[Vision2020] Letter six from Dave Barber: Volcanoes and the Night of the Iguana

[Louise Barber]

Letter 6

 

Dear All --

 

Friday (16 feb) I left the iguana a casa, her front legs evidently
dislocated behind her back, assuming that Mario would dispatch it there in
the afternoon.  But he took it to Doña Amanda´s house (Ana´s mother), which
has more space for dispatchment, and I figure she has experience with
iguanas.  That evening I saw the completed product, the iguana now not green
but red, neatly spiraled above its 33 eggs.  (It is when female iguanas have
their almost-ready eggs in tow that they are considered a delicacy.)

            But we did not eat it/them that night.  Mario decided that since
it might not agree with me on the eve of our outing to Granada and the
Masaya Volcano, we would eat something safer.  But it turned out to be not
that safe.  We had frijoles and yucca -- that´s fine, but the arroz was
fried in what seemed an excessive amount of oil.  And the cheese was fried.
The cheese here is OK, white and grainy, tasting smoked, but queso frito is
my idea of overkill.  And then, Doña Amanda, making sure I knew that she was
offering me a bottle of their version of ketchup, poured a handful into her
palm, so I could see, then poured most of it back into the bottle, licking
up the rest.  Not wanting to seem impolite, I used some ketsup on my
frijoles.  Who knows the mysteries of cause and effect, but later that
evening I suffered my first serious intestinal upheaval, which worried me
because of the trip the next day.  Possibly having two tall glasses of water
with powdered Gatorade didn´t help, or perhaps it saved me, along with Pepto
Bismol provided by Mario, and Rosauer’s finest preventative, which I started
taking at midnight.

            The next day, a little shaky but solid, I went off with Ana and
five school principals, including Mario.  Our trip took us to four
spectacular places.  As guest of honor I got the front seat next to a very
excellent and amiable driver, who looked a lot like Morgan Freeman and who
was the second person here to guess that I am German.  He excelled at
avoiding potholes, whose number is legion on some roads, and bicyclists, who
ride often on the edge of the none-too-wide roads.

            First we drove to the Masayo Volcanic National Park.  The Masaya
volcano is one of several active volcanoes in Nicaragua, and you can drive
right up to the rim, get out of the car, and walk 20 yards to find yourself
looking down into a crater with vertical walls and smoke rising from the
bottom.  It´s maybe 400 yards in diameter and 300 yards straight down, and
some days, I´m told, you can see the red magma at the bottom.  I´ve never
looked down into a live volcano before.  Its last big eruption was about a
century ago.  The first Spanish priest who arrived here, in the 1520s, had a
cross erected at the top of the hill nearby, where we couldn´t go because
it´s supposed to be dangerous just now; the cross was to mock Satan, or keep
him down there among the flames.

            Next we saw Granada, one of the main tourist cities.  There´s no
Alhambra here, but some charming Spanish-colonial public buildings and a
lovely, not imposing cathedral.  And last weekend, I read in the newspapers,
they had an international festival of poetry.  Only Bob Wrigley would want
to be there more than I.

            Digression:  Here´s a Nicaraguan paradox.  1) It is a nation
that prides itself on its poetry.  You see that in various ways, including
all sorts of reference to its great modernist poet Ruben Dario.  Friday when
my 


 

school gave me a special show for (delayed) Valentine´s Day, interspersed
among the dancers were two students who had memorized and recited poems, and
did it very dramatically and well; 2) It is not a nation of readers.  Even
Ana and Mario, professional educators, have no books around the house
(unless they keep them in the bedroom).  And the light for reading in the
house is minimal at best.  There are no tables where you can PUT a book,
except one with a Bible on it, always opened to the same page except when
the wind blows through the room.  For a whole week I saw no newspapers
anywhere in town.  There is no public library.  BUT in Catarina, coming up
later on the tour, there is a public library.  Wonder what it would take,
and whether it would be worth it, to create one in Villa El Carmen.

            Next we went to the near shore of Lake Cocibolca (also known as
Lake Nicaragua), which MAY be (I´m not sure) the world´s largest fresh-water
lake, but anyway it´s big and it´s the one with the unique fresh-water
sharks, Chris.  We took a lancha, a tourist boat, around the small islands,
isletas, along this shore.  Here I discovered what the very rich do in
Nicaragua:  they buy small islands and build paradisal houses on them.
Americans would build bigger but grosser.  For me, though, the main thrill
of this trip was the large number of huge white birds that lined the shore.
Herons, egrets?, at least one pelican -- we pass within 40 yards of them and
they pose.  Also cormorants and some kind of duck, but no gulls in sight.

            Finally we climbed up to Catarina, a tourist town that sits on
the edge of a hill from which you look down to a crater lake whose beauty at
least equals Oregon´s Crater Lake -- is not so round but bigger, just as
blue, and you see it from WAY above.  On its shores, just one building.  On
its surface, just one small sailboat in all that blue.  Beyond the lake, the
buildings of Granada and beyond that, the shore of Cocibolca.

            On the drive home, “Morgan” played the same CD of songs nonstop
and loud, and I was in the front seat.  But I liked it, for a while, and
some of the songs I liked a lot, especially one called UN BESO Y UNA FLOR,
sung by a Spaniard:  you know because when he hits that most common of words
in Spanish-language love songs, it comes out “coraTHON.”  Nevertheless,
three hours is a bit much at full blast while dodging bicyclists, and I was
glad to be nearing the end even though I knew were were approaching the
iguana and her 33 eggs.  Ultimately I ate, without serious damage, one egg
(they are half the size of a chicken egg and have soft membranous shells)
and what I thought was a leg.  It turned out to be the tail.  The meat is
OK, like a tough chicken.  I didn´t like the sauce that permeated the rice,
though; it had the taste of lizard, somehow.

            Thanks for your patience, or your ability to skim.

            Dave

 


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