Lodge Porch: Nicaragua in Seven Days: Part I

I. 21 years later

In 1987 author Salmon Rushdie was invited by Nicaragua's Sandinista government to witness and document the rapidly evolving events of that country rebuilding under world scrutiny and U.S covert attack. Over a heated two week period Rushdie observed what would become his book the "The Jaguar Smile", the intimate dispatch on the Sandinista mass rallies for the party's poet-politicians, the distribution of property to the poor, and the overall heady atmosphere of a country emerging from civil war.

I re-read the book on the plane down to Managua at the beginning of my own express highlight tour of Nicaragua. Twenty one years later the country is enjoying a surge in tourism and the mountains are producing some of the world's best coffee, not rocket fights. It's clearly a different place from the Nicaragua in Rushdie's account, but there is one featured character from the book still around. President Daniel Ortega.

We met him soon after leaving the airport.

Driving down the main highway that runs next to Lake Managua is a punishing experience by any standards of inner city driving. The shooting gallery of cell phone case vendors and pre-Giuliani era windshield washers clog a thoroughfare that lacks street signs entirely, but is abundant with political ads - for one person.

Standing above the chaos in advertisement gloss is a tired looking re-elected President Ortega raising his right fist hoping to remind all of us below how inspiring he was. In Rushdie's book he captivated crowds with fellow poet Ernesto Cardenal and took the U.S government to court. Today along the highway his image competes with signs for Flor De Cana run and a new gated community by the beach.

The revolution lives on.

II. Volcanoes and Below

Nicaragua’s landscape appears at times science fictional, almost Jurassic. Nicaragua is the least populated country in Latin America and most of the countryside is characterized by small farms and ranches (almost 50 percent of the country is entirely undeveloped on the Atlantic, a fact that requires another discussion). This lack of population and infrastructure set an expansive stage for the country’s most dramatic features, the towering volcanoes - some smoldering, some sleeping, all of them commanding the skyline. At anytime you would not be shocked to see a pterodactyl circling above the rims.

The most exceptional showcase of these fantastic cones is Isla de Ometepe. It is, as tourist literature contends, the “Eight Wonder of the World”.

The barbell shaped island sits 16 miles in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the majestic “sweet water” sea, and still a habitat to some freshwater sharks. The hour-long approach on a two-of-everything-arc/ferry has the feel of time travel, or for we of the post-Spielberg generation, an entrance to a wildlife park for recently reanimated reptiles.

Twin four thousand foot volcanoes rise from the horizon. Skirting their slopes are blankets of rain forest and farmland rolling down towards the water. Concepción in the north “bell” is the taller of the two peaks and is the paradigm of a volcano in its form. The one paved road on the island circumnavigates the scant level ground between the volcano and the lake. As you head inland the island quickly ascends through banana plantations and above them an emerald hem of rain forest. This ring of green suddenly gives way to the treeless gray skin of the cone that shoots to the sky and tapers finally into a perfectly intact rim thousands of feet above. Concepción is active and when clouds are not covering the peak, smoke can be seen creeping out the cone.

Volcan Maderas on the southern and less developed "bell" of the island is reached by driving over a comically difficult road over the isthmus. The road does not improve, but as a reward it cuts along the eastern coast where a constant west-bound breeze from the Atlantic gives the place a refreshing Caribbean feel.

Maderas is dormant and completely shrouded in rain forest. There are a few trailheads, but the classic starting point is from Finca Magdalena. The farm has been around for decades and evolved into a spartan hostel for backpackers on their way up the trail. The feel of the finca is that of a commune and outpost of self-reliance. The farm grows staple crops and coffee and was a durable oasis like the rest of island during the Civil War in the ‘80s.

Backpackers sit around tables in the open dinning room, speaking several languages as they pour over maps, trip itineraries and freshly found world knowledge. Out from the veranda are sweeping views of the lake. The farm exists as an inspiring intersection of community, wilderness and history. The walls are covered with maps of the island and articles and posters proclaiming the danger of water privatization. The caretakers chat and busy themselves behind a slatted partition, cooking the next meal or managing any of the quotidian tasks required to work a farm and lodge. The finca is a few hundred feet above the lake and the main buildings have a well worn but airy expansiveness with their breezy communal rooms and swinging hammocks, all of it a tableau of elegant Bolshevism.

The trail begins past the hanging laundry. There is a fancy new ranger station that sits empty and tucked away near the path. The entrance to the trail is a wooden gate constructed out of branches that forces you to turn sideways in order to slip through. It is the first of a few filters that seem to be designed to restrict the obese from attempting the climb.

The beginning portion of the trail is mild and passes the working fields of the farm. Corn and beans grow from swidden black fields. Although informal fencing outlines the clearing, the cultivation seems to blend into the wooded surroundings. The trail picks up pace and a few hundred feet higher coffee trees appear. They are tall robust trees filled with green fruit. This Arabica is the epitome of shade grown. There is a nursery with baby plants off to the side in a clearing, the only indication that what we see bearing fruit is not growing wild. A contrast to the linear rows of coffee production in Costa Rica or Guatemala, the coffee grown here flourishes haphazardly along the slope within the rain forest.

Rain forests are at once both beautiful and dismal. Their beauty is usually obvious. They are homes to towering trees of all types, sensational flowers, and birds and mammals one thinks only exist in books or zoos. Walking through a healthy rain forest is like entering into a heavy scented, muddy biology textbook. The student can see all the lessons and models of cohabitation and survival of the fittest right in front of her eyes. This teeming abundance of diversity and carbon mass in general is also what makes a rain forest dark, threatening and at a certain time of day, cacophonous – all of it sensory overload.

The main culprits for the noise are the monkeys. The forest is haunted by the grunts of howler monkeys. The simians are the size of Labrador retrievers, but not as well behaved. You can hear them more then you can see them as they spend most of their time yelling at one another or crashing through the foliage. They are dark brown with some light coloring around their masks. Not surprisingly, one way to pick them out of the brush is to notice the male’s light colored testicles hanging predominantly from a branch. There is a loveable and lazy menace to these beasts.

As the trail continues uphill the coffee and palms fade away and the air cools a bit. Despite a desire to look out at this higher elevation, the forest is even thicker and claustrophobic. It is midday but it is perpetually dusk under the canopy. Your eyes fall to the muddy trail below, which hosts a different community - one reigned by ants.

Ants in the tropics are ambitious and control more real estate than their northern cousins. Spend anytime leaning against a tree and soon you will feel the burn of a red bullet ant. I have yet to meet a mellow ant in the tropics. Their aggression must be in part due to the large territory they protect; huge dirt castles several feet tall. These are the homes of leaf cutter ants, hearty critters that saw off cellulose and haul it underground where it will then ferment into nourishment. The teamsters of the ant world, they demonstrate all those fantastic ratios of body mass to carrying capacity you never really believed.

There is a lake at the top of this trail in the crater of the Volcan Maderas. We never saw it. Hiking in the mud at a steep pitch takes time and we needed to catch a ferry. What we did see along the trail besides the incredible species, both plant and animal and the view of Concepción through a portal in the growth (almost worth it all), were two artifacts of Isla de Ometepe’s past.

The first and maybe the oldest was a volcanic boulder, a pocked like meteor sitting alone in a field. Perhaps it had been shot in the air and had landed with thud here, hissing against the wet ground. The soil beneath it is jet black.

The field behind the boulder and all the fields on the island are boastfully fertile and productive. The farm is safe under the dormant Maderas, but Concepción still poses a threat.
Despite a recent explosion few people have left. Along the trail just above the farm is a petroglyph on another ancient stone that dates back from before Columbus.