Nicaragua?! Are We Nuts?!

Those were the questions we were wondering when we first considered the idea two months ago. Guide books seemed to state that Nicaragua was among the safer countries in the Americas, and that much of its bad reputation related to outdated vague memories of considerable violence from the '70s and '80s of Somoza, the Sandinistas and the Reagan-backed Contras.

(The Sandinistas finally deposed US-supported dictator Somoza in 1979, however the counter-revolutionary "contra" movement started only days later in part due to the then recent murder of one one the less ideological rebel leaders "by a stray bullet" at a Sandinista meeting, clearing the way for Daniel Ortega's Marxist agenda. {The mid '80s Iran-Contra scandal related to US Govt/ Oliver North/Reagan(?) selling arms to Iran in order to finance the Contra guerillas, both of which had been prohibited by the US Congress}. The Contras disbanded in 1990, Ortega and the Sandinistas peacefully gave up power after losing the 1996 election to the Liberal Party, but then won it back in 2007, and he now is acting, despite his leftist/ populist self-image (buying votes by promising cheap chickens?) much like any other pseudo-democratic dictator, changing the constitution to allow >2 terms as president, and getting rich off plans for a controversial Chinese-built canal across the country [which would be wider than even the widened Panama Canal, which currently limits the size of oceanic cargo ships. The people we talked to seemed split on its economic benefit vs environmental impact, but were mostly anti-Ortega], while his wife backs a long line of many dozens of several story-high electric artwork "trees" on "highway" medians, which are the most visible structures for arriving airplanes in Managua.)

http://hyperallergic.com/117612/psychedelic-symbols-of-state-power-in-nicaragua/

Yet going to US State Dept, British FCO, and govt of Canada travel websites, as well as searching "Nicaragua safety" on travel forums still painted a scary picture. So how to get some objective assessment of risk? Wikipedia's list of murder rates by country!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Canada was 1 per 100 000popn/yr, USA 4, but many places we've previously travelled including South Africa, and much of Latin America about 30. Nicaragua, at 14, was only slightly worse than Costa Rica, which is generally viewed as the safest place in the area. Nicaragua's neighbors are much worse: El Salvador 44, Honduras leading the league at 92! So, having felt fairly safe during a month in S. Africa, and last yr in The Bahamas (33, violence in main island that includes Nassau described by State Dept as rising to "critical"), we decided to go ahead for the 2wks. Only concession we made was to pre-book private taxi transfers rather than to rent a car as apparently the law is that the drivers in any serious accident are immediately thrown in jail until fault can be sorted out!

We got back home fri after 2 great weeks! Safety was a complete non-issue, and we were surprised to see that Nicaragua has its own well-beaten gringo trail with lots of American and even Canadians. We started with 4 days on the visually and geologically spectacular dumbbell-shaped, twin-volcanoed (not surprisingly said to be the upright breasts of a fallen mythological love-interest tragic heroine) island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua (the largest freshwater lake in the Americas south of the Great Lakes, and half of the planned canal route). It's very shallow and warm so you can walk out very far- great, quiet beaches and nighttime swims under the Milky Way!

Also a few days in each of the competing historical colonial cities of Granada (including kayaking the nearby 100s of tiny bird-filled isletas on the Lake, many mansion-topped) and Leon (including a quick trip to the Pacific to complete our 2-day isthmus-crossing, and going up the 1959-born active volcano, Cerro Negro! Western Nicaragua is volcano-lined- including apparently 21 in a 60km stretch near Leon, many of which we saw from the air or ground- visually spectacular!). In the middle we flew out to the Caribbean island, Big Corn, for 4d (~5x2km, big only in comparison to nearby Little Corn), which does have a very different culture and popn, typical of the rest of the Caribbean, as opposed to the Mestizo base of mainland Nicaragua. Its features abundant cheap excellent seafood including "regular" langostina (lobster), which one of us had each of the 4 nights. We passed on (and didn't see any evidence of, beyond multiple sniffing dogs at the airports) the apparently widespread "langostina blanca" which washes up on the shores thrown overboard from speed boats escaping authorities heading north along the route to the cocaine markets of the USA.

Needless to say there was no shortage of the usual travel-related hassles esp with the hotels (very noisy early am- didn't get to sleep in once! Secondhand smoke wasn't much of a problem, but $150./nt gecko urine stench- or so they claimed-was) and transportation, however, altho several other worthy stories were generated, the hands down winner was Costena, the country's local, limited and only airline, which we flew to Big Corn. It started with their request to show up 2.5hrs early, and 20kg combined checked/carry baggage limits for the puddle-jumper of a flight. On calling to confirm that am they said it was necessary because the system's stated flight time of 2:30pm was wrong- the flight would actually be leaving at 2pm!

Of course not only did we not board until 2:30pm, but on walking out to the plane we saw our bags among a large pile of luggage yet to be brought out to the plane. When, as the plane taxied down the runway, another tourist who spoke no Spanish but was sitting on the terminal side of the 40-seater stated that his bags were still there, I yelled for the flight attendant to tell her! (By the way, we spent much of the 2wks talking in a new language- Spandarin! I suspect it has a bright future if the canal plans go thru. It has taken over my neurons previously dedicated to French/Hebrew/Yiddish!) She replied to us that our bags would be going on another flight! Intentionally!!! (and apparently, per semi-routine!) As we had a short stop on the carib coast and they didn't, the bags would be arriving at about the same time as us. it ended up being the majority of the passengers crammed into the small arrival/immigrn/bag collectn room, were all waiting for their bags, with the next flight, expected 20min later.

Sure enough a 12-seater landed shortly thereafter (4pm) and JC's bag was taken out. But not mine! And not most of the other people's, many of whom had the day's last connecting boat to Little Corn leaving in a 1/2hr! We were then told they would be on a 3rd plane(!) landing at 5pm, and that they would put the bags on the 1st boat the next am, tho the people must be at the dock to receive them (leaving them with only the shirts on their backs for that night- tho the very small boat ended up being cancelled due to high winds, which apparently occurs ~50% of the time this time of the yr- so we didn't try to go to Little Corn as there is no other way back). As our hotel was nearby, we thought we'd check in then come back for my bag, they told me no problem as long as I get there by 5:20pm. At ~4:40pm, we heard a plane land, and we decided not to wait. After some difficulty getting a taxi, sure enough when I got to the airport at 4:55pm they were locking it up and a handler was walking off with 2 bags, one of which was mine! Jumped out of the cab just in time to claim it before it got locked up for the night!

Overall we had a great 2wks and we'd certainly recommend Nicaragua!

Hasta Xia Tse,

Stu