NerVan-Ah! Nerys and Ivan take off on an Adventure

Ah Nicaragua! I have always wanted to go here, ever since listening to Billy Bragg's song, Nicaragua, Nicaraguita. And the country did not disappoint.

I fell in love with the people, its history, the stunning beauty of Nicaragua's countryside and the revolutionary ideals so many fought and died for. To think that in my last year of high school, while I was deciding which university to attend, Nicaraguans my age were veterans of a war that didn't "end" until 1989. Here's Bruce Cockburn's song that he wrote while visiting during the 80s, Nicaragua - the song for this week's blog.

Hard not to love a country that began its revolution fighting American marines and interference with a band of only 30 revolutionaries, especially now as a new age of American Imperialism is upon us.

But more on that later, when we get to Leon. Let's take this love story in order, shall we?

1. Somoto Canyon

Crossing from Honduras to Nicaragua was like crossing from Quebec Highway 105 to a newly paved 417. Night and day.

After the chaos of the Honduran border, we decided to stop at the nearest overnight camping area, Finca La Huerta, a small farm inside the National Somoto Canyon Park. The enterprise was run by Claudia and her family (though it was clear it was Claudia who really ran the show - not even her husband was allowed to take our money without her knowledge).

During the day, buses would come and go with tourists to take them on the magical canyon tours, but at night we had the place almost to ourselves - if you don't count Claudia's five dogs, three cats, her cow, its always-lowing calf (she was in the process of being separated from her mom, so wasn't a happy calf), and at least half a dozen roosters being reared for coq fighting. All to say, mornings were early and loud. But the view at night, and the fresh watermelon and produce Claudia would give us from her farm, they more than made up for it.

Claudia's husband took us through the canyon on our second day. We rode in the back of a truck to the trail head then hiked through the brush to the canyon, where, after scrambling over rocks, we were surprised to see that the locals would ferry you through in inner-tubes and flat-bottomed boats.

The locals had us "chained" together, with Ivan instructed to hook his feet under my tube, while one of the locals swam us through the sections we couldn't scramble. The ride was fun, but when we finally got to jump off a small waterfall and into the rushing water, and our guide saw how much we loved to swim, we were then allowed to swim the rest of the way. He said Nicaraguans in general don't like to swim, so that's why most tourists are conveyed down the canyons.

It was incredibly peaceful and cooling in the water, with the light reflecting on the walls and small clusters of flowers providing bursts of colour along the way. Our guide said, come spring (once floodwaters recede), all the cliffs burst into life and the view is indescribably pretty - that would be something to see.

Somoto Canyon

Another view

Hiking in with our guide - you can see the dry season has arrived

Heading into the canyon

Our parking spot. That's zucchini and watermelon fields in green behind us, and mountains all around.

Cacti in bloom - one benefit of dry season

Being ferried in inner tube "chain" by our guide

Flat-bottomed boats ready to ferry tourists across the wider parts of the canyon

Park Entrance

One of Claudia's gift of produce - calabacita, or Latin American's white zucchini

2. Leon, larangytis, and the best host EVER

From Somoto we drove to an idyllic ranch, Rancho de los Alpes, near the city of Leon, the home base for the Nicaraguan revolution. The horse farm and retreat was operated by Axle, the best host I have ever met. Having worked as a lawyer in Germany, he'd returned to run the family ranch a few years ago.

Every night, he'd bring us a cocktail in the evening, when we returned from watching the sunset, and every morning he brought us plates of fruit or giant avocados (as big as a child's head). And even though I suspect that he spoke a much better English than I spoke Spanish, he still talked with us in our pidgin Spanish, telling us stories about his "majestic, gentleman" rooster, how he'd always let the hens eat first, and the crazy zorros (foxes) that kept trying to get his chickens, and patiently listening to us tell our own stories.

Axle's beloved gentleman rooster

At least this was for as long as I could talk. Turns out that for the first time in my life, I got laryngitis. For three days, I couldn't speak. Which wasn't very helpful when trying to work on a podcast and run interviews. But the virus did force me to take a break - and what a place to take one. We walked through trails with the horses, saw every type of bird imaginable, and had the run of the place. The peace and quite (and Axle's ginger, lemon and rum tea) made it the perfect place to recover. I even made progress on my cross-stitch that I've been working on for five years (that's for you Dee!).

Walking with the horses

Trees suddenly bloomed day three

Breakfast from Axle

Hiking the wooded trail at Ranchos

Panama tree nut

Our nightly ritual, watching the sun set

And here's the sunset

Wooded trail view

View from Ranchos

Driveway

Volcano view - this is the one everyone rides down on a toboggan-like-thing, but we skipped that one

We did take two road trips while at Ranchos, one to Leon and one to the beach - both 15 minutes away.

3. The City of the Revolution

A day trip into Leon was both humbling and heartbreaking. Also eerily timely, given all the talk about Cuba happening at the time.

The streets in the city centre (which I call the "Revolutionary Road" but am not sure that's the name) are lined with hundreds (or seemed like hundreds) of permanent placards the size of large headstones. Each features a photo and obituary of a "revolutionary hero", so it's like you're walking through a graveyard, reading the inscriptions of the long-dead. There are so many placards that I couldn't read them all. Not only of Nicaraguans guerrillas, but also of Hondurans Cubans, students, teachers, doctors, men, women, children, Indigenous -- just so many people. In Leon, it's impossible to get away from this revolutionary history; even behind the basketball court in the centre of town, where local youths were skateboarding while we ate lunch, there was a mural of protesting students being shot.

Statue outside the theatre

Mural behind the local basketball court

Leon Arch (the city was once the Colonial Capital)

Street view

4. The Revolutionary Museum

A highlight of Leon - not for the quality of the exhibits but for the experience - was the Revolutionary Museum.

The ticket booth was manned by a veteran. A second, trilingual, wandering-eye veteran guided the tour. This guide had already started with another tourist, so we were told (as others who came after us were told) to just join them wherever they happened to be on their circle around the two rooms that comprise the exhibit space. So we started somewhere around the second time the Americans tried to screw Nicaragua.

Once the tour was complete, the guide beckoned us, and started again at the beginning (Sandino's birth), so we caught up on what we missed and then left (awkwardly) while the guide kept on going with the remaining stragglers and the newly joined. It was like a looping Spotify soundtrack, Nicaragua's history on eternal repeat.

Che. Hero of so many wars, including in Nicaragua,

Heroines of the revolution (that's Sandino's mom in the forefront)

Stairwell of the former school that houses the museum. The guide says it's under renovation. I suspect it has been for awhile.

Sandino, father of the Anti-imperial revolution

Yes, I too wonder why revolutionaries are so handsome?

Inside the museum

View from the top. What you don't see is the pigeon nesting next to my foot at the top of the stairs. It's eerily beautifully sad and echo-ey.

As I said, the exhibit was in two former classrooms and was comprised of framed images and a small cluster of ammunitions piled into a corner like broken rakes in the back of a garden shed.

There were no fancy exhibits. No quotes pasted like they do in the modern art museums. Just dot-matrix print outs, some crafted using Pagemaker (remember Pagemaker?), some collages complete with movie-reel borders, a lot of bad photocopies of photocopies, a few faded polaroid's - and a lot (I mean A LOT) of dead heroes wearing death masks as they were photographed where they lay shot in the streets. The Revolutionary Museum does not hold back, people.

Room 1

Room 2

The tour ended looking out from the rooftop at the square. The city was preparing for Semana Santana, painting its curbs a bright yellow, preparing the flower carpets to be trampled by the processions, and every where there were pigeons flying around and shitting on it all (see the stairwell above for a graphic representation of this feature of Leon).

View from the rooftop - all those black things are pigeons

5. Ortiz-Gurdian Museum of Art

From the Revolutionary Museum, we went to one of the best art galleries we have seen in all of Latin America: the Ortiz-Gurdian Museum of Art. From the street, it didn't seem like much, and we dudtifully looked at the old Christian art that you see everywhere. Some great stuff, but nothing new.

But then we were told to cross the street to see the rest of the museum. So we passed through this non-descript door, and once we got in there, we discovered a labyrinthine maze of some of the best art from all of Central America. Crazy collection. Some artists we knew from Guatemla and Mexico, and some were new from Costa Rica and Nicaragua. We didn't even get to see it all - there was just so much to on the ground and on the walls, everywhere you turned.

One of the many courtyards of the museum

The potter

Installation from Guatemala

Just loved this guy

6. Climbing the Cathedral

For our last major tourist stop in Leon, we climbed the Cathedral-Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The church itself was lovely in the way of all churches, but the highlight here is the rooftop view. Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out how to get on the top, and almost gave up.

Then we found a small entryway tucked into the side of the church's back exit. There we descended several low stone steps and passed Nicaraguan Cordobas between the slats of an iron door to a woman wearing a sweater in 30 degree heat. The woman then passed us tickets back through the gate and directed us to a doorway on the far side of the church. There we climbed up a dark, steep, stone stairwell, past the belfry and - after taking off our shoes and being told we had 27 minutes (not 25, not 30, but specifically 27) to spend on the roof - we were finally granted access.

Blinded by the white plaster, gratified it wasn't too hot on our bare feet, we toured the roof and made it back down within our allotted schedule.

7. Playa de las Pinitas

The day after visiting Leon, we hit our first (but far from last) Nicaraguan beach. We ended up paying a man in new Nikes with at least five gold teeth $10 to park, although there was free parking a few blocks away. To be fair, he was there with his rake guarding our van every time we passed, so I suppose he earned his dineros.

The beach was near a preserve where we saw various Germans in sensible Tilly hats go off on tours to bird watch, but we could never figure out where they actually went, so instead we just walked for miles to a playground with giant concrete sea creatures and a view out to sea. We found one safe place to swim in the waves with the locals, and returned to explore the preserve, pass by the sad waterfront stores (not the kind they put on postcards), and ended it all by eating overpriced fish cooked by French ex-pats as herons fished nearby in the estuary.