A Gateway to Hell

Friday morning the newlyweds awoke not quite as well rested as they would have hoped after the incredible events of the preceding day.   

Though the city of Matagalpa was still in the mountains and cooler than the rest of the country, it was still a bit lower elevation than Selva Negra and was a few degrees warmer, and the room became a bit stuffy with the absence of power for the ceiling fan or the air conditioning.  Ryan had opened the window after the power went out, but the air had been fairly still, and furthermore there had been a decent amount of noise out in the streets.  It had sounded like some sort of human whistle occurring at regular intervals throughout the entire night. It almost seemed as if this was some sort of communication between members of a security patrol monitoring the pitch-black streets.  Whatever it was, it didn’t help with getting a sound sleep.

Shortly before dawn, the power kicked back on, and Ryan and Aimee were able to enjoy some cool air conditioning while they gathered their very muddy belongings for the final long distance drive of their trip.   Before checking out, they wandered downstairs for their complimentary breakfast.  The dining room was a simply decorated, brightly colored, modern, semi-formal dining room with a table that could seat about 10.  Two men were already at the table, one of whom was finishing his breakfast and got up to leave as we sat down.  His travelling companion was only about half way done with his breakfast and remained providing some company and conversation.

This man was French but spoke decent English.  He was visiting Nicaragua on business and was looking at coffee farms in which his company was considering investing.  He’d not done much sight-seeing but had visited the same chocolate factory that Ryan and Aimee had just toured.  After a short conversation, he rose to begin his travels of the day, and Ryan and Aimee wished him safe ones.

After breakfast Ryan and Aimee checked out, loaded up their car, and embarked on the three-hour drive to Grenada… 20 hours behind schedule.  As they were leaving, Ryan made sure to email “Chris” from their next guesthouse, to let him know that we were once again on our way, and expected to be there shortly after lunchtime.

The drive took them behind Lago Xolotlán, through the cities of Tipitapa, and Masaya (this time avoiding dirt roads through farms of any sort).   Though most of the days activities were planned in Masaya, they continued through the city so that they could check in and drop off all their luggage.  The trip between the two cities was a short 20-minute drive, so this detour did not take up too much of the day. 

Though the cities were close in proximity, the character of the two were quite different.  Driving through Masaya, the cityscape was crowded, dirty, and without much apparent character to it.  As we reached Grenada however, the streets became narrow corridors walled in by endless rows of contiguous buildings. The only thing that differentiated one building from the next was that each one was painted a different color.  Tan, pastel pink, aqua, baby blue, sea green, chartreuse…  Anywhere you turned the endless walls flew by in a pinwheel of color.  We found our hotel, Miss Margrit’s Guesthouse, pulled our car up as close as we could, and folded in our mirrors, hoping that left room for cars to get by on the street, and knocked on the door.

 

Streets of Grenada

A security guard accompanied by a dog opened the door for us and led us into a small desk in the central courtyard of the building.  Inside we were met by Keely, who checked us in.  While she was taking care of the paper work, we looked around the courtyard.  It had an elaborately patterned tile floor and beautiful gardens, which much to Aimee’s delight were full of turtles. 

A Turtle for Aimee

Courtyard of Miss Margrit's

As Keely went over the details of our stay, a short man in his late thirties, came walking towards us barefoot, in shorts and a tank top.  He introduced himself as Chris in an Australian accent, and said “You must be Ryan and Aimee.  It sounds like you’ve had QUITE the adventure.”  As it turned out Chris was the owner of the building, and had managed much of the rehabilitation.  The building itself was around 500 years old.  As with any of the buildings in Grenada, there were strict rules about how the building could be renovated.  Including that any of the original adobe mud walls had to remain.  Though all of the original walls had plaster walls erected around them, to provide a glimpse into the buildings history, they left a 30 by 30 inch square section of wall uncovered, and put a wooden frame around it, so that visitors could see the original walls that were behind the renovated walls.

Window to History: Original Wall Behind Plastered Wall

Chris escorted Ryan and Aimee up to their room.  They climbed up to the second floor, and continued climbing up a somewhat narrow staircase ending at a door at the level of a what would be the third floor.  When he opened this door, Aimee and Ryan’s mouths dropped in amazement at the beautiful room.  It was very bright and open with high vaulted ceilings, and small terraces that overlooked the rest of the building as well as much of the city of Grenada. 

Hotel Room Overlooking Grenada

The room had a King size bed, which only took up a small fraction of the floor space in the large room. The bathroom, had an attractively tiled custom shower.

Lunchtime View

After briefly freshening up, Aimee and Ryan decided to take a walk to find a quick lunch before heading back to Masaya for their afternoon activities.  They found a quiet café with a terrace overlooking one of Grenada’s streets, and sat and enjoyed what ended up being a very large lunch.

After lunch, they jumped back in the car and drove over to Masaya.  They had debated a few

activities for the day, and had talked to Chris about them as well, but ultimately settled on driving up to Volcán Masaya and then walking through the Artisan Market.  At this point, Ryan and Aimee envisioned these as leisurely time-fillers of some local site seeing.  However, they were greatly underestimating what was going to be one of the most incredible sites of the trip.

This trip was not Ryan’s first in seeing a volcano.  Two years earlier he was able to tour Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii, and also took a helicopter ride over a lava flow.  However, insurance companies and tort laws in the US preclude you from truly getting anywhere close to an active volcano.  In Nicaragua, that is not the case. 

Volcanoes are a large part of Nicaragua’s history, geography, and identity.  Even their flag has a triangle at its center, which is meant to represent a volcano.  Nicaragua has 19 volcanoes, 6 of which have erupted in the last 20 years.  Volcan Masaya is continuously erupting.

Unlike in America, in Nicaragua, you can drive your car all the way up a paved road to the cone of the volcano, park, and walk all of 20 feet to an observation deck where only a 24-inch-high wall separates you from the 2,000 foot (600 meter) deep crater.  The parking lot is so close that there have been a couple times in the past 20 years when cars have been damaged when a few volcanic explosions occurred, sending rocks out of the crater.

When checking into the park, they told us not to stay for more than 5 minutes.  There were also signs at the observation ledge reinforcing that due to the toxic fumes in the air, visitors could not stay long. 

 

View of Volcan Mombacho from Volcan Masaya Visitor Center

Walking up to the deck, the smell of Sulphur was in the air, and plumes if smoke could be seen emanating from the crater beyond.  As Aimee and Ryan walked up to the edge of the stone platform, they could hear a deep, constant roar, like that of a choppy ocean, but much deeper and angrier in tone.  Across the vast chasm in front of them, the wall of the crater on the other side extended down, down, down, and down further.

It was hard to determine exactly how far down they were looking, as there were only a few vague points of reference, but it was clearly several hundreds of feet, if not a couple thousand feet deep. As your eyes reached the bottom of this pit, it looked as if they were staring directly into a gate way to hell. At the bottom was a vast tumultuous ocean of bright red lava sloshing and splashing about almost as if in slow motion.  The vision was mesmerizing and Aimee and Ryan found it almost impossible to pull themselves away after the recommended time limit.

After they got back in there car, they noticed there was a road that went a bit further up one side of the cone.  They decided to follow this up a bit further, and found a small wooden observation deck.

Ryan Standing on the Main Observation Platform

As they pulled over to stop this, they heard some yelling coming from the main observation area they had just left.  They ignored it for a minute, but then it appeared that a person was calling directly to them.  They couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but they thought they heard “Cheles estupidos.”  It seemed he was telling them they didn’t belong up there.  However, after they got back in their car, and drove back down, it didn’t appear that the person was of any position of authority in the park.

After leaving the volcano, Aimee and Ryan went into the town of Masaya to the “Artisan’s Market.”  This was known to be the central place to shop for local handmade items.  Originally, the plan had

been to tour this the evening before, as that night they also had folk music and dancing.  Unfortunately, yesterday’s misadventures got them here a day late.  The market took up an entire city block and was in a building that looked like a short stone fortress.  As they parked, a local came up and offered to watch the car.  He also offered to wash the car as well while we shopped.  Since they were going home in the morning and it was not their car, (though it was in DESPERATE need of washing) they declined his offer for the car wash.

Artisan Market

Inside the walls of the market there were hundreds of stalls of paintings, carvings, leatherwork, t-shirts, furniture, anything and everything you could ever desire to remind you of your trip to Nicaragua.  Shortly after entering, a neatly dressed, well spoken man in his 50s approached them and began talking to them.  He persistently asked what sorts of things we were looking for, and offered to help us find them.  It became obvious that he was trying to act as some sort of guide or broker through the market.  Ryan and Aime did not have anything specific in mind, and were much more interested in leisurely browsing and talking amongst each other, and after 15 minutes or so were finally successful in giving him the hint that while they appreciated his help they were doing fine, and he eventually moved on.

This was the last opportunity to get some souvenirs for home, but the two were quite overwhelmed at how many options they now had to choose from.  Eventually they did finally make some decisions, made their purchase and made their way back out to the car.

Outside, they were surprised to see that their car was now spotlessly clean, with a young fellow toweling off the last few droplets of water.  This was not the fellow that they had talked to earlier, but he asked us to hold on while he went and got the other man. 

When he came back, he asked for $25 in return for washing the car.  Although he had done a fantastic job of washing it, Ryan had specifically told him not to.  Additionally, Ryan had very little cash left in his wallet.  He negotiated for a few minutes with the man in Spanish, and ultimately told him, “I only have $7 in my wallet. “  He pulled the $7 out and gave it to him, and showed him that the wallet was in fact now empty.  They man hesitated not quite sure where to go, but wanting to persist.  His friend that had been toweling the car dry looked at the wallet, and looked at his friend and laughed at him, realizing there wasn’t much more he could argue.  At this, he begrudgingly accepted it and thanked us.

Catedral de Grenada

Now that their shopping was complete, Ryan and Aimee headed back to Grenada, where they pulled there car into the courtyard of the building for the evening, cleaned up, and decided to take a walk from the hotel down towards the lake-front where the night-life area was.  This town had a very different feel to it than any of the other towns.  There were a lot of Americans in the area.  There were also a lot of art galleries, that seemed to be owned by and catering to Americans.  The prices also looked a lot more American.  Here there were items for sale similar to what they saw in shops elsewhere, but for 5 to 10 times the price.   On the one side, the city had a neat artsy vibe to it, however on the other hand, it lost a lot of the authentic Nicaraguan feel that much of the rest of the country had.   

Once they passed the Parque Central, there were many historic colonial looking buildings, and the

vibe in the streets began to feel like any of the many nightlife districts in the US.  Music emanating from many storefront bars and restaurants, tipsy patrons wandering down the street with the characteristic wobble of twenty somethings enjoying the transition in life where they still want to stay up and party all night, have a little bit of money to do so, and not many responsibilities to keep them from indulging.

Iglesia de Guadalupe

After a trip full of very cultural experiences, and dining in some pretty local establishments, Aimee and Ryan were somewhat luke warm to this stretch of bars and drinkers that looked like it was simply transplanted from any US city, and dropped into Nicaragua.  Nonetheless, they continued to look to find a place to sit and eat dinner, and enjoy a few drinks in their final night in the town.  Every restaurant they walked past had someone outside who would put a menu in their face and try to get them to come in and eat.  After refusing all these solicitations, and checking out the entire area, they went back, selected one, and sat down.

It wasn’t long after sitting there that they noticed a man in his early to mid-sixties alone at the table next to them.  He seemed to be a bit of a reformed hippy, and had already had several drinks in the evening.  A few times a group of tween-aged boys came by and talked to him, and then went away and came back.  This seemed a bit unusual, and Aimee and Ryan started to pay a bit more attention.  He seemed to be taking on a bit of a condescending fatherly tone with them, and seemed to be more familiar with them than having just had met them this evening. 

Ryan fairly quickly sensed that the man was likely a talker, was a bit drunk, and was also likely to be obnoxious and overbearing in his conversation and opinions.  Several times it seemed the older gentleman was trying to either insert himself in Ryan and Aimee’s conversation, or pull Ryan and Aimee into a discussion about things going on around them.  This was done with the occasional out-loud thought, stated clearly enough for us to hear, and somewhat projected in their direction.  Ryan tried not to take the bait as long as possible, but at one point, the man asked a direct question and conversation was unavoidable.

The man was friendly enough, but it didn’t take long for him to prove Ryan’s intuition right.  He had been in the area for a couple months, and was essentially retired and permanently travelling.  He frequented the area, and did know the boys that were wandering the streets, selling small bracelets to the tourists.  The man went on and on about his travels, about his home in Vegas, about his marijuana grow operation (though he said he was licensed), and several other topics.

At one point the man began to talk about a recent visit to Cuba and how great Cuba is and recommended we visit.  He then went on to say how great the country is because it still has this vintage feel to it with all the old cars on the streets, and how great it was that the government price controls on goods in the country meant that you could buy a rack of lamb for as much as you could a chicken dinner.

Ryan immediately drew a comparison to a recent interview he had heard with one of the Kardashian’s who made very similar comments about visiting Cuba.  He was somewhat taken aback at the naïve wonder that this man (and the Kardashian girl) held for a country that hadn’t been able to progress past the 50s/60s because of the oppressive government that has been in power there.  And that while he was reveling in the fact that government price controls on the price of meat, meant that the farmer that raised and butchered the more costly animal, got paid the same as the farmer that raised the less costly meat, even though he had to work much harder for every pound he sold.  To Ryan, this didn’t sound like the greatest deal to the workers who were getting paid less for their work, due to these price controls that gave this relatively wealthy man (as compared to the common Cuban) the nicer meal for the cheaper price.

After a decent dinner, a few drinks, and a conversation that while pleasant, certainly wasn’t their favorite from the trip, Ryan and Aimee walked back to their hotel, for their final night’s rest in Nicaragua.