Brother in law was seduced by a Sultana....

....the nickname of the town of Granada in Nicaragua.
Everyone is seduced by it except curmudgeons like me  who have discovered that nearly everything in the historic centre was rebuilt after the attempt by a nineteenth century American mercenary to take over the country ended in catastrophe and he burned the town in his wake.
The old town, whence fleets set sail across Lake Nicaragua and down the Rio San Juan into the Caribbean on their annual route to the homeland, is just vanished history.

Never mind. Reality is not everything.

The first time I visited Granada was by international bus from Costa Rica - the pain free way of crossing the frontier.
American friends in Costa Rica had counselled me to avoid muggers by walking in the road...it was immediately clear that to follow the advice courted immediate death by being run down by a car or horse drawn carriage so walking on the pavements was the better option.

As an aside, I must say that in my view most people, anywhere, are just busy getting on with their own lives, earning a living which is not made necessarily by picking pockets or mugging and in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras I have never had the slightest problem with theft of any sort, apart from tourist restaurants where I have been stuffed for the last dollar in my possession.
Except for one incident at the border when it was an attempt to steal a passport, which was thwarted by an elderly lady selling plantain chips who grabbed the malefactor by his ear.
I have also, to be fair, been warned by passers-by and stall holders to keep a good hold of my purse because of the possibility of theft, so perhaps I have just been lucky.

By walking on the pavements in Granada I was able to catch glimpses of the interiors of the colonial style houses....rooms built round open patios for coolness, luxuriant with columns, wrought iron doors and water...and was given advice on a hotel by the ladies sitting in their rocking chairs on the wide pavements.
Good advice.
Local owners in a town where the hospitality industry seems to be increasingly in foreign hands, clean rooms, hot water and great food at the bar. Right in the centre too.

This time we went upmarket, while brother in law adjusted his sights on Central American hotel pricing, but it was in the same street which at night was full of tables spilling out from the many bars and cafes, with music, parades of giants and the endless clip clop of horse drawn carriages taking the tourists round the town.

He tramped the town with his camera before breakfast, returning with more photographs than there were buildings, bewailing the lack of funds to maintain some of the gems, such as the church on the right. He  found some super non touristy ceramics, too, made in the potters' village of San Juan de Oriente some kilometres away, which were for sale in a shop that seemed to be having a hard time keeping going in the face of the New Age tat  vendors in the square and the itinerant hawkers of pots for the tourist trade.

He had also done a reconnaissance for where to eat breakfast and led us to a good spot in the arcades near the cathedral where all sorts of good things were offered.
We ordered and sat, people watching, in the morning cool.
A few minutes later a loudspeaker van turned up.
It played music. Loudly.
Then 'organisers' took it over, broadcasting at top volume that Granada, and Lake Nicaragua on whose shores it stands, were international, not just national. They belonged to everyone.
Further, there was a campaign to stop littering.
Further, they would welcome foreign volunteers to pick up litter.
We were deafened right through an excellent breakfast and then, as we finished our coffee, the din stopped.

Later brother in law strolled down to the lake, where the mosquitoes hum in clouds over the open sewers of the town, and photographed several worthy souls with gloves and pointed sticks, picking up litter. All foreigners.

The organisers would do better to get the town council to provide proper rubbish collection rather than deafen innocent tourists over their breakfast.
But that wouldn't be as much fun as getting the heirs of the supposed colonial oppressors to pick up your litter, would it?

Visit your local volcano....

Before visiting Costa Rica for the first time, my image of volcanoes was that of the primary school geography book....some sort of mountain with a hole in the middle through which lava would rise to the surface at unpredictable intervals, sowing death and destruction and, after a considerable lapse of time,  degrading into fertile soil in the vicinity. Living near a volcano seemed rather chancy....too well into the fertile soil era and the blasted thing might be likely to have another go at the death and destruction bit again.
Knowing my luck I know which I'd get.

From our little house in the hills I can't actually see any active volcanoes, but I have visited two which are within easy reach and in each case was astonished to find that I could approach near enough to peer down into the craters - restrained from a plunge to my death only by wooden railings. Not a good place for little Johnny to drop his favourite toy.

I have a feeling that if the U.K. had volcanoes, no one would be allowed to approach them at all and would only be allowed to see films of them in visitor centres on the grounds of health and safety, whereas in Costa Rica you can get close up and personal unless the things are actually chucking rocks about.

I'm sure it will change....the European Union have been here recently, advising local government on how to set up a tax base and I'm sure they're behind the new draconian driving laws too, where the fines imposed for not wearing a seatbelt would bankrupt a family on the average wage.
Where tax and seatbelts lead, health and safety cannot be far behind, so if you want to sniff the sulphur, come to Costa Rica soon - or go to Nicaragua where the EU seems to be concentrating on providing local NGOs with large gas guzzling 4 x 4s instead.

The photograph above is of the Poas volcano, a little north of the capital San Jose, taken from behind the railings which is about as close as I would care to get. The approaches are superb, as you climb from the floor of the Central Valley through pine forests with Swiss chalets and cows to the national park, whence you approach the crater through masses of gunnera bushes and suddenly the verdant green turns to grey rock, yellowish fumeroles and the dark water of the crater lake.

The photograph below is of the Irazu volcano, an altogether nastier looking beast high up above the old capital, Cartago.

The green splotch in the middle is the crater lake - as seen behind the railings again in one of the brief moments that the driving wind, rain and cloud permit a photograph to be taken. The surroundings, unlike at Poas, are burned black and the access points are much more limited.

You can go anywhere in Costa Rica by bus and Irazu is no exception. A bus runs once a day from the capital, and I have taken it twice.

The first time, the warm, sunny weather in the San Jose area began to turn chillier, wetter and windier as the bus climbed out of Cartago to the national park. The bus driver, like most of his kind in the country, was most helpful, collecting our money and descending to pay for the entry tickets at the park boundary.
By the time we reached the car park, it was blowing a gale and, not realising that I had warm clothes and a brolly in my bag, he insisted on my taking his own sweater to wear. It took a bag inspection before he was satisfied that I would be warm enough outside the safety of his bus.

The next time, building on this good experience, I went with a friend who was visiting.
We found the bus in the centre of San Jose, where two other tourists, a Swiss couple, were waiting. The driver, a young man, sat stolidly in his seat, the bus door closed.
We waited. The departure time was approaching. There was movement within and we started to get out our purses to pay the fare.
False start. The driver was sweeping out his bus. Purses away.
He opened the door. Purses out again. The Swiss lady headed for the door. The driver swept the rubbish out over her feet. He shut the door again. Purses away.

We were eventually allowed to board and pay and he drove us towards Irazu.
We had to settle our own tickets at the park boundary and as he set us down in the bleak car park, he announced that we had to be back at the bus fifteen minutes before the time scheduled.
Irazu was blanketed in swirling cloud and was shortly to be overtaken by diluvial rain, so a shortened visit was not too much of a problem.
It all cleared for about ten minutes but then we were driven to take shelter in the visitors' centre, which was quite jolly as we were sharing its' close confines with two school parties - well behaved - and an american tour group who could not believe that we Europeans would trust ourself to local bus services.

They must have been better informed than we thought.

We emerged at the appointed time, only to find that the bus doors were firmly closed and there were no signs of life.
We waited until the scheduled departure time. My friends' hands were turning blue.
The Swiss gentleman had had enough.
Boldly he approached the front of the coach and fiddled with something under the protective housing.
With a welcome hiss, the front door of the bus swung open and we all bolted aboard.
Warmth!

Suddeny, the driver emerged, red eyed and loaded for bear, from the back of his bus.
'Everyone off the bus!'
'This bus will not leave until everyone is off the bus!'
We thought it quite probable - given his mood - that once we were off the bus it would certainly leave, without its' passengers, ticket or no ticket, so chorused as one
'We don't understand Spanish!'
He stormed from the bus, shutting us in, and went off to gather support.
He tried the park rangers.
We could see them shrugging and shutting the window of their hut against him.
He tried the visitors' centre.
No joy there.
He tried the toilet block.
Goodness only knows what support he expected from its' occupants.
There wasn't anything else he could do, except for asking Irazu to overwhelm us in lava, so eventually he came back and drove us down to the capital.

On the way, we discovered the likely origin of his fury.
Half way towards Cartago the bus made an unscheduled stop and a young lady descended from the back door.
A very attractive young lady.
Our Swiss colleague guffawed. And then explained.
Clearly, when he had opened the front door of the bus, the back door had opened as well and our driver had received a sudden gust of Irazu's finest which had most likely dampened his expectations.

Ruddy foreigners. No respect for anything.

Return of the lobster

There is a large red object in a number of the photographs that brother in law has been taking during our trip in Central America.
It resembles an oversized, well boiled lobster.
It is me.
No,  I am not putting up a photograph. There are limits. You're getting one of a disappointing clock instead.

I have two regrets about our trip.
One, we did not make it to Guatemala.
Two, I went bright red on day two and stayed that way for the duration, despite hats, shade and aloe vera cream. Is it really too much to ask that I could go brown?

The first regret isn't much of one, as we saw so much to please and fascinate in Nicaragua and Honduras that we all want to go back and explore further. Guatemala can wait.

There was something for each of us.
Brother in law, who kindly took the bulk of the driving, wanted to see Mayan ruins, so we visited Copan and its' little sister site El Puente - which I liked much better, though that could have been because the curator was kind enough to give me two hours of his time explaining the history of the site and the significence of the exhibits in the museum. It didn't hurt that he was extremely handsome and charming as well as erudite and patient.
It would have been nice not to have looked like an overcooked crustacean in his company.
If we had visited El Puente first I would have understood why Copan left me cold, despite all the hype.
A different culture some of whose monuments resembled modern art works until the Copan culture took over later in the history of the site.

Mr Fly wanted to see plants and found lots that were new to him, thus giving rise to hair raising cries of
'Stop the car!'
Usually on a hairpin bend.
He has garnered an alarming collection of seeds and went beserk at a nursery in northern Nicaragua, leading to a guilty session of rolling plants up in the washing in the suitcase in order to smuggle them back across the border into Costa Rica.
And before anyone starts whingeing about introducing non native plants, the two countries are contiguous and the point of buying the plants in Nicaragua is that they were about a quarter of the price demanded in Costa Rica...even if you could find them for sale.

I wanted to see Spanish colonial towns and I had a surfeit!
When we reached one of them, tucked away in the pine forests in Honduras, I could completely understand why its' founder called it 'Gracias a Dios'.
It must be what he said when he finally found a suitable site in the surrounding wilderness!

We were all suckers for sitting in the shady central squares with a plastic bag of fresh fruit drink to be drunk through the straw tied into the bag.
We all enjoyed searching for somewhere to eat in a strange town - except in Copan, which is a tourist rip off on the grand scale - and no one had food poisoning despite all the fears about the ice in the drinks and the water in which the salads had been washed.
This is considerably more than I can say for eating out in France.

We have had memorable meals.
One of the best was in the bus station in Santa Rosa de Copan where the lady only had the water she had lugged in in a large bin so to save washing up the plastic plates were covered in cling film. She deep fried tilapia from the nearby lake in an old saucepan and it was cooked to perfection. Crisp skin and melting flesh within.
Celebrity chefs eat your heart out.

Brother in law discovered plantains in all their manifestations and became addicted. Plantains figured at every meal from morning to night. Boiled in fish soup, fried with rice and beans, covered with refried beans and sour cream, plantain chips.....the only way I didn't see them presented was as a sandwich.

We had setbacks, of course.
Crossing the border from Costa Rica to Nicaragua took hours...most of them spent in waiting in a queue of vehicles in the no man's land between the frontiers....but that meant that we spent the first night in Granada rather than pushing on for the north, so could enjoy the architecture and the atmosphere.

The car lost its' brakes on a hillside in the wilds of Honduras.
A minivan passed, stopped, took Mr. Fly into the next village and came back with a mechanic. Refused any payment.
The mechanic took the car - driving it, not towing it - to his workshop, a tin roof on stilts, and analysed the problem.
He could get the parts, so, if we wanted to wait five hours, someone would go by bus to fetch them or, if we were in a hurry, a friend would drive there, but it would cost more.
We plumped for the car and went into town to draw money at the bank.
He asked us if we trusted him with the money or would we prefer to go with the friend to buy the parts.
We plumped for trusting him.

Within half an hour of going to the bank and sitting in the central square we were the object of everyone's attention.
San Juan las Collinas is on no one's tourist trail - and it wouldn't have been on ours had our intrepid navigators not made one of their erratic choices at a fork in the road.

A gentleman in a pick up hailed us in english, and told us that if the car wasn't ready that day we could stay with him and his family.

Another gentleman walking his dog directed us to the lake and the path up the hill above the town.

A further gentleman, seeing that we were reading, asked if we were reading 'The Word' - his way of referring to the Bible.
Learning that we were not, he informed us that all other literature was sinful and for good meaure told Mr. Fly that if he stopped smoking he would not be as thin as a rake but as  fat as his wife.
All with perfect good humour as befitted the town wiseacre.

Children tried out their english.

Not being a tourist town, there were no beggars.

We took a tuc-tuc out to the garage, where the assembled staff and friends were enjoying having a look at the car.
A delightful boy called Brian, all of eleven years' old, was the self appointed guide to events, ranging from an inspection of the litter of puppies to a run down on how disc brakes worked, culminating in the announcement that now that his brother - the mechanic - had fixed the brakes we had better be careful we didn't go through the windscreen when using them.

We were on our way from that hospitable town in five hours flat.
A pity that the frontiers aren't as well managed.

There was a disappointment, too.
I had read that the oldest clock in Central America was to be found in the bell tower at Comayagua, north of the Honduran capital. Originally housed in the Alhambra in the Spanish Granada, the twelfth century piece had been presented to the town by Philip II of Spain.
We wanted to see it.
Well, I don't know what they've done to it but it is singularly unprepossessing.
However, we had landed in Comayagua in Holy Week and that more than made up for the clock.

I have seen Holy Week processions in Seville on the TV, so was expecting something solemn and formal.
Nothing of the sort.
The images on their floats swayed from side to side on their route through the town, preceded by a man with a pole to hitch up the power lines....Christ bowed to his mother to the applause of the crowds....children took the parts at the Stations of the Cross...dear little girls with angel wings who represented the seven last words were borne in sedan chairs before the bier at the deposition....Mary Magdalen dashed about all over the town looking for Christ and word from the Vatican has not reached Comayagua that Saint Veronica didn't exist.
While all this was going on, food stands sold all manner of meals accompanied by a memorable rum punch and the piped music that filled the square ranged from Strauss walzes to the Girl from Ipanema.
A truly popular, happy event.

What was most remarkable to me was the phenomenon of the carpets of sawdust laid to ease the feet of Christ on the roads to be used by the processions.
Not just plain, ordinary sawdust, but art works made in different colours with stencils.
Apart from the expected religious and municipal themes, there were also others using the occasion to express their views on the late political unrest, including one featuring guns and the names of those from the town who had died in the repression.
A peoples' event.

We have had a splendid time, but without brother in law we would not have been able to even think about the trip, given the driving involved.

He returns to Australia on Monday, so we can only hope that the lure of the plantains will bring him back to Costa Rica for another attempt on Guatemala.

Another year.

When I'm pale again.