Feb. 27, 2003
Granada, Nicaragua
As you may recall we left El Salvador not in the best of moods. After squeezing onto too many crowded buses (one of which broke down), an uncomfortable night in a sleazy border town and two tedious border crossings we entered Nicaragua looking forward to a break, and to exploring a country we knew very little about.
Like most Americans much of what I knew about Nicaragua came from biased news coverage of the Sandinista revolution twenty years ago, and the “Contra war” that followed. (It has been interesting filling in the gaps from Nicaraguan accounts.) More recently we had heard favorable reports from a handful of travelers who had been to Nicaragua. We hoped we could find some interesting places and that conditions would at least be tolerable. Fortunately Nicaragua has far exceeded our expectations.
Our first stop was Leon, the former capital from the Spanish colonial era until the mid-1800s. Faye was feeling so traumatized by our trip that she broke out her Mastercard and we checked into one of the city’s finer establishments. At $35 it was way over our budget- we try to average about $20 a day for everything. But with such refinements as air conditioning, a decent mattress and hot showers it seemed worth it. The hotel was a remodeled old colonial building with a very nice patio encircling a tropical garden. After getting cleaned up and relaxing a bit we strolled out to explore the city feeling more like rich folks on a vacation than bus-weary backpackers.
Leon has some impressive old cathedrals, including Central America’s largest. Begun in 1747 it took more than one hundred years to complete. In the 70s virtually the entire city resisted the Somoza regime and paid for it dearly. Somoza’s National Guard bombed the city and there is still evidence of that damage. There are numerous murals around town commemorating the war and those who died fighting. But in spite of the damage it wasn’t even close to what we thought we might find in Nicaragua. Most of the damage has been repaired and the town felt peaceful and fairly prosperous.
From Leon we went to Granada on the western shore of huge Lake Nicaragua. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Western Hemisphere, founded in 1524. In the past four centuries Granada has had its share of excitement. Three times in the 17th century Granada was sacked by English and French buccaneers who sailed up the San Juan River from the Caribbean and across Lake Nicaragua. (During the California Gold Rush the Nicaraguan government granted American capitalist Cornelius Vanderbilt a transportation concession to carry forty-niners from the East Coast along a similar route- up the San Juan River, across the lake, then to Rivas, a ways south of Granada. From there they were shuttled across to the Pacific port of San Juan del Sur, just 12 miles or so from Rivas, where Vanderbilt’s ships carried the men to San Francisco.)
In the 1850s Granada was the headquarters for one side of a civil war. The opposition was based in Leon. In a very bad political move the Leon faction hired the American adventurer William Walker to attack Granada. They got more than they bargained for. In 1855 Walker captured the town with a band of 56 mercenaries. He declared himself president and made English the official language of Nicaragua. Walker was a Tennessean and gained support from some Southerners by legalizing slavery and proposing that Nicaragua could be colonized by the Southern slave states.
It is impossible to know how long Walker could have lasted in his quixotic kingdom. He made the other Central American countries nervous by announcing his intention of taking over all of Central America. But his biggest mistake was threatening Vanderbilt’s transportation business. Vanderbilt was making a million dollars a year on the enterprise and Walker wanted it. Vanderbilt helped finance a coalition of Central American forces who finally drove Walker out of Nicaragua in 1857. As Walker left he ordered his men to burn Granada. He left the epitaph “Here stood Granada.”
It was not Walker’s first attempt to get a piece of Latin America– he had declared himself president of Baja California in 1853. Nor was it his last; he led an attack on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua six months after he was driven out of Granada, but was arrested and sent back to the U.S. His last attempt was in 1860, near Trujillo, Honduras. After being defeated he surrendered to some nearby British troops, who he thought would be sympathetic. They weren’t. Walker was turned over to military authorities in Honduras who executed him by firing squad. (We visited his grave in Trujillo a couple years ago.)
Granada is remarkably attractive with wide streets and tidy colonial homes. Ironically I think one reason that is so is most of the buildings were rebuilt after Walker burned the town in 1857, not so long ago for this part of the world.
Within an hour of arriving we were ready to put a down payment on a place. The Nicaraguan government has made foreign ownership and investment attractive, and quite a few of the colonial homes in Granada are being bought by foreigners and fixed up. A lot of the old public buildings and plazas have been restored, as well as a number of magnificent colonial cathedrals. From what we understand most of the work has taken place in the last three or four years.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few years Granada becomes a popular vacation destination. There is plenty to do nearby to keep one busy for a week or two. One morning we trekked to the top of a nearby volcano and looked down into the smoldering crater. Another day we visited a village where artisans specialize in making pottery. There are more than 400 small islands in Lake Nicaragua, most uninhabited, and one can hire a boat to explore them. There are many fancy restaurants (out of our budget) and several very nice hotels in historic buildings– rooms from $35-$75 a night.
For those like us with more time and less money there are quite a few places with decent rooms for $10 or less. Food is reasonably cheap. We found a place that makes great pizza for under $3.
From the beach in Granada we could see the twin peaks of Ometepe, the largest fresh water island in the world. It is formed by two volcanos, one dormant, the other just dozing. After ten days or so in Granada we took a four-hour boat trip over to the island, once again not knowing what to expect. Petroglyphs, pottery and carved stone statues have been found on the island, evidence of habitation going back 3000 years. Today about 35,000 people live there, scattered about in several settlements and a couple of larger towns.
The boat got to the island after dark and we rode in the back of a pickup to the nearby town. It was hard to see much but we could tell that we were passing through a forest of banana trees. The next morning we woke to a mix of domestic and jungle sounds, chickens and wild parrots.
We spent the next several days on a couple of tranquil beaches. The lake is so large it was almost like being on the ocean, but with fresh water. Quite nice. The jungle came down nearly to the water, and at night particularly it sounded pretty exotic with the cries of parrots, the chirps of frogs and other jungle animals and the occasional roar of a howler monkey. (To hear howler monkeys you would think they were the size of gorillas. But they are not much bigger than a cat.)
The two volcanos dominate nearly every view on the island. We spent a couple nights on the lower slopes of one of them at a coffee plantation called Finca Magdalena. During the Sandinista era the landlord was relieved of ownership and the plantation was given to the people that had been working on it. Today 29 families run it cooperatively. They supplement their income by taking in guests at the old hacienda, built more than a hundred years ago. It is pretty basic but the view over to the other volcano is spectacular.
There was definitely a sense of pride in the workers we encountered and they seemed happy (a little too happy when they came traipsing past our door at 5:30 in the morning on their way to their communal breakfast!) If you want to know more about Finca Magdalena their website is http://www.coop-cdc.com.
From the island it was a short hop over to the Pacific Coast, to the fishing village of San Juan del Sur, not far from the Costa Rican border. The village is pretty quiet so far, though it is getting a reputation as a good vacation spot. There were a few yachts in the harbor alongside the fishing boats. It looked like the town was expecting a lot more visitors- a dozen open air restaurant/bars lined the beach, mostly empty. For now the town is busy only on weekends, and when the occasional cruise ship pulls into the harbor. We found no trace of the more than half a million gold prospectors that passed through San Juan in the 1800s on their way to Cornelius Vanderbilt’s ships.
Unfortunately San Juan was quite windy. The place we stayed the first night wasn’t built very well and the wind blew so hard that Faye was afraid it was going to come apart. Lying on the beach one was assured of a rosy glow, if not from sunburn then from sand blasting.
After a few days of that we returned to Granada, where we are now. We plan to head back to Guatemala in a few days. (No chicken buses- we’re taking a luxury bus direct from Managua to Guatemala City!)
The small part of Nicaragua we have explored in the past few weeks in some ways surpasses anywhere else we’ve been in Central America, which is quite a surprise. There are more travelers here than we expected, but nearly all seem to be here for the first time. For now we feel like we’ve discovered something. But I think things are going to change quickly here. Nicaragua seems ready and eager for more visitors. Tourism is becoming a significant part of the economy. For better or worse Nicaragua may become the next Costa Rica.
We’ll spend most of our last month in the little village of San Antonio in Guatemala. We have some catching up to do there.