Nicaragua: Can You Keep a Secret?

by Ellen Barone

Here's the truth: I want to tell you about Nicaragua and its wild, deserted Pacific beaches, active volcanoes, colonial cities, coffee plantations, and verdant mountains - but then again, I don't. Writing about delicate cultures like Nicaragua, where political, geographical and economic realities have brought interference and hardship on one hand, and a simpler, more grounded way of life on the other, always brings up mixed feelings.

I want tell you what is great about Nicaragua - a country where gracious women with colorful bundles perched atop their heads amble past colonial buildings in faded pastel colors; where green, cloud-fringed volcanoes tower over terra-cotta rooftops; where roadside stands overflow with a colorful bounty of tropical fruits and vegetables; where a quilt of fertile plots blankets the valleys and gentle sloping mountains - but I'm afraid you'll go. Worse yet, that you'll be followed by a parade of boorish culture skimmers eager to turn it into the Familiar.

While the United States has a shady legacy (persistent meddling and numerous armed interventions) in Nicaragua, I, an obvious American, was welcomed. More than a million Nicaraguans live in the United States, and just about everyone seems to know someone living in Florida, Texas or California.  "That's all in the past now," a taxi driver in Managua said gently. "We are, at heart, poets, not fighters."

I experienced this gentle forgiveness and genial warmth often during my three trips to the country during the past two years. Trusting, honest, and helpful, the Nicaraguan people are the real spirit and charm of the country. Ask for directions and Nicas, as they call themselves, are likely to set aside what they're doing and lead you there. Poke your head in an open doorway and they invite you in. Ask to take their photograph and they reward you with a dazzling smile - spontaneous and heartfelt. Express interest in something they are doing, whether it's weaving a basket or painting a pot and they'll show you how it's done. A simple "Como está?" ("How are you?") and the floodgates open, resulting in a charming torrent of Spanish. The conviviality and honesty of their responses is unmistakable as they sprinkle their words with mimed expression and gesture, graciously anticipating a foreigner's difficulty.

Until a few years ago, Nicaragua remained lodged at the edge of my conscious mind as an enigmatic locale: A place of revolution and natural disaster revolution and natural disaster. - destination non grata for travelers. However, as a professional wanderer, I embrace destinations off the beaten path. "It's my job," I told my neighbor when she asked why I couldn't "find somewhere safe to go."

In the plane, I brushed up on my research. "Interpol crime statistics put Nicaragua second only to Canada among the safest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Sandwiched between Honduras and Costa Rica to the north and south, the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the east and west, the real image of Nicaragua is a country that is safe and one that is rich in natural resources. Here you can have an authentic experience that will make your travels much richer..." read the tourist brochure.

Once on the ground, the hardship inflicted by decades of dictatorship, treachery and revolution is certainly evident. It's clear that the country is more challenged by decay and neglect than by violence and crime.

Much of the grandeur of Nicaragua's colonial cities, a Spanish legacy, has faded. An assorted stream of vintage tractors, sputtering scooters, and horse and ox carts share potholed roads with wheezing yellow school buses, worn-out relics shipped down the Pan-American Highway from North America.

There is real struggle, but an alegr’a de vivir ("joy of life") appears to win out. The country pulses with optimism for its future. In December 2005, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cancelled Nicaragua's US$5.309 billion in foreign debt. Fresh coats of brightly colored paint adorn old facades. New houses and improved roads announce the presence of a burgeoning class of returning Nicaraguans and foreign expats. Where guerilla fighters once roamed, an army of college-educated twentysomethings (65% of the population is under 25) is eager to shape their country into a land of opportunity. Their weapons are intelligence, enthusiasm and hope.

Consider 27-year-old Ana Azalea Zavala, a mischievous 5-foot bundle of spunk and enthusiasm whom I met in Managua. Like many of her generation, Ana spent part of her childhood in the United States when her family left in the 1980s to escape from the Sandinista Regime. After the regime was voted out in 1990 by a nation desperate to end the war, the Zavalas - along with many of those who fled - came back. "My dad«s dream of coming back to our country always filled my brothers and I with hope. We thought it was important to return. We lived many years in the United States and had a good life there, but we love, and have a responsibility to, our country. It feels good to be back."

Since 1990 the number of visitors to the resilient Central American nation, has grown steadily. In 2005, the country of six million people, roughly the size of New York State, hosted nearly 700,000 tourists, more than twice as many as nine years earlier. It's no longer absurd to speak of it as a tourist destination: of market stalls stocked with bright hammocks; of boating on Lake Nicaragua; of surfing Pacific waves.

Ironically it is the nation's turbulent history, and subsequent snub by the outside world, that has protected Nicaragua from being inundated by consumer culture: it isn't paved over with blacktop, overrun by tourists, or 'globalized' to look like everywhere else - yet.

Nicaragua's delights are simple and natural. Instead of glitzy duty-free shops selling overpriced perfumes, jewelry, and electronics you could buy in any resort, shopping in Nicaragua is personal and inexpensive.

Travelers are more likely to wander into a pottery studio smelling of earth and clay, where the potter throws his pots on a wheel in the back, or the home of a weaver, basket maker, furniture craftsman, or wood carver, to buy directly from the artisan. Coffee connoisseurs can bring home organic, shade-grown beans purchased from a cloud-forest farm; even participate in the harvest if they're so inclined and the season is right. Cigar aficionados can observe expert rollers practicing their delicate art at one of the country's cigar makers/factories. Your purchase, or taxi ride, or meal, or hotel stay can directly affect lives in a country where half the people earn less than $1 a day.

And of course, in a country with nearly half of the people earning less than $1 a day, your purchase of their goods, a stay in their hotel, ride in their taxi, or meal in their restaurant, can directly affect lives.

While Nicaragua may not be quite ready for mainstream tourists - infrastructure and services are not yet comparable to its better-known and more trampled neighbor, Costa Rica - those who go will find some of the greatest natural gems in all of Central America. The country boasts the largest area of primary-growth rain forest north of the Amazon, mist-shrouded cloud forests, and steamy jungles. Wildlife flourishes with more than 600 species of birds, as well as jaguars, sloths, monkeys, toucans, manatees, crocodiles, and the world's only freshwater sharks. Since 2002, the government has created 76 national parks to protect the country's wildlife.

Make no mistake, however; while Nicaragua may be on the verge, it is still very much Developing World. Where else would you find an active volcano with its own crater-edge car park? (No fear of lawsuits there.) One of nine active volcanoes in a knotty spine of more than forty cones that punctuate the broad, hot, and fertile lowlands, Volcán Masaya, hasn't had a serious eruption since 1772. But she's still belching molten lava and sulfuric gases - and in 2001, she burped up lava the size of UPS trucks, setting fire to three tourist buses, miraculously without injury.

Word of paradise found, with its untrammeled natural bounty, is spreading fast: Canopy tours are popping up all over, cruise ships are docking at the Pacific port of San Juan del Sur, and Costa Rican resorts are offering day trips to Nicaragua.

But like all frontiers, this one is receding quickly. There is no shortage of real-estate developers eager to sell you a slice of paradise before they bulldoze it. As of 2005, 85% of Nicaragua's coastline was undeveloped.

As happens in many places in the Developing World, First World tourism brings painful new developments as well as hard currency. The dilemma, as I see it, is that Nicaragua is ripe: ripe for economic and social success; ripe for discovery by adventurous travelers seeking a culturally and naturally rich destination; and ripe for exploitation by the type of overdevelopment typical of paradise lost. Think Malibu before the movie stars; Tuscany before Under the Tuscan Sun; Hawaii before the missionaries; or Thailand before the sex tours.

"You like Nicaragua?" an old and weatherworn woman asked me after I had joined her on a park bench in Granada on one of my trips. "Si, me gusta much’simo." ("Yes, I like it very much") I replied in my best Spanish. "Por supuesto," (of course) she said quietly, more to herself than to me, as she gently took my hand, wished me well, "Vaya con dios" ("Go with God"), rose and walked away; her gait transmitting the blend of resignation and dignity I've now come to associate with Nicas.

Today, it's twenty-six years after a bloody civil war ended four-decades of a corrupt dictatorship; a dozen years after devastating US-backed post-revolutionary fighting and economic embargo; and fifteen years of relative peace. With crucial national elections looming on the 2006 horizon, the second poorest country in the western hemisphere (behind Haiti), is on its way to becoming.

Becoming what is the question.

Nicaragua Basics

WHEN TO GO:

Nicaragua enjoys an average temperature of 81¡F (27¡C) year round. Humidity averages 65-percent. There are two seasons, green (mid-May to mid-November) and dry (late-November to early-May).

HOW TO GET THERE:

At just under two hours from Miami or two and one half hours from Houston, Managua is an easy hop from the U .S. Grupo Taca, American Airlines and Delta Airlines offer direct flights from cities such as Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Washington, and Dallas. Visitors to Nicaragua must have at least 6 months of validity remaining on their passport and a return ticket to the country of origin. Visas are not required for citizens of most countries, including those of Western Europe, Canada and the U.S. The airport entrance tax is US $5 and airport exit tax is US $32.

WHERE TO STAY:

á Managua: For a splurge, try the new five-star hotel Real Intercontinental (505-278-4545, www.gruporeal.com). A cozy alternative is the 14-room Hotel Los Robles (505-267-3008; www.hotellosrobles.com), or the friendly 32-room Hotel Mansi—n Teodolinda (505-228-1050; http://teodolina.com.ni)

á Granada: We stayed in the elegant, beautifully renovated Hotel Alhambra on the town plaza. Spacious rooms, comfortable people-watching rattan rockers on the veranda, and a gracious staff made this a real favorite. (505- 552-4486, http://www.hotelalhambrani.com/)

á Southern Nicaragua: At Morgan's Rock Hacienda and Eco-lodge, a sumptuous new (2005) British-designed, French-owned resort, tree farming and reforestation project and private nature reserve, we got in shape hiking to our tree-house bungalow (#15), where waves pounding the beach below, a cacophony of bird song, and raucous troupes of monkeys rustled us from sleep instead of an alarm clock. (Pacific coast near San Juan del Sur, 506-296-9442; www.morgansrock.com)

á Central Nicaragua: Selva Negra Mountain Resort: Home to one of the most responsible coffee farms in the world, the resort has been accommodating intrepid travelers since the 1970s. The resort's rustic cabins are set in dense forest, and sprout vibrant gardens and flowers growing out of the Bavarian-style roofs. (Km 140 Hwy. Matagalpa-Jinotega, 505-612-3883; http://www.selvanegra.com/).

á Finca Esperanza Verde (Green Hope Farm) Eco-lodge and Nature Preserve: Created out of an abandoned coffee farm, the resort is a model for sustainable development and small-scale ecotourism in Nicaragua. In 2004, it received Smithsonian magazineÕs sustainable tourism award for conservation. Its beautiful lodge and cabins are equipped with solar powered electricity, flush toilets, sinks and showers accommodate up to 26 people. A camping area offers three campsites and a covered shelter. (San Ram—n, Matagalpa, 505-772-5003, http://www.fincaesperanzaverde.org).

WHERE TO EAT: In Managua, we sought out traditional Nicaraguan food at the Cocina de Do–a Haydee (three locations in central Managua; www.lacocina.com.ni)

In Granada, La Gran Francia, located in the city's historic heart, offers delicious continental cuisine fused with the flavors of Nicaragua served in a beautifully restored colonial building. (505-552-6000, www.lagranfrancia.com)

Stop along the new road to Líon at La Paz Centro for a tasty quesillo, a high-cal combo made with tortilla, cheese, braided cabbage, pickled onions and cream.

WHERE TO SHOP: In Managua, we found Mama Delfina's (Enitel Villa Fontana, 1c.lago; 505-267 8288) to be a great source for native arts & crafts. Simplementé Madera (Los Robles, Hospital Monte Espa–a 1c.lago; 505- 278-1478; www.simplementemadera.com) is a unique source for high quality and well-designed furniture from responsible and well-managed hardwood sources, and the genius behind everything from the lighting to the furniture and buildings at Morgan's Rock.

Only 16 miles from Managua the Masaya Arts and Crafts Market offers a variety of handicrafts. The indigenous villages of San Juan de Oriente and Catarina are famous for their ceramic and furniture workshops.

INFORMATION: Guides dedicated to Nicaragua can be hard to find in local bookstores, so you might want to go online. Formerly one of the only publishers featuring Nicaragua, Moon Handbooks recently released (©2005) its second edition of Moon Handbook Nicaragua. Lonely Planet launches it's first edition guide Nicaragua & El Salvador in August 2006, and the Footprint Nicaragua (©2001) guide remains a helpful source of information.

The Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR), http://www.visit-nicaragua.com (1-888-SEE-NICA) has offices in several cities in Nicaragua, including Managua and Granada. Its Web site lists attractions, cultural information, tour operators and much more. Tour operators with innovative programs include Tours Nicaragua (http://www.toursnicaragua.com/) and Careli Tours (www.carelitours.com).

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Ellen Barone (www.ellenbarone.com) is a freelance writer and photographer who specializes in travel. Her work appears in a wide variety of regional, national and international publications.