wing Patriotic Party who served as an army general at the time of the dictatorship of Efrain Rios Montt (who,is currently cared with genocide) in a region of the country which experienced the worst human rights abuses and massacres. He has put thousands of troops on the streets in the areas of most serious crime. In fact some of the worst criminal excesses are committed by the security forces.
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Our Central America tour (16): Copan
February 8th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
It had rained in the night but Friday morning was another bright day. – perfect for our visit to the Maya location that is a World Heritage Site. Oddly the town is called Copan Ruinas while the site itself is simply known as Copan. We left the hotel at 8.30 am and returned at 1.10 pm and virtually the whole of this time was spent at the ruins because they are only a 10 minute ride from the town centre,
Our local guide was Marvin Diaz who was of part Maya descent. He was absolutely passionate about the pre-Columbian civilisation and both informative and amusing in his explanations of each section of the site. He had a long thin stick with coloured feathers attached to one end which he used as a pointer.
The approach to the site is along a nature trail with various plants, trees and birds which were explained to us. We were blown away by the number and beauty and proximity of around a dozen macaws – resplendent in red, yellow and blue and flying free and wild.
Like all lengthy civilisations, the Maya civilisation is divided by historians into periods and all the sites we are are visiting on this tour are from the classical period which ran from approximately 200-900 AD with 426-822 AD said to the height of the civilisation. The Maya civilisation was over by the time of Columbus and seems to have been wiped out by drought – an early example of the consequences of climate change.
The Copan site embraces 20 structures and a number of plazas. The official estimate is that it housed a community of around 25,000 but Marvin believes that the site had 10 times that many inhabitants. Life expectancy for the Maya was about 30-40 years.
We were fascination by Marvin’s explanation of the Maya numbering system which was based on the number 20 – because we have 20 fingers and toes – and is made up symbols for zero, one and five. He illustrated the system by tracing out each number with his stick in the soft soil and then showed us actual usage on some of the monuments.
Looking at various stelae and structures, we were told about different kings who ruled the community. Successful in military conquests and the greatest patron of the Maya arts was the wonderful named Uaxaclajuun Ub’aah K’awiil, known by the delightful appellation 18-Rabbit, who ruled from 695-738.
The most famous monument on the site is the Hieroglyphic Stairway (which is covered for protection). The 63 surviving steps contain no less than 2,200 inscriptions – of which around 85% have been deciphered – setting out information on important historical events.
The Ball Plaza was the site of a Maya game using a ball of 3-4 kg which could not be touched with hands or feet but had to be kept in the air with any other part of the body such as elbows, knees, hips and backside.
After walking round the site, Marvin took us to the Museum of Sculpture which is entered through a winding tunnel representing the body of a serpent. This excellent museum contains artefacts from the site that are better protected under cover. It is a modern and airy structure which includes a full-scale, full-coloured reproduction of the Rosalila temple which is not accessible to tourists on the actual site. Alongside the museum there is also a souvenir shop where Roger & Vee supported the local economy with some purchases of gifts.
For only the second time on the trip, we had a free afternoon and this time there were no real options. Since this is Day 12 of an intensive 19-day tour, we were all pleased to have a well-timed and very welcome pause in the programme. Vee & Roger chilled: eating, sleeping, reading, writing.
Refreshed, we then went for a wander around the cobbled streets of Copan and in no time met two colourful middle-aged characters. A Canadian from Ottawa wearing a red Stetson said he was a songwriter called the Happy Cowboy and gave us some hug tokens. An American from Florida, speaking in a pronounced Southern drawl, said that, an hour after leaving the aircraft, he met the Honduran women who is now his wife and we met her and their two delightful children.
We returned to the hotel for dinner with our new best friends. At the weekend, the staff wear an especially coloured outfit which was a cue for yet another photograph.
The rest of our trip will be in Guatemala …
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Our Central America tour (15): Honduras
February 7th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
On his fourth and final voyage, Christopher Columbus landed in the country in 1502 and its name – literally “depths” in Spanish – is said to come from the explorer having written “Thank God we have come out of those depths”. Honduras became fully independent in 1840.
Honduras is the original and archetypal banana republic – a small, poor, fertile country controlled by wealthy families with transnational business interests such as Chiquita, formerly the United Fruit Company. Even today, the nation is dominated by ten oligarch families.
The population is 8 million (half of whom are under the age of 19) and the capital is Tegucigalpa, although San Pedro Sula is the business centre of the country (as well as allegedly the world’s most dangerous city). Like other countries in the region, Honduras was devastated by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 when at least 5,000 were killed and there was damage estimated at $3 billion.
Currently the heavily militarised Bajo Aguan region in the north east is the centre of a conflict between palm oil companies such as the Dinant Corporation, owned by Miguel Facusse (one of the country’s most powerful men), and a farmers’ revolt led by the United Peasant Movement (Muca). The country as a whole is the main transit route for cocaine to the United States.
The nation has been described as “the most violent state outside a war zone” (“Guardian”, 31/12/13). It has a murder rate of around 90 per 100,000 people, compared to one in 100,000 for the UK and five in 100,000 in the USA. The main cause of such a high murder rate is turf wars between street gangs – known as “maras” – such as M-18 and Mara Salvatrucha. Allegedly the gangs and drug smugglers have no interest in tourists.
For the past century, two political parties have taken turns to form the government, except for period of military rule: the Right-wing National Party and the Centre-Right Liberal Party. In the last few years, however, a new Left-leaning party has emerged: the Freedom and Refoundation Party, a democratic socialist party, known by its Spanish acronym as Libre, founded by Manuel Zelaya and his wife Xiomara. In the presidential election of November 2013, Xiomara obtained second place, with an 8% margin below the Right-wing National Party, whose leader Juan Orlando Hernandez won the presidency for a four-year term.
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Our Central America tour (14): San Salvador – and three countries in three hours
February 7th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Thursday started in San Salvador as we set off at the usual time of 8.30 am for what was billed as a city tour but was really just a visit to a cathedral and a model of the country. We were joined for the morning by a local guide called Alfredo whose grandparents lived two blocks from the main square downtown so that as a child he witnessed the tragic aftermaths of a number of demonstrations.
San Salvador was founded in 1525 by the Spanish explorer Pedro de Alvarado. It became the capital of the United Provinces of Central America from 1834 to 1839. Historically natural disasters have beleaguered the city including tremors in 1854 and 1873, a volcanic eruption in 1917, floods in 1934, and earthquakes in 1986 and 2001. Today it has a population of over 2 million. It is known as “the city with two sides of the coin’ because of the vast economic inequality but apparently violence is limited to a few neighbourhoods in the east of the city.
We drove downtown where modern department stores and offices share space with hundreds of non-legal street vendors whose stalls cover all the pavements and a good deal of the roads. We stopped in the main square of Plaza Barrios where plenty of armed police were in evidence.
The Catedral Metropolitana is far from the most impressive in the world – or even Central America – but it is noted as the site of the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated on 24 March 1980. The day after he made his latest speech on the need for human rights, he was shot dead while celebrating mass at a local hospital. To this day, nobody has been prosecuted for his murder and there is no absolute certainly over who ordered the killing, but Alfredo told us that “it is a well-known secret” that the assassination was ordered by the former mayor Roberto D’Aubuisson.
We saw his ornate tomb in the crypt of the cathedral and it was clear that he is held in great reference both nationally and internationally. Indeed moves are already in progress by the Catholic church to make him a saint. Officially two miracles are required.
From the cathedral, we drove to a place that used to be a military barracks guarding the presidential palace (or leading the latest military coup) but is now a military museum with a huge outdoor relief model of El Salvador in which all the altitudes are magnified double which emphasises the number of volcanoes in the nation (26).
North-west of the capital is the important archaeological site of Joya del Ceren known as the Pompeii of America because a small Maya settlement of perhaps 5,000 was covered by a volcanic eruption around 1400 years ago. The. devastation was caused by Volcan Loma Caldera.
Discovered in 1976, it is only a small site but its significance is that it is the only example of a Maya rural community accessible to archaeologists which is why it has been recognised by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site. There is an excellent small museum containing some of the artefacts discovered and then a walkway around the 10 structures that have been uncovered. Meanwhile the ubiquitous armed guard was wandering around.
We dropped Alfredo on the Central American Highway (not literally) and proceeded a little further north-east to the town of Santa Ana where we were deposited at a modern shopping centre to find some lunch.
We then headed north for the border between El Salvador and Guatemala where we had an easy crossing in just 20 minutes. The road in Guatemala was the worst of our trip and, sincee Roger & Vee were on the back seat, it was especially bone-rattling and bum-bruising. We were only using this road to reach the part of the border with Honduras that we wanted. We had to pay $2 a head to leave Guatemala and $3 a head to enter Honduras but the whole process only took 30 minutes. This meant that we had been in three countries in three hours.
Our destination in Honduras was Copan Ruinas which is only just over the border so were at our accommodation at 6.15 pm. It had been a journey of 300 km – much of it on a really rough road – but our hotel, the Marina Copan, welcomed us with a refreshing cocktail of rum, cucumber, honey and mint. It was our fifth hotel in five days – a new record for Roger & Vee and not one we will expect or hope to exceed. In fact, it is the most delightful hotel of our trip: spacious and well-provisioned rooms around a courtyard housing an open air swimming pool.
After such a lot of travelling, Roger & Vee and Brian & Cally opted to have dinner at the hotel and it was as good as any restaurant.
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Our Central America tour (13): the Salvadoran civil war
February 6th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
We are now about half way through our grand tour of Central America.
At Perquin, Wednesday morning’s breakfast was eggs as you like them and brown beans puréed. Beans and/or rice seem to come with every meal in this part of the world which is fine but puréed brown beans have an appearance more suited to a toilet than a restaurant. We spent all morning around and in Perquin which is in the Morazan province in the far north of El Salvador near the border with Honduras that was involved in a lot of fighting during the civil war. In effect, Perquin was the guerrilla capital.
Outside Perquin! we took an unmade road to a village called El Mozote which became infamous on 11 December 1981. On that day, in an operation called “Anvil And Hammer” [for more details click here], army troops persuaded people from the surrounding communities to come to the centre of this village where the men, woman and children were separated before around 800 of them were massacred. One of the few survivors, a woman called Rufina Amaya Marquez, was determined that everyone should learn about the atrocity and campaigned for it to be known nationally and internationally.
Today the village has constructed a memorial with silhouetted metal figures of a man, a woman, a boy and a girl holding hands. Behind these figures is a wall with plaques commemorating the names of many of the victims. We were told the story by a young woman called Estrella who was six at the time of the massacre. The pain was still evident in her voice and eyes and our guide Sandra chose not to translate the full descriptions of some of the macabre horrors that unfolded. It was a very moving account, but one of our group – a particularly pompous and portly man who will remain nameless – was chatting as Estrella spoke and Vee publicly and loudly rebuked him.
We returned to Perquin to view a museum on the civil war together with a mock up of a rebel camp. We were accompanied by a former member of the FMLN called Rafael who, since the peace agreements , has worked as a guide. He served with the insurgents for a decade (1982-1992) and was wounded by bullets hitting his fingers and left foot. He was remarkably lacking in bitterness towards his former enemy which he put down to a need to forgive and his evangelical faith.
The Museum of the Salvadoran Revolution consists of three rooms of photographs, posters and weaponry illustrating the conduct of the civil war (all the descriptions are in Spanish so it is good that we had local guides). The reproduction of an FMSN camp includes a short stretch of underground tunnel and a suspension bridge with open slats and naturally Vee & Roger experienced both. Finally Rafael donned combat gear and brandished an M-16 rifle for some photographs.
It had been an emotional morning. The suffering of the Salvadoran people during the civil war was terrible with over 90% of the deaths caused by Government armed forces supported – and in some cases trained – by the. US military. People – like members of our group – who have comfortable lives in peaceful and developed countries cannot imagine the horror and brutality of a civil war.
We returned to our hotel briefly for some lunch and then at 1 pm set off south for the capital. We had a brief comfort stop at a supermarket close to yet another active volcano called Volcan Chaparrastique (2130 metres). We had a briefer comfort stop at a service station opposite a Korean textile factory. By now, we are becoming used to seeing armed guards but this place actually had two machine gun-toting guards. it was 6 pm, after a drive of five hours, when we arrived at our hotel in the capital city of San Salvador.
The Hotel Mirador Plaza is our best hotel so far by far – huge rooms and all the facilities one would expect. The famous four went out for dinner, walking a couple of blocks in minimal lighting to the local World Trade Center which houses a variety of restaurants. We chose a place called “Bennigan’s” which billed itself as “American food. Irish hospitality”. The former was fine; the latter involved the staff wearing a variety of green hats. It was hard to imagine we were in the capital city of one of the most murderous nations on earth. However, one of our group wandered off alone in a different direction, found armed police on street corners, and felt distinctly uncomfortable.
Tomorrow … Honduras.
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Our Central America tour (12): from Nicaragua to El Salvador
February 5th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Another day, another guide, another county. On Tuesday morning, we met our guide for the remainder of the trip, a loud, hyper and ever so cheerful Guatemalan called Sandra Molina who would regularly shout “OK, chicos!”. We were leaving Nicaragua for El Salvador and today was all about travelling between the two countries. As Brian put it: “If you’re going to Salvador, don’t Dali.”
We started at 8.30 am, travelling in two mini buses and heading north east up a peninsula which encloses the southern portion of a large lagoon between Nicaragua and El Salvador. We had a comfort break at a town calked Chinandega and then turned off the main road to take a dusty and bumpy dirt road for the last three quarters of an hour. At the end of the peninsula was a tiny town called Potosi where a navy facility provided immigration control.
At this point (12.30 pm), we and our luggage boarded separate motor boats for the trip across the gulf which brings together Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador: Golfo de Fonseca. The problem was that there was no jetty and the boats drew too much water to reach the beach, so staff had to carry our bags to a small boat while we waded in bare feet in water up to our knees in order to board our only slightly larger boat. The wearing of life belts on board was “mandatory”.
The weather was excellent and the water was placid. Around half way across the gulf, we entered Salvadorean waters and we were approached and stopped by a Salvadorean navy vessel with armed personnel who wanted to check that we were not smuggling drugs. Obviously the Salvadorean navy is not overly busy because we were very soon approached by a second navy vessel and this time all our passports were studied
Our initial destination – reached at 2 pm – was an island called Zacatillo. This is one of 12 Salvadorean islands but one of only three that is populated. We waded ashore for lunch – choice of either fish or shrimps, all caught and cooked locally. It was a pleasant example of what Sandra called “community tourism”. If we thought Isla Ometepe was isolated, then Zacintillo is even more remote and we felt as if we were in another world, eating fresh fish while watching the water lapping the beach below a near cloudless blue sky.
After an hour on the island, we had our last wading session and the the boat proceeded across the gulf to take us to the mainland of El Salvador. We disembarked at a sleepy place calked La Union where for the next hour Sandra sorted out the immigration procedures. We now had another coach which was smaller and less comfortable than the one we had in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Most of our bags went on the roof but some had to come inside on seats.
As in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, we used service stations as stops for comfort and refreshment, but we soon discovered that something was different in El Salvador. In one corner of the service station was an ATM machine and standing alongside it was a private security guard in uniform wearing a pistol and a shot gun.
We turned off the main road to take a minor road north to a part of the country that is particularly deprived and suffered badly in the civil war. It was well past sunset and very dark when we reached the small town of Perquin and our accommodation for another single night: the Perkin Lenca Hotel was another collection of chalets, this time on the slope of a steep hill. It was 7.20 pm when we arrived – a journey door to door from our hotel in Nicaragua to our hotel in El Salvador of almost 11 hours.
Before we all crashed, we went to the hotel restaurant for a light dinner. On the return to our room – sorry, chalet – we observed a brilliant canopy of multitudinous stars in a cloudless sky. Very, very different from London where the ambient light means that we see only a handful of stars.
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Our Central America tour (11): El Salvador
February 4th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
The country’s name means “the saviour” which is a reference to Jesus Christ. A Spanish colony from 1540, El Salvador became fully independent in 1840. It is known as the land of the volcanoes.
In the 1980s, the country was ravaged by a civil war which left around 70,000 people dead and caused damage of around $2 billion. Oliver Stone’s 1986 film “Salvador” portrayed the early years of the conflict. The civil war ended in 1992 but then the country was hit by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and earthquakes in 2001.
El Salvador is the smallest by far of the five countries we are visiting, but it still has a population of over 6 million, making it the most densely populated state on the mainland of the Americas. The capital is San Salvador.
It is one of the most crime-ridden countries in the Americas with street gangs called “maras” and it has one of the highest murder rates in the world: 70 per 100,000 per year, compared to one in 100,000 for the UK and five in 100,000 in the USA. All this is blamed largely on the fights between two rival gangs: Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. The two gangs entered into a truce in 2011, but the number of murders has recently been going up again and some analysts fear it may not hold much longer.
Once the civil war ended in 1992, the conservative Arena Party won won every election until, in March 2009, Mauricio Funes of the Left-wing Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN), founded by the former Marxist guerrillas, was elected president. Two days before our arrival in the country, there were fresh elections in which former rebel and current Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren of FMLN had a convincing 10-percentage-point lead in the presidential ballot, but a run off election is now necessary in early March.
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Our Central America tour (10): Leon
February 4th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
On Monday morning at 8.30 am, we left Granada and three of the five who had joined us a few days earlier (so now we are 15). It was a short drive north west to the outskirts of the city of Managua.
Historically Managua remained a village until 1852 when it was chosen as the new capital of the country, following a civil war between liberal Leon and conservative Granada instigated by the American brigand William Walker. Geographically it is located between the other two. It was devastated by earthquakes in 1931, again in 1936, and most recently In 1972 and today it is a sprawling, shambolic and chaotic but modern city of over two million people.
Leaving Managua, we rejoined the Pan American Highway and continued to skirt the southern shore of the large Lago Managua and eventually stopped for a wonderful scenic view of two volcanoes at the north east of the lake: Momotomba and (smaller) Momotombito.
We reached Leo at noon which was a little early, so Eduardo took the opportunity to take us round the main covered market. Unlike yesterday’s market, this one is for the locals: fresh fish, meat, vegetables and fruit, in displays as colourful as they were mountainous, plus all the other products necessary for normal domestic life, all in a bustling and noisy environment. However, we could have done without the live iguanas with their feet tied.
Once we were united with our local guide Miguel, we drove out of the city to visit a small village called San Jacinto where we were able to observe bubbling and spluttering and splashing hot springs, the result of the nearby Volcan Telica. The ground was as hot as the air so we had to keep moving before we fried. Several of us were accompanied by local children – Roger’s guide was a seven year old girl called Solangel and Vee had a boy with the typically Nicaraguan name of Kenneth tagging along – who attempted to tell us what to observe. It would be lovely to think this was all about friendship towards older people but, before we re-boarded the bus, the ubiquitous $1 had to be sacrificed.
We returned to Leon. The city was originally founded In 1524 by Francisco Hernandez but, after a series of natural disasters, moved in 1610 to its present location. It served as the nation’s capital for most of the colonial period of almost 200 years. Politically it has traditionally been the most liberal city in the country and today remains a Sandinista stronghold. It has a population of almost 200,000 and it is the intellectual heart of the country.
Back in the city, we started with lunch at an attractive restaurant called “Al Carbon”. It was an especially good meal: a small salad, a meat soup, pork with sweet & sour sauce, and cheesecake. A full stomach and humid heat made a walking tour of the city with Miguel a doubtful attraction, but we did not walk far and the two places we visited were interesting in very different ways.
First we went to see the cathedral in La Plaza de la Liberacion which is officially known as the Basilica de la Asuncion and is the largest in Central America. This is the fifth version of this establishment since the creation of the city and the current building was constructed between 1747-1860 in the baroque style by indigenous labourers. It is In the process of a major programme of renovation with the inside and the roof completed. Some of us went up to the roof for views of the city and the row of volcanoes beyond it. The climb up was not particularly easy and the walk across the top of a small curved dome would be a challenge for anyone with vertigo.
The other place we visited was a unique venue called the Museum of Myths and Legends. This was founded by a woman called Señora Carmen Toruna to remind a information technology obsessed citizenry of the traditional stories of Nicaraguan folklore. It is housed on the location of a former political prison and at the entrance is the tank that helped to liberate the Sandinista prisoners, in the courtyard is a figure of a rebel throwing a homemade bomb, and on whitewashed walls there are black drawings of prisoners being subjected to various gruesome tortures. The rest of the museum consists of papier mâché models of historic and legendary figures, including some obviously intended to scare naughty children Into behaving better. Museum collections hardly come more eclectic than this.
Our afternoon in Leon was probably the hottest time of our three-week tour: about 35C. The two hour walking tour finished at 5.15 pm at our accommodation for the night: Las Mercedes Hotel. We had left our hotel in Granada almost nine hours ago, so it was another full but fascinating day. Early in the evening, we said farewell our guide Eduardo and driver Felix for the Costa Rica-Nicaragua portion of our trip.
As yesterday evening, since we had had such a large lunch, we only needed a light dinner. So the famous four – Roger & Vee and Brian & Cally – ate almost next door at “El Sesteo”. Roger was keen to have his dessert but the waiter claimed that none of the desserts were available. When pressed, the cafe decided that it would be possible to serve a banana split but all the ice cream would have to be the same flavour and he could have any flavour he wanted as long as it was chocolate. He could live with that.
Tomorrow … El Salvador
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Our Central America tour (9): Granada and environs
February 3rd, 2014 by Roger Darlington
It was Sunday but for us it was no day of rest as we spent all day in and around the city of Grenada accompanied by local guide Gustavo as well as Eduardo.
Granada – nicknamed the Great Sultan after its Moorish counterpart in Spain – is the oldest colonial city in Nicaragua, having been founded in 1524 by Francisco Hernandez. It was burnt down in 1856, but latterly has been the subject of major restoration. These days it is a town of 123,000, noted for the charm of its cobbled streets and polychromatic colonial homes.
We set off from the hotel at 8.30 am in a different form of transport from our coach: carriages carrying five passengers and a driver drawn by two blinkered horses. It was a relaxed way to view the city sights and streets and we made six stops for Gustavo to explain some of the history of the city: the old train station which is now a railway museum, the first hospital which is now a shell awaiting reconstruction, the Gunpowder Fortress which is now a museum, the cemetery where the Picasso family has a large grave, the baroque La Merced Church where we climbed up to the top of the bell tower for wonderful views of the city, and the former Church of San Francisco which is now an archaeological museum.
It was proving to be another really hot day: around 35C/95F At this point in the tour, we were picked up by our coach and driven outside the city to the nearby area known as Pueblos Blancos (White Villages). This is a region named after the pale while stucco homes that once dominated the area. Today it is dotted with five pretty villages famed for their craftsmen.
We visited the village of San Juan de Oriente which is the most important centre of artisanal pottery in Nicaragua. Here we went to a small workshop where local people demonstrated their craft in making their famous pottery from red clay using the unique techniques of the indigenous people. Roger befriended a mother, her children and the children’s friends and had the youngest on his knee being tickled and ‘dropped’ to much laughter.
Next we went on to the gorgeous village of Catarina which is known for its mirador that presents fabulous views of Laguna de Apojo with Lago de Nicaragua on the horizon. We stopped here for lunch at the “Restorante Carolina”. After a good meal, we drove on to the town of Masaya where we were given an hour to wander round the covered market Mercado Artesanias. To be honest, the wares and gifts were rather tacky, so Roger & Vee used the time to enjoy an ice cream (banana split in the former case).
From the town of Masaya, we drove to the national park of Masaya. First, we looked round an interesting museum which explained the nature of volcanoes and the locations of those in Nicaragua. Then we drove up a deep road to have an awe-inspiring view down into the heavily smoking and sulphur smelling Nindiri crater. Another short drive and a steep walk took us to the overgrown crater of Volcan Masaya which had a huge explosion in 1772 and is still active today (a new eruption is expected at any time). We moved on to a suitable vantage point to see the sunset – a moving setting but not particularly colourful this night.
Finally about half of the group – including Vee & Roger – donned helmets and took torches to climb down a steep descent and enter one of the 17 lava tunnels in the area. Inside the large tree roots and the uneven volcanic rocks made the continued descent quite challenging. Then we all switched off our torches and in the pitch blackness listened to the beating of the wings of some of the 40,000 bats in the area. When we switched our torches back on, we could observe the numerous little bats darting swiftly from one position to another.
We were back at our hotel at 7.10 pm after another long day of over ten and a half hours. Since we had all had a large lunch, nobody wanted a heavy dinner. So Roger & Vee, together with Brian & Cally, returned to the same part of the city as last night but to a different restaurant (“Nectar”) and for a lighter meal. Roger & Vee each had a Greek salad and Roger & Brian each had a delicious local dessert called chocolate Aztec lava cake.
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