Wednesday, February 20, 2008
 | Super Bowl Sunday in the jungle… Granada's gringo sports bar The Zoom bar is having the Flor De Cana go go girls and chili, El Quito bar has chicken wings and a taco bar and Jimmy 3 Finger's "Bama Rib Shack has live music and a Harley show. There are 17 Harleys in Nicaragua….Black leather and baby powder in the tropics…It was over cast today till noon so it's a cool 89 degrees. Just before the month ended I finally got on the bus and got myself to Costa Rica. My 90 day visa was expired. In Oct I went to the immigration office here in Granada and for 50 bucks they sent my passport up to Managua and got me a 90 day extension but this time I was forced to leave the country. And neighboring Honduras and Salvador are part of the C4 with Nicaragua so they won't work, Costa Rica here I come. This is common practice here for expats that don't have resident status. I expired around the middle of January. So I had a fine to pay….a dollar a day.. I woke up at five a.m. and was walking over to the Ed's for a hearty breakfast of gallo pinto (Nica rice&beans),fried cheese and eggs by six thirty. I went past the old market around seven on my way to the bus lot. It was a bee hive of activity with every one setting up for the day's business. The Rivas bus lot is tucked in behind a fruit stand and a bike repair hut. Seven or so tired old yellow school busses form a co-op running south along the lake to Nandiame and Rivas. The road is bad even by Nicaraguan standards and has lot's of construction zones. Transportation and infrastructure here are among the biggest problems they have here. Lot's of roads and bridges were damaged during the Contra era and have never been rebuilt…Rivas is a busy working town about sixty miles south of Granada. They even have a four way stop light there and a brand new bus stop in the chaotic market place. It's the bus hub, go east to San Jorge to ferry across to Isla Ometepe, west to the beach surf town San Juan del Sur or catch a local south bound bus to la frontera. There is also a tiny little muraled purple mini van there that sells a Sopa Marinero. This is a seafood soup with a little 4' long purple crab served in a big paper cup. The locals time their lunch breaks around this vans arrival. The luxury bus lines have stations on the edge of town but all the other transport meets in or around the Mercado… Tiny little Toyota express mini vans, three wheeled bicycle taxis, pick up trucks with wrought iron roofs and wooden benches mix among the crusty old fleet of "chicken " busses. The horse drawn working carts are my favorites. Old unpainted wooden two wheeled horse drawn carts. They use old rear axles from old cars so the carts have the suspension and car tires….shiny spinner style plastic hub caps with old dvds as reflectors. Most of these work for or with building supply or hardware stores to delivery the goods. Some even have dump beds to bring sand and such. When I bought my wooden chair and table in the Mercado I had a cartero bring me and my new stuff it to my place. Cost ten pesos (0.52). Both the drivers and the horses are thin and grizzly. Three kids and the driver all dressed in rags with NY Yankees and NIKE hats. Some of the drivers seem carefree and comfortable while some seem to take out their frustrations with their lot in life on the horses. Whipping on their sway backed beasts of burden with wood handled whips. Any way… I was tempted by some big greasy home made glazed donuts but I bought some mandarin oranges and a bag of cold water for the second half of my bus trip and then got on the local to Penas Blanca on the Costa Rican border. It was a typical tired old yellow retired US school bus. Tiny little seats and windows that only go half way down. It has been modified with a full length roof rack with access ladders, a powerful sound system, air horns and many religious decals and statues. Some even have complete shrines. The Virgin Mary is big but they have lot's of mysterious patron saints too.. I got one of the last open seats and we rumbled out of the market and down south along the west side of Lake Nicaragua. How the bus helpers lean out the open door shouting the names of the destinations before they wiggle thru the standing room only aisle of the bus groping the girls and collecting the fares while the bus is barreling down the hiway is some thing to see. Most of the younger ones remind me of Burt Reynolds from Smokey and the Bandit. Funny little mustaches and all. They remember who has paid and who has to receive change all while talking on the cell phone and singing along with the radio…I paid about $1.20 for my passage to Rivas and this leg costs a buck…It's only an miles to the frontera but we stopped all along the way to take on and off passengers. Every thing from giant baskets of fruit to squawking and squeaking live stock can be among the carry on luggage, hence the name chicken bus..I have heard rumors of a Sunday only market there with a heavy emphasis on gray market goods. When we got to Cardenas the end of the line I expected to see the border but there was just a little town and lot's of semi trucks parked on the dirt road. A teen age kid wearing an "I Survived Andy Winkleman's Bat Mitzvah" tee shirt sensed my surprise and hired himself to assist me thru the border. He was a true professional. We cut thru lines, handed some one a dollar as we slipped thru a gate, sneaked in thru the trucks and some how avoided paying my fines. Good work, then right on the actual border when he couldn't go any farther he asked for 100 cords (5.20)… I balked at that and we settled for 50 cords plus a dollar bill. Now I was legally stamped out of Nicaragua and standing in the heat at high noon on a two lane tropical dirt road with semis parked for about a quarter mile with no other pedestrians only narco police. I found a proper border check point building with dogs and a snack bar after a while. Lot's of activity with little organization but I found the line for entrance and I had my entrance stamp in no time…. I had heard that Nicaragua required a 72 hour absence before returning but a lot of people said that like so many other things here " No One Cares" so I went out side to watch the customs agents tear up some long haired surfer's van and figure out what to do next…Maybe I should take a local bus fifty or so miles south and visit Coco Beach on the pacific maybe San Jose to shop for computer stuff. But neither my heart or wallet was into a road trip…. A big line of people had backed up to leave Costa Rica on the shady side of the building. The crowd was chatting, I heard Japanese and Italian…then I looked back to see the super deluxe international TICA Bus pointing to Nicaragua…I jumped up to stand in the exit line and twenty minutes later my Costa Rica adventure was finished. In and out of C.R. in twenty minutes with out ever holding any colones$….By now the mighty behemoth TICA bus had pulled forward and was loading passengers back on, headed for the Nica side of the border. I showed the driver a ten dollar bill, he smiled and popped open the shiny silver door, I jumped up and entered the tinted air conditioned splendor of the deluxe Eurostyle bus. I got a seat towards the rear. Ten minutes later the steward collected our passports and entrance fees for Nicaragua. Before we stopped at the border we drove thru a big car wash like building with "sniffer" hoses, then while the steward went to immigration to have our passports stamped, customs had us pull all the luggage stowed below off for inspection. I only had a small backpack but I joined the line….I chatted with an American couple living in Costa Rica on a "Visa" holiday too. Very typical Costa Rica gringos, but integral for the tourist biz in Granada. C.R. does enforce their 72 hour rule so many expats living in C.R. visit Nicaragua twice a year on VISA vacations. Then the steward stood in the door of the bus and called out names. Foreign pass ports with hard to say names were called last but he had the best Stephen Vermeulen pronunciation of any Spanish speaking person I ever met…When we got back on the bus, they brought cold drinks before dropping the Tvs down to watch The Departed dvd in English. It was hot outside in the middle of an equatorial day, but on the darkened bus the ac hummed and most people drifted off to sleep with Jack Nicholson shouting profanities on the tv. By three pm the massive bus was threading its way thru the narrow colonial streets of Granada. Back home before four. Good for another ninety days. My neighbors/landladies have been here for about a week and the drama/interaction level is way up. They are kinda suckers and lot's of people make a living off them. They bought a big cute black lab puppy last week. Their place is pretty small and they have three cats already but they wanted a big dog to hang out with them in the bar for protection. Yap, Yap , yap all day… They have the internet now but they seem to be reluctant to share as we have discussed… then this morning at seven Terry was pounding on my front door. The puppy had died in the night.. The way the house has been split in half their side has a swimming pool in back and my size has a 26x26 foot garden remnants from the original yard. They needed to borrow my shovel to bury that big sad dead puppy in my garden…Sobbing middle aged butch lesbians in boxer shorts in my garden cradling a cute but rapidly stiffing dead baby dog before coffee…And a good morning to you… I had wanted to put a passion fruit where the doggie is now planted.. The drop in comfort level here at my place has got me looking at real estate here again. The colonial center is expensive but it expensive because that's where the action is. The calzada, a cobble stone street leading east to the lake is lined with café's, hostels, tour companies, bike rentals etc. In the evenings hundreds of tourist from all over the globe sit at the out door tables drinking bottled water and beer while waiting for their over priced but lovely meal…..In the four or so block long stretch of calzada that is finished there is a lot of food choices, a couple of good Mexican, Thai, Italian, Spanish and Argentinean places, even a USA style sports bar. The most USA looking place is called The Roadhouse and is owned by Miami Nica's. They have air conditioning and football jerseys hung on the wall. The Spaniards are footing the bill for this pedestrian style street renovation.. It's a very nice focal point tying the central park and cathedral to the lake. It's taken almost two years to build the four blocks thay have now and they have six more blocks to go. They have traffic diverted and the streets torn up for months at a time coating the surrounding businesses with dust and bad business. The other big tourist attraction here is the Conventa. Across from the overly hip and purple Third Eye restaurant and kitty corner from the gringo movers and shakers hang out "Kathy's Waffle House". I saw a small house right around the corner from there and in a gringofying block. It's about 26 by 56 feet and it's nothing more than a walled in lot right now. They are asking 65,000 but seem vaguely interested in my 45,000 offer. They bought it about 3 years ago for 30,000.. The renovation (rebuilding) process here is expensive and crazy. One of the original gringo remodelers here just got prison time for his business practices. It's mostly concrete walls with roofs made of red tiles and tin sheets. The deluxe version has cane to hide the metal on the inside. They are simple constructions with lots of open garden space. That little place would cost at least 20,000 to make livable and another 10,000 to gringo up….But I am still tempted. It would be a small but central spot for the business and walking distance to every where….There really do seem to be a never ending stream of people moving here. And even with Nicaragua's short comings, Granada's a warm cheap sunny and safe place to live with lot's of cute girls. Granada is not like the majority of Nicaragua. It's a city state of it's own…Else where in Nicaragua 20,000 or less will buy any house in town and up north in the mountains top flight green and scenic farm land is less than 500 an acre…A friend here built his wife the prettiest house in Boaco for less than this empty shell of a colonial will cost me…Competing with the boom in India and China the price of building materials here has doubled at least and workers here demand at least $5 a day not the 2 bucks you pay in the sticks for workers…But it's still the gringo in between contractor that really drives up the prices. Places bought 5 or 6 years ago for 65,00 are priced three times that now and in high demand… Ten years ago big colonials could be had for twenty thousand and now a days some renovated palaces are up to a million dollars… Granada claims to be the oldest city in the Americas and is due for U.N. historical city status. That would make the colonial center historically important and triple the price. Crazy stuff, Yesterday I made an offer to buy the pulparia across the street and todays project is to find a lawyer and a contractor so wish me well. adios |
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