July 12 – Granada, Nicaragua

We’re several days and several countries from where I last wrote. So let’s catch up a bit.

We left Antigua Saturday morning after breakfast to drive to Volcán Pacaya. I looked at our Guatemala map and found a road that appeared to be a somewhat straight shot to the volcano, so I navigated us onto that road. A couple of kilometers out, we passed through a little town and then the road turned into a dirt road. We asked a couple of kids and they said we were on the right road, so we continued. It wasn’t the first time that a road on a map turn out to be, or turned into, a dirt road. Now something you should Central America, and it’s a shame really, is that they are several years behind on their concepts of trash collection and disposal. As often as not, it gets dumped somewhere near town and set a blaze. Cliffs and canyons are great things to throw garbage from, I guess because you don’t have to see it. But really, you can pretty much dump your trash wherever you want. So a few kilometers past town, as we snake through the mountains and basically hug the side of a volcano, the road passes several little garbage dumps, and for a little while, is pretty much composed of garbage. So after driving across the trash highway, we pass under the actual highway (which we want to be on) and end up in a crappy little town and several wrong turns later, we’re on the highway. We turn off a couple of kilometers later and head up to Pacaya.

After paying our park fees we parked at the base of the hiking trail. Passing on the disgusting looking options for lunch there, we ended up making chicken salad in a can and eating it on some of our last wheat thins that we’d brought from the States. Six stray dogs, including a cute but aggressive little pup wanted a piece of out lunch. A couple of them got some chicken juice poured on their heads when we were draining the cans. While we were eating, about 20 yards away from the car, some little punk kid managed to break the little quarter window on our car. Jackass! The window was still being held together, mostly by the tint, but it was destroyed. But nothing we could do about it. We got the “ranger” to find us a guide for the hike, and asked the “ranger” quite nicely to keep an eye on our now-vulnerable car. The hike up started out as a forested trail for the first kilometer or so. It was steep but pretty easy climbing, although the altitude made it more difficult. After a little while, we got to the edge of the wooded area and looked up at the great black cone ahead of us. The top of the volcano was nice and cone-shaped and was billowing smoke, just as you might hope a volcano would look. We took a bunch of pictures, and then our guide asked if we wanted to continue up and see lava. Of course we did. Pacaya actually had three different cones: the top one was smoking and was not climbable, the second lower down was a difficult 45 climb up and had lava, the third was an easy hike up and apparently was somewhat warm or something. We hiked up the second. The footing was loose volcanic rocks, some of which were just hours old. Every two steps forward was followed by the proverbial one step back. We made it to the top of the second cone and marveled as we saw lava oozing slowly from the earth’s surface just meters away. Our guide scrambled over some rocks and found us a sight that no one else on the volcano was finding that day. He scurried back and led us along to an area where there were two large streams of lava slowing from the earth. The heat given off felt as if we were standing too close to a campfire and our feet got too hot if we stood for two long on some of the warmer rocks. We watched the top of the lava cool first and then fold over as the bottom continued to flow. We were basically watching new rocks being formed before our very eyes. I’ve done a decent bit of traveling, but this was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

The descent was even more difficult than the ascent. We had to climb down backwards at times as if working our way down a ladder: a hot, sharp, crumbly ladder. We both slipped several times, but I managed a pretty decent fall that ripped my sock and my ankle underneath. We passed several pour souls who had booked the organized afternoon trip out of Antigua who would only scale the third cone. I can’t imagine getting 90% of the way up an active volcano and not seeing lava! They were settling for a marshmallow toasted over a warm rock. When we got to the bottom, we thanked our guide and gave him a great tip. He had been so patient and informative and had clearly given us the best tour of the volcano that anyone was getting that day.

We drove the rest of the way down the mountain and onto the highway into Guatemala City. By this time it was fairly dark. We’d pretty well avoided driving at night through Mexico and Central America because it’s about 10x as dangerous as driving at night. In Central America the roads are not just for cars. People walk, ride horses, herd cattle, bicycle, conduct business, lie down, etc., etc. in the roadways. Furthermore wild animals and stray dogs wandered out into the streets and often had no motivation to get out of the way. Literal highway robberies are more prevalent at night as well. The road into Guatemala however was a four lane divided highway, and we were only about 40 minutes outside of the city. We didn’t figure it would be too bad, and frankly, we didn’t have too much of a choice. Another obstacle we learned about is that many cars have no lights: no headlights, no taillights, no brake lights, and sometimes no reflectors even. Apparently some cars drive without their lights on because the drivers believe it allows them to see other cars better. We managed not to hit any of them, navigated the city without too much of a problem (considering we still didn’t have a map) and ended up at a clean, quiet, and cheap (although utterly un-charming) hotel in the one safe area of town. After settling in, we went out to find dinner. We had to walk by several clubs and bars toward our chosen restaurants and we both got some interested stares. We were the only gringos we saw in the area. After failing to find the tapas restaurant (Guatemala City Fail #6), we ended up at a popular Mexican place and had some decent tacos.

The next morning we found the Wimbeldon final on ESPN. Several hours later, when Federer had finally bested Roddick, we left the hotel to go to laundry. We walked the two blocks to the laundry listed in the guidebook. It wasn’t there (Fail #7). We got the car and drove to another lavandaría. Closed (Fail #8). Apparently nearly everything closes in Guatemala City on Sundays. We drove toward a restaurant that we couldn’t find (Fail #9) and ened up dead-ending in a crappy neighborhood that was bordered by a giant canyon… in the middle of the city (Fail #10). We got ourselves out of there, found what we thought was an open lavandaría, but apparently it was only literally open (the door) they were not open for business (Fail #11). Back in the car we were trying to get to our hotel when we found out where everyone was: the mall. So we parked (took 20 minutes, the lot was packed) and headed to the (joy of joys) food court for lunch. After a half-decent bagel sandwich, we headed across the mall to the multiplex to try to see Up. Unfortunately, Up was only dubbed, not subtitled. We could see Ice Age 3, Transformers, or Hannah Montana the Movie with subtitles, but Up was only dubbed (Fail #12). So we got some gelato (this was a really nice mall) and saw a man reading the Sunday NY Times… although it was in Spanish. We thought the Sunday Times, or any English newspaper would cheer us up. So we headed to the bookstore. No newspapers. (Fail # 13). Finally we left the mall. After we regrouped at the hotel for a while, Janet went and found another bookstore (still no newspapers). Fortunately, they had the English Lonely Planet guidebook for El Salvador & Nicaragua, two countries for which we didn’t have a guidebook. I’m not exactly sure what we planned on doing, but that was a good find (Success #2). We called Amazing Andy and left him a message about the broken window. We then got back in the car to go grocery shopping at the Walmart, for which we had the address. It wasn’t there (Fail #14). We drove across town to the Hiper País (sorta like a Super Walmart… and possibly owned by Walmart) and stocked up on groceries. We got back to the hotel in time to cook dinner and catch the last half of Sunday Night baseball on ESPN… which meant seeing my Rays (Unfortunately, it was the third game of a 3 game sweep by the Rangers).

Monday morning we headed back to Amazing Andy’s shop and found it with minimal wrong turns. Andy drove us the Embassy and took the car to get the rotors re-ground and to replace the brake pads. After waiting around the typical amount of time one might expect to wait at an embassy (even when arriving within 15 minutes of them opening at 8 AM), I had 20-some new pages ghetto-taped into my passport. We took a cab back to Andy’s, and the brakes were all fixed. We paid him the less than $100 (most of it parts, only about $13 labor, and he gave us the address and directions to the place to replace the window. We thanked him for all he had helped us with and we gave him a bottle of wine we had gotten for him. Andy invited us back to his farm when on our return trip… hopefully we’ll be able to take him up on that offer.

At the glass place, after a brief lost-in-translation moment when I could not understand that the girl just wanted my name for the receipt (she was very confusing and had a thick accent), they got to work replacing the window while we picnicked in the office. Half an hour and $15 bucks later, we were on the road, headed to El Salvador. Again, after only a handful of wrong turns, we saw the sign that pointed to El Salvador and took that route. A couple hours later at the border, we started jumping through the border-crossing hoops. El Salvador really wanted a description of our car, including: VIN, make, model, year, # of seats, # of doors, # of cylinders, type of fuel, and my favorite: engine displacement. I have no idea the engine displacement, couldn’t find it in the manual, so I made it up. The CRV is now a 3.6 litre! Crazy enough, it cost us absolutely nothing to cross into El Salvador and we were remiss to learn that they would not be stamping our passports. There is an agreement among Guate, Salvador, Honduras, and Nica that allows free flow of people between the countries, so that apparently means fewer passport stamps (though not less paperwork). With no map of our new country, we stopped in a small town and started asking at gas stations. The Shell was sold out; the Texaco (pronounced tex- ACK- o) didn’t have any… but they pointed us to an auto-repair shop across the street. The jovial owner of that shop welcomed me warmly and said he should be able to find a map. He made a call and then said we needed to go into town. I told him our car was too cluttered to fit him in, so he drove me in his Jeep. As it turns out, his wife worked at a travel agency in town and that’s where he took me. They were such a cute and sweet couple and surprisingly, she spoke perfect English. We had a wonderful Spanglish conversation about El Salvador and New York (the man had been to Albany to buy school buses to import to Salvador) and she gave me a touristy map that I thought would be no help for driving. As It turns out, Salvador is such a small country, the crappy little map worked just fine. We drove a little ways more down the Route of the Flowers to a gorgeous little place with perfectly outfitted cabins. There were interesting insects and birds galore and we made dinner on our little porch as it began to pour. We ate dinner, drank wine, and watched the lightning before turning in for the night.

The next morning, after lazing about a bit, we headed down toward the coast. We debated where to stay but really wanted to end up camping that night, since we hadn’t camped in almost two weeks. We ended up driving toward a little town on a thin peninsula of land between the Pacific Ocean and a small bay. Most of the road was dirt, and much of that in a sad state of repair. We somehow missed the town and just kept driving down the dirt road until we ran out of road. We knew we weren’t too far from the ocean, so we took a right down a path and headed toward it. The path thinned and thinned until it was completely blocked by brush. We turned off the path until we couldn’t go any further, and then I got out and stood on the roof of the car looking to see if I could see the beach. See, no; hear, yes. We decided to clear some brush and head for the water. After scratching past a few more trees, we hit a clearing and drove out onto the sand. We were miles from the nearest town and figured it would be a good place to camp; it was pretty much night by this time anyway.

There was about half a hut constructed on the beach out of sticks and palm fronds that we decided to refit with our tarp to create a covered area. We pitched Janet’s little hiking tent (almost all mesh) under the tarp and then started prepping dinner. As we prepped, an odd man walked up and we had a disjointed conversation about the area. He smoked a cigarette and generally hung around awkwardly long before wandering down the beach without saying anything else. Odd fellow. We continued prepping dinner (stir-fry… there were a lot of veggies to cut) when two young guys rode up on their little horses. We were starting to get hungry now and hoped this would be a quick interference. We were wrong. One of the boys was drunk and wanted to chat… which was quite difficult because he spoke the kind of Spanish even a native would have trouble understanding. It was the equivalent of a really, really heavy hick accent in English… except in Spanish… and slurred through the drink. He chatted for a long time. He asked if we had batteries for his walkman. We gave him batteries. He chatted some more. He offered me a ride on his horse. Several times. I politely refused. He told me how pour they were. He asked for money. I gave him $20 (they use the dollar in El Salvador). He thanked me and eventually he left. The boys rode down the beach a bit and then came back. He wouldn’t leave. He asked for more money. I explained we needed the last of our money for gas. He asked for food. I explained that we only had enough for the two of us. Eventually I gave them a bottle of water and told him my wife and I wanted to be alone. They finally left. This was almost an hour-long meeting and by now we were starving.

We cooked the stir fry, which turned out to be delicious and watched the full moon over the water. More people came by on their horses. This was the least-deserted deserted beach ever. Neither of us slept well because it was stifling hot in the tent and because we were sleeping on lumpy sand. Since Salvador doesn’t abide by the whole daylight savings time thing, the sun came up at 5 AM… and so did we. After oatmeal and coffee, we packed up our sandy, messy stuff and headed back to the main road. Our plan was to find a nice little beach town near the Honduras border, stay the night, and head through Honduras in the morning. After scouring the guidebook, we found nothing that suited our collective fancy, so we decided to hell with it, let’s drive to Nica! We stopped in a small city called San Miguel to find an internet café to make sure it was still reasonable to drive across Honduras. After several failed attempts to find open internet cafes, we went with the old standby of driving slowly and refreshing the wireless networks page until we found and open network… and it worked: Pollo Campestre (Central American KFC). We sat in the parking lot reading the news on Honduras (Good! The two sides were in talks in Costa Rica and there were no protests!) and then grabbed some fried chicken (but from Pollo Campestre’s competitor: Pollo Campero. FYI, in English these places are the Amenable Chicken and the Country Chicken) and headed for the border. A couple miles from the border, we straightened ourselves out at a rest stop. We were filthy and stinky and tired. We brushed teeth, changed into dirty but nicer clothes, applied makeup (one of us) and chewed some dentyne/sucked on some altoids. Then we drove to the border.

And then the fun began...

(...to be continued)