Nicaragua
During the 1970-80s I had five visits to Nicaragua. My first was scheduled to take place in early 1973 but I was forced to delay it until the September because on 23rd December the capital, Managua was hit by an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 which effectively wiped it out. Deaths were estimated in the region of tens of thousands of people with approx 100,000 left homeless. Even when I did get there 9 months later my photographs below in the gallery will show you what a mess was left behind. With the added corruption at the top creaming off much of the international aid the rebuilding didn`t get going for many years afterwards. I was based in the pyramidal shaped Intercontinental Hotel which sat on the top of a hill looking down on the desolation and whose construction allowed it to survive where most buildings were decimated. From there I had to commute the one hour journey to our factory in Leon and then back to Managua for the night, passing a dead dog at the roadside which over the fortnight gradually blew up bigger and bigger as the stomach contents gassed up. Our factory manager, Ing Dolores (aka LoLo) Estrada was a member of a club which resided in an old Spanish colonial building in Leon town centre and we used to go there for lunch for what were probably the finest steaks that I have ever eaten anywhere in the world! The journey was a stunning one as the road ran parallel to a range of active volcanoes. Often there were odd cardboard boxes in the road or other litter and I got used to simply driving over them rather than taking avoiding action. Big mistake! My little Toyota saloon hit one really hard to the point of becoming airborne - it turned out to not be cardboard but actually a large rock! On another day there was a smaller `rock` in the road which I could straddle but when I was about 50 yards from it it stuck out a head and legs - it wasn`t a rock, this time it was a turtle. During the Nicaraguan uprising/revolution aircraft that couldn`t use any of the government airfields used the road as a landing strip.
The volcanic chain divides the nation into the main population on or near the Pacific coast including the main cities of Managua and Leon from the Atlantic/Caribbean coast and the isolated port of Bluefields capital of the South Caribbean Autonomous Region. The population in Bluefields is mixed race with so many Caribbean slave escapees finishing up there that they speak English and dance round the maypole, etc. Having to survive isolated from the Pacific coast mainstream Bluefields has developed a tourist industry based on access to the Caribbean - game fishing and beach resorts. Being a volcanic country there is great potential for production of geothermal energy which is renewable and not hydrocarbon based. A lot of work in this area was going on whilst I was there and there are now two productive geothermal fields yielding 70 Megawatts. On my first weekend there I didn`t know what to do so I decided to take a road trip into the coutryside . A work friend was a butterfly collector (it was acceptable back than!) and Nicaragua had swarms of Monarch butterflies which are on the British list. So I made an improvised butterfly net out of the wire ring from my hotel bedside lamp shade, handkerchiefs and my stapler!! And yes I did manage to capture one for him. I`d looked at a map and headed off. Gradually the road got worse and worse and then changed to gravel and then dirt. They I drove through my first ford, then another. Eventually after five I arrived at a small village and when they saw me they pulled a rope up across the road and demanded a `tax`! The sum was trivial and both parties were happy with the outcome. In the evening, back at the hotel, I was telling an American couple about my day`s adventure when the lady immediately told me I`d been in "bandit country" and did I have my gun with me. She pulled out a little pearl- handled gun to demonstrate my error!
On another visit I had to stay in a `motel` outside Managua - it was exactly like the one in the opening scene of the first Jurassic Park movie! A waitress served myself and my colleague with coffee amidst swarms of flies. To drive them away she produced an insecticidal aerosol and proceeded to spray not only the table but also the sugar! The interesting item in my room was a diagram of the plans for the Nicaraguan canal which had been proposed and surveyed around the time that the Panama canal was commissioned. You can see a copy of this in the galley - an interesting document. Like the Panama canal it`s route utilised both large lakes and existing rivers to reduce the costs. The large Lake Nicaragua involved is extremely intersting as it used to be connected to the Pacific Ocean before volcanic lava flows cut it off from the ocean. Tis has resulted in a number of saltwater species like sharks, sawfish and tarpon having converted/evolved into freshwater variants. There are a number of islands including two (Ometepe and Zapatera) with active volcanoes. Nicaragua introduced me to latin style food and my first lunch involved ceviche - raw fish/prawns which had been `cooked` by marinading in lemon/lime juice which also sterilises it. And trust me it`s wonderful. Seafood, shrimps and lobster and an export staple along with coffee, meat and sugar. Recently textiles exports have expanded significantly together with copper derived from the copper mines in the northeats of the country. All in all it is a very poor country though.
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Browse through the picture galleries below relating to this page and you will get a much better idea than just reading my words! Each page has it`s own set of relevant images - where possible taken by us.