=Previous Page - 01  ~Page 16~=                                                                        People we met along the way and their stories!

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This first evening on Ometepe I started to talk to a local guide as we watched a fabulous sunset over the lake. Harold, and I soon became good friends.  He talked about the difficulty of trying to be in business for ones self and I made some suggestions as to setting up a web site and so on.  The next evening Barbara and I had a long talk with him.

He said he was married and had a son and the job conditions were terrible.  Petrol was a dollar a liter so that meant $5.00 a gallon.  If he had to hire a taxi to pick up tourists, that came out of his pocket.  If he met them at a resort, the resort took a cut of out the tour.  

His favorite tour is a six hour climb to the top of the Conception Volcano and four back down.  He provides lunch for the group made by his wife.  He also provides ropes to tie people together as they climb the volcano.  So if he had multiple pickups and hosting from multiple resorts, his take was next to nothing!

He along with most of citizens we talked to said, "At least in the U.S. you actually see the taxes spent on something.  In Nicaragua the cities and the Managua Capital took in the taxes and then they disappeared. 

We had a long talk with the receptionist in Granada at our hotel, the Asialatina, and he told us when he was four years old, his family escaped over the border into Texas in the early 1980s because of the Sandanistas.  He said Nicaragua was so dangerous and in Texas, they were kept in a camp for over a year.  He and his father were in one camp and his mother and sisters in another camp.  

President Reagan passed a law to allow Nicaraguans in danger, to get a green card to allow them to live in the U.S. without problems.  So basically his family moved to the Seattle area and live there.  He decided to move back to Nicaragua and said even he has problems understanding some of the Spanish after living in the U.S. for so many years.

I told Barbara the Asialatina Hotel sounded like a gay bar name.  She just shook her head.  I told the receptionist this and he laughed and said the owners are gay!   One from Manhattan, he said the 'white' one, about 45, and his lover, a 'black' Nicaraguan - looked around 35, owned the hotel/bar/restaurant.  The hotel was great as it was on the beaten track next to the restaurants and a block and a half to the main square and bus stops!

When I was climbing the 172 steps to the top of the Masaya Volcano between Granada and Managua, I met a guide with two people who were complaining about the climb.  They looked about 50 and I am 68 and had no problem climbing the 12 story high hill to overlook the crater with the gas steaming out of the volcano.

Denis looked peeved and let then go back down and started to talk to me.  We hit it off and walked back down after he took my photo and we met Barbara.  I suggested he could take us on the island cruise on the lake the next afternoon.  Denis said he was available and said he would check at the hotel the next day.  In the mean time Barbara had talked to a woman who saw her on the ferry to Ometepe.  Barbara didn't see her and she said she was sea sick in the back of the ferry!  

The next afternoon around three P.M. Denis came and asked if we would mind two more on the tour?  The boat holds about 16 people so we said yes.  Denis took us to the boat landing and who is there but the husband and wife that were on the ferry to Ometepe five days ago!   Such a small world.  

Denis said he was around 30 but not married.  We kidded him about that.  He said he thought I should be married at 68 and I said he was the one to be married at 30 plus.  His mother must be disappointed.  He was not amused!  P.S.  The wife did look a little pale during our boat ride at first but was fine after we stopped for a drink.

Barbara and I were looking for the bus to Leon at the bus terminal in Managua and we met Israel waiting in line for the bus.  We started to talk and he was very nice.  He said he was just coming back from working with a group from the U.S. to aid poor children.   Israel said he had just gotten married and his wife was lucky to get a job at the Ford Motor Company manufacturing parts.  

He said the work was very hard for her and they only received $25 a week.  He said the company was very strict about bread and lunch time but the income provided them with enough money to live in a small house by themselves!

He said his father had been a lawyer but abandoned the family when Israel was young.  He said many men did that in Nicaragua.  He said his mother left the country and worked in Costa Rica for ten years and had just come back to Leon.  We heard the same story from many people, they sneak over the border into Costa Rica to work and make some money.  

So to makes matters even strangers, the last day we were in Leon we went out for a walk.  We heard someone yell out, "Barbara!".   Who could that be?  It was Israel, working only a block from our hotel. He asked us to come in and talk to his class, five men and a woman.  He asked them if they could ask us a question in English.  One young man looked at Barbara and said, "What is your phone number?"  We laughed and I said he was learning fast!  I gave Israel my business card and he just wrote me an e-mail at the end of February!

The owner of the hotel in Leon was very nice and the hotel was fabulous.  It is called the Hostal "La Casa Leonesa" Nicaragua and the owner is Dora Maria Gurdian Ortiz.  

She escaped from Nicaragua in the 1970s and went to Alabama!  She told her mother there was nothing in Leon for her and her mother told her to just pack and leave!  There she married a German man and raised her children there from a previous marriage that ended in divorce.  The children and grandchildren all live in Alabama today!  

Her husband passed away and in 1990 she came back to Leon and bought this house.  It was in very bad shape, people let the property fall apart because the Sandanistas would come in and take property away from anyone if they wanted it.  

She redid the roof, put caning on the bottom, then a lining of zinc, on top of that, the red tiles.  The floors are fabulous tiles and she has a lot of old German furniture.  

She said she was Vice Mayor for a few years but there is so much corruption and many people we talked to indicated the taxes just disappear in the pockets of the politicians.   The hotel was extremely clean and we had a wonderful full breakfast every morning we were there.  

Dora also called us a cab to take us to Managua to the airport to catch our flight to San Salvador!

When we decided to go to the petroglyphs on the other side of the island of Ometepe.  We had breakfast and decided to catch a local bus along the only highway on the island of Ometepe.  The buses run about every hour so we walked up the lane to the highway and stood there, waiting for the bus.  The highway is composed of hexagon blocks and placed on a bed of sand and each block is laid by hand!  The road is two lanes wide and about 18 miles long.  This road runs from the dock to a town on the other side of the active volcano.  We had to go there and catch another bus that traveled on a gravel road to the petroglyphs beside the dormant volcano.   As we stood beside the highway, a woman about 30 came by on a bicycle.  She asked how much farther to the next town and we said she was about half way there.  She was not amused and said she had left her bags at the pier and was biking around to see where she might want to stay.  She said she was worn out all ready and was foolish to start this bike ride.  Well the road went about half way around the volcano and most of it was uphill all the way!   We passed her later and then we did catch the second bus and go to the other dormant volcano and checked out the petroglyphs.  

We came back and saw her again and she tried to flag down the bus but we were full.  In town, we thought we would have to wait for an hour or so but to our surprise, a bus was leaving immediately!  We got on and about a mile had gone by and there she was again.  This time the bus stopped and they managed to squeeze her bike onto the bus in between the passengers standing up.  Barbara had an empty space next to her and the woman sat down.  She said she was from L.A. of all places and was in Costa Rica trying to setup a day nursery for children of prostitutes.   She said the church said they would give her a room if she set up a cafe for them to make some money!   

We asked why she was in Nicaragua but all ready knew the answer.  Costa Rica has a law that after three months you have to leave the country for at least three days and have your tourist card renewed.   (The tourist card above with a date stamp is mine when we left Costa Rica to Nicaragua!)  We met several people doing this and it was a good excuse for them to take a three or more day vacation!   Nicaragua also has a time limit but it and Belize, El Salvador and Guatemala have a pact and anyone leaving any of these countries has to go to Costa Rica or some place else to renew their status, not in any of the four countries.  We were also told Costa Rica was getting irritated by foreigners who built expensive homes but wanted to live there and not pay taxes.  I guess Costa Rica was or is changing their laws that one eventually has to become a citizen and pay their fair share of taxes.   Anyway, this is basically what I heard, but may not be completely accurate.   So as they say, buyer by aware! 

At our hotel on Ometepe we were watching a sunset and suddenly this pretty young woman came by and we talked.  She said she was staying at the next resort and was taking her three day trip from Costa Rica to get a newly dated tourist card.  She had a strange story.  

She said she was in Bolivia and started to run out of money!  In Bolivia?   So she traveled through Columbia, into Panama and on into Costa Rica.  There she got a job at a bar/restaurant as a waitress.  We asked if she spoke Spanish and she said not really!   She said the place was frequented mainly by Americans and Europeans who spoke English so she just learned the basic words for foods and drinks in Spanish.  

She said when she made enough money as a waitress in Costa Rica she would return to Bolivia.  Talk about a strange story.  We wondered why she would do such a thing and what would she do in Bolivia?  

Space.

So as you see, we met many interesting people along the say and actually there are other stories to tell by that would have to come at a later time!

Space.

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Published on 2008.02.29 ~ Leap Year!