Bending Tree Arts

brief pause to acknowledge other realities

By Betsy | Published: February 7, 2010

Reading over this hedonistic little journal, I feel compelled to say that Bob and I do also maintain some awareness of the outside world. We´re moved and appalled by the desperate plight of Haiti (the banks here have collection boxes, gathering contributions from the Nicaraguan people). There´s also a dire drought taking place in some of Nicaragua´s central-eastern regions, with already marginal inhabitants stressed to the breaking point.

I don´t know how to mingle these different consciousnesses in a travel blog (Super Bowl ads jingling in the background as I type this) but I´ve been bothered by the self-involvement of my notes. How to respond, as one small citizen of a crowded world… we chew on this as we careen through days in a very foreign place.

It´s all about the Super Bowl

By Betsy | Published: February 7, 2010

I mean, if we were back on Waldron, Bob might still get the chance to watch the game at someone´s house, but it wouldn´t be poolside in the banana tree breezes. But there he is, over in the shade with a half-dozen other mesmerized souls, happily watching the starting lineup (with Amer¡can network commentary), and explaining the rules of American football to a few Aussies. They´ll all be hypnotized for hours.

This hostal has a cooler full of beer and sodas, and you have only to walk over and take whatever you want, adding the drink to your room tab. It´s been a lazy day for us, mostly just reading and hanging out. I did go back to the main market, buying some local honey and cocoa beans and a white lace vendors´apron, and some fresh tortillas for a late night snack. I also bought a fruit which looks like a hairless kiwi on the outside, and tastes like caramelized figs on the inside.

Sometimes the downtimes are really nice: trading books with other guests, tumbling in and out of the swimming pool, lazily contemplating all the cultural adventures we´ll dive back into tomorrow. A young woman floating on an air mattress next to me in the pool turns out to know my daughter Sarah, because they both work in the Willamette Valley wine community. Another guest teaches me how to make Skype phone calls, and the world gets even smaller.

Dipping below the surface…

By Betsy | Published: February 6, 2010

…of the culture, that is. The toughest part about being tourists is the way in which we´re set apart. Skimming around like waterbugs on a pond, unable to dive into the whole world unfolding beneath us.

This morning, helping Doña Ana stir the pot of Indio Viejo ( a fragrant local stew which we helped prepare in her outdoor kitchen), I felt a tiny bit closer to normal life here. After visiting the intense fresh market behind the cathedral with three fellow travellers, and locating all the ingredients on our shopping list, we were herded by our local guide onto one of the trucks which serve as in-city buses. For 15 cents, you´re hustled up into the tarp-covered truck bed, where you hang onto bars for dear life as the truck whips around corners and lurches to frequent stops in order to load more people than you ever believed possible.

After six blocks´walk from the bus “remember to stay on the shady side of the street,” we sat in the shade of Doña Ana´s modest garden and caught our breath with cold beers and colas. Then we trekked off along the unpaved roads for a few more blocks to the local tortilleria. It turned out to simply be someone´s back yard, where a larger outdoor kitchen was set up. Four or five wood fires burned, heating various bubbling pots and hissing griddles. It was shadowed and smoky and so unbelievably hot that we simply stopped noticing the sweat running down our bodies.

The patient tortilla makers paused in their patterns of slapping and pounding, and taught us laughingly how to form a decent tortilla. Then they fixed our results, and set them to toast on one of the hot surfaces. They told us they get up each morning at 4 am to start work, and produce about 2000 hand-shaped tortillas each day. Apparently they have a contract to supply the local hospital, along with who-knows-how-many other venues. Men sat in chairs nearby, watching the activity.

I spotted some kids, middle-school age, copying Winnie the Pooh drawings from their notebook covers onto some paper, so I sat down with them and drew a few little doodles for them on my own notebook. Kids and adults were mesmerized — whether by my drawings or by the sheer weirdness of my doing such a thing — and they seemed truly pleased. They asked for other drawings, asked me to sign them and tried to pronounce my name. It was such fun, so many smiles, a moment free from language and tourism and separateness.

We trundled our tortillas back to Doña Ana´s, and hung out with her, trying to be helpful while she cooked. She wasn´t entirely thrilled by the peppers we´d brought, because she warned us they´d be too spicy, but they were OK in the end. I have the recipe, and can probably reproduce it at home, except for one particular spice called Achiote. I´m going to try to pack some achiote home in my checked luggage, along with (Hi, Winnie) cocoa beans to share. I have no idea what Miami Airport´s Homeland Security will consider to be a threat, but it´s worth a try.

After a while we sat down with Doña Ana and we all ate, while her husband and son continued with their project of making crocodile stew. Mercifully, that hadn´t cooked long enough to taste while we were there, but we did take photos of the croc´s head with the jaws propped open with a stick. After lunch, Ana´s husband took us proudly around his yard and showed us all his fruit trees — most of which have names I´ve already forgotten. He had one each of maybe a dozen kinds of trees, some with fruit nearly ripe and others dormant in this dry season.

After the amazing lunch (with some packed up in plastic bags to bring back to Bob and one other absent partner), we took another wild back-of-truck ride and ended up near our hostel. It was a warming experience in every way, one small chance to connect with people without quite as many filters in the way. Bob having completed his morning errands (laundry, bank, another pair of sandals to replace the ones he wrecked while motorcycle riding) we settled in for a lazy poolside afternoon of chatting and daydreaming. An iguana sat silhouetted on the roofline of the hostal, watching the swimmers. Ah, vacation!

Posted in 2010 blog posts, Nicaragua trip | Tagged Indio viejo, Leon Nicaragua | Leave a comment

Feeling like rocks in a tumbler

By Betsy | Published: February 5, 2010

Weary after a long long day´s travel… the motorcycle and the ferry boat, the two buses and the taxi, underway for so many hours we fell into a kind of exhausted trance. So much to tell: the hike yesterday part-way up one of Ometepe´s volcanoes to a delicate waterfall; the day before, hiking through a different island forest, seeing a whole family of howler monkeys in the trees above us and stopping to watch them, the strangeness of these almost-human creatures moving freely in their natural world. We swam and swam for the last several days in fresh-water surf, a dreamlike experience, and the constant lake winds swept our minds clear. Ometepe is slow and has the feel of an island, lots of horses and cows on the roads, and the twin volcanoes always in sight.

Today´s travel began on the motorcycle at the windy lake beach, and ended half a country away on a candlelit terrace drinking white wine and lemon daiquiris. We´ve come back to Leon, to sink into this city we´ve become so fond of, and really get to know it. Tomorrow morning I´m going out to a cooking class given by a local woman in her house, traditional wood-fired oven and all. Bob may deal with laundry, (which usually just means sending it out) but will also be able to hang out in the swimming pool here at the hostel all morning if he wants. We´re due for a restful day or two, after the intense volcano hike and the marathon travel day.

We´re so glad for the chance to be here, and Nicaragua is soaking in through all our pores, the dusty roads and smoke, the cows and buses and murals and music, the lush green banana trees, the volcanoes always at the horizon.

Posted in 2010 blog posts, Nicaragua trip | Tagged Nicaragua travel, Ometepe | Leave a comment

Sunburned knees

By Betsy | Published: February 1, 2010

That´s what happens when you ride a motorcycle in shorts. Actually, a motorcycle is what it should have been, but Bob chose instead to rent a motor-scooter (thinking of my comfort as the passenger, and not having seen anything but pavement). The roads here on Ometepe are paved in parts, but mostly not, and in the unpaved sections they´re far worse than any Waldron road. The poor scooter made some bone-crunching contact with various ruts and cobbles, but we had a blast anyhow and managed to return it in one piece. When we rent another, it´ll be a regular motorcycle for sure.

Motorcycles are a pretty practical way to get around Ometepe, which is the largest island in fresh water in the world. About 30,000 people live here, ringed in small communities and fincas around the two volcanoes which make up the island´s twin centers. Ometepe just got electricity last year, and so services are few and far between. Buses run a couple times a day, moving so slowly that a ride across the island can take three hours or more on the bus. Taxis are also rare, and can cost $40 US to get across. Which is probably not unreasonable, considering the toll these roads would take on any wheeled vehicle.

We stopped today for a swim in a tropical grotto, where a spring is caught in a shaded pool before it spills over the far end and forms a little river. It´s called Ojo de Agua (“Eye of Water”), and it´s almost disgracefully picture-perfect, with parrots flying overhead and the trees alive with birdcalls. A few tables and chairs have been set under the lush greenery at the sides, and a little snack bar offers light meals and drinks. It might be the coolest body of water in Nicaragua, since it comes right out of the ground and hasn´t been touched by the endless heat. Although to be fair, Ometepe is cooler and fresher than the cities were. The lake is so huge that you can´t even see anything on the horizon — it´s like an ocean — and there is always a breeze.

It´s interesting to figure out how to penetrate into the farther reaches of the island. We decided to start out in the little port town of Moyogalpa, staying for two nights at a quirky but comfortable hotel run by an ex-pat American and his Italian wife. He´s a wealth of information, with an endless appetite for hanging out on the front step chain-smoking and chatting with his guests. This island is more touristy than most places in Nicaragua, but still so rough-edged that all but the most intrepid tourists would be discouraged. The vast majority of non-local visitors have sunbleached dreadlocks and sturdy twenty-five-year-old legs, and they come to hike up the volcanoes or work on the organic farms. Bob and I poked our heads into the hostel which is the center of their activity, and felt an odd tug from both the familiarity of the vibe and the realization of how out-of-place we would be there, now. It´s a dim warren of rainbows and beads and incense and reggae music … the sixties do still live on, in a few out of the way places.

Actually, one of the other places where we felt that old surge of brilliant-colored sixties energy was back in the city of Granada, two nights ago before we came down here. On Saturday night in Granada was a festival of street artists and musicians from all over Central America. It was entitled “Berrinche Ambiental”, which means something like “Environmental Tantrum”, and it was a passionate multi-media expression of Nicaragua´s need to protect its beautiful land. Children and teenagers and older people were clapping and singing along, and there were huge puppets and brilliantly painted-up dancers acting out all sorts of theatre pieces. We wore out after 4 hours or so, but it went on and on into the night, and it was good to be a part of.

Today on our travels, we came to the beach on the isthmus which separates the two round volcanic island halves from each other. It´s on the windward side, so the waves looked like they belonged on an ocean; still, charmed by the abundance of palm trees and flowers, we put a deposit down for tomorrow night on a little cabaña at the water´s edge.

Our internet access will vary in coming days, since we´ll be away from the only real town on the island. But we´re taking tons of photos, and trying hard to store up everything in our memories as well.

Posted in 2010 blog posts | 2 Comments