Nicaragua so far

Another country, another currency, another accent, though the same language thank god. It feels like I'm back to reality here in Nicaragua, well back in Latin America at least.

Apparently its the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, just behind Haiti. And that's easy to believe. But despite being incredibly poor, it definitely has a certain charm to it; the locals travel into town by horse and cart to carry their products to the markets, everyone rides around on bicycles, and particularly here in Granada, the preservation of the colonial buildings gives it that unique ambiance (I never thought I'd use that word) giving you the impression its the 1930`s.

Downtown Granada

Local returning from the market in Rivas

Though people really do struggle to get by here; even those with employment, trying to make something of themselves have a hard time. Speaking to some university students here, they tell me of the fees they have to pay not only for each lecture, but the huge amount just for the certificate at the end of the course to prove they have passed, without which the degree is worthless. These huge amounts of money are really just around 50 USD, which seem like nothing, but that really takes a long time to save that money if you`re working in an unskilled job here (its amazing what you can buy for 3 English pence). Some of the guys working on the streets, just hussling tourists really, told me they cannot get a job because they have no identity papers, and they have no identity papers because you have to pay for them - like you have to pay for identity papers to live in your own country?! And it was an amount that these people just couldn`t afford, though whether that was actually the full story I'm not sure.

The general lack of education amongst the population is really evident. Most kids don`t go to school, and if you visit some of the poorer towns around Granada like Masaya, you can see the really dirty conditions that people live in.

Kids playing in the market in Masaya

So I have had just about a week so far in Nicaragua, mostly around Granada, taking a few more Spanish lessons and making some trips around the area. The next move is to head out to the Corn Islands with some fellow travellers, and then travel up the Carribean coast, where apparently there are some indiginous communities and unexplored territory, its not clear if there is a means to travel up the coast (there are no roads out there), so nothings certain.

Turista Rica

Well I have had a week in Costa Rica now... and wow, what a difference to Venezuela. After spending 2 months in a country where I barely saw a westerner, to this place, where the gringos out number the locals on the buses. My opinion of Costa Rica isn't great unfortunately, which is why I'm heading for Nicaragua this afternoon.

Costa Rica (or Turista Rica as I've started to call it) has sold itself for tourism; for North American tourism. In some of the tourist hot spots its hard to imagine you are in Latin America at all - you can pay everywhere using US dollars (as well as the local currency of course), English is spoken everywhere, and the streets are full of 4 x 4 rental cars, American style fast food restaurants and hotels. A lot of the countryside is now covered in resort style hotels, and you can see countless more being constructed. On the coast, there's one word on everyone's lips; "real estate", as you see billboards advertising plots of land for sale everywhere. I guess this place has become for North Americans, what the Costa del Sol has become for the Brits, a cheap place to have a holiday home with great weather and beaches.

Costa Rica has really embraced tourism, which in a way is great for the economy of the country; they've made their country really accessible to the middle class tourist, who pop down for a week or two, hire a car, stay in nice hotels etc. They've skipped the whole 'backpacker' tourist thing, where everyone's on a budget, staying in cheap hostels and travelling on buses. But I feel this has come at a price. Its hard to see what the 'real' Costa Rica is like, and the locals don't always seem particularly welcome to the ignorant and often rude tourists that seem to come here. Which is another thing, the tourists that you constantly bump in to here, are not what you would call culturally aware, they are here for the cheap holiday in the sun and are really not interested in anything more. The locals seemed fed up and irritated with the tourists, I didn`t get a smile from any of the local people, especially those serving in restaurants etc. I was just another gringo...

And there is also the issue of sex tourism in Costa Rica; prostitution is legal here, which has of course attracted the wrong kind of tourist seeking the wrong kind of thing. When you arrive in the airport in San Josè you are constantly bombarded with billboards in English reminding you that it is illegal to have sex with under 18`s.

But Costa Rica does seem to be a naturally beautiful country, and I'm sure I could enjoy more if I tried and explored a bit more, maybe. Though its not the kind of place I'm looking for at the moment, so I don't want to waste anymore time here.

Roraima Tepui

My main target after leaving Mèrida was to climb the Roraima Tepui, the biggest and most famous table top mountain in Venezuela. Roraima, is of course in the middle of nowhere, the nearest town is situated in the very south east of Venezuela on the border with Brazil. So this is where I headed to try and join an expedition to climb Roraima. My German philosopher friend was heading in the same direction, but luckily I left Puerto Ayacucho before him to avoid being stuck with his stressful rantings for the next week.

Roraima and Kukenùn Tepuis

I managed to arrive in time to join an expedition that was just leaving. An expedition to the top of Roraima goes something like this. Its a 2 hour jeep journey from the nearest town across dirt tracks through Dartmoor like wilderness. You then have two days walking ascending to the base of the wall of Roraima,

a day to climb the wall (which includes climbing up through cloud forest, scrambling up rocks under a waterfall and then clambering up the path of a small river),

We made our way up under that waterfall and up the slope to its left

The cloud forest reached up to the wall of the Tepui

a couple of days exploring the top, and a day or two to descend.



The top of Roraima, which is about 10 square miles, is a very unique place due the altitude (2700 metres), the constant swirling clouds that engulf it at least once a day, and its sheer remoteness and contrast in climate from the surrounding terrain. There are apparently 1000 endemic plant species, and about 4 endemic animal species there (a couple of small frogs and some worms). It really did feel like we were on a different planet.

There were 8 of us who made the trip; 2 Swedish, an Italian, 3 Germans and a Norwegian - a truly European effort. Everyone got on really well, which was good as we spent 6 days together, and it was nice to speak a little English again.

Cornwall, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Germany, Germany, Norway

You can check out all my photos from the trip here.

After Roraima, I think all but two us were decided that some days relaxing on a warm beach were in order, so we all headed to the coast. Which is where I`ve been for the past few days. Now I am preparing (ish) for Costa Rica - I fly Friday. At the moment I plan to stay there for maybe a month, taking some more Spanish lessons and getting to know the country, and then making my way north.

I hope you are all getting on ok back home - it must be almost Spring in the UK right? Its always great to hear anyones news, so any emails are gratefully received, and if you want to plan any summer holidays - how about meeting me in Mexico or Cuba?

Best wishes to everyone.

Trev.

Puerto Ayacucho

Ok, I will try and write some posts on what I`ve been doing in the past couple of weeks; I`m trying not to spend most of my time in internet cafès, which is why I haven`t always kept this thing up to date, and so I apologise if I don`t always get around to replying to anyones emails that promptly.

Puerto Ayacucho

After leaving Mèrida in the Andes in the west of Venezuela, I made my way east across the south of the country. After about 20 hours of bus journeys through the middle of nowhere (this country is really big), I ended up in a town called Puerto Ayacucho, which is kind of situated on the edge of the rainforest. And this place really was in the middle of nowhere, like you can travel for hundreds of miles in this country across flat, featureless terrain and not see a soul or a house, and Puerto Ayacucho seemed to be, well, it actually was at the end of a very long road, which just stopped when no one could be bothered to live any further into the middle of nowhere (kind of like Truro, but with good weather).

20 hours driving through this

It was sooo hot there, I was sweating like.. well, like a Cornishman in the Amazon, and apparently it gets up to 50 degrees in April. I wasn`t planning on staying long there, but I ended up staying for a few days and had an interesting time. There was a company offering tours into the Amazon, although unfortunately there seemed to be only two tourists in town - not enough to make a tour. And in meeting the other tourist, I think I met my opposite. He was an unemployed German philosopher, which is beside the point really, but worth mentioning. Anyway, he had 3 guide books and photocopies of pages of a fourth, and he had a note book where he had planned each part of his trip down to the last detail, including special hand drawn maps of everything. He had a backup plan for each part of the trip in case things didn`t work out, and then, he had backup plan for his backup plan. He couldn`t quite understand how I managed by deciding what I do from day to day.

Anyway, I spent my time there talking with some of the locals, drinking ice cold orange juice, sweating, and visiting some of the sites. One of these included some big rocks (I would call them hills) just outside of town.


There was like a forest park office nearby, where 5 park officers worked. After climbing the rocks I spent the rest of the day hanging out with these guys, talking about politics and Venezuelan women. They had such an easy job; it consisted of either lying or sitting on a bench in the shade whilst chatting and sleeping. Alot of people are poor here, but for most of them, its not as if they work that hard. After we had all had a siesta, we headed into town for what turned out to be a pub crawl. The bars they have here are different to Europe. There is a brand of lager called Polar Beer (which is actually quite a clever name when thinking in English), and there is a type of Polar Beer called Polar light, and alot of the bars in Venezuela, especially in Puerto Ayacucho, ONLY sell bottles of Polar light (which has a taste close to water, but is served so cold it has bits of ice in it), this makes everything rather simple, for the customer and for the bar staff - these bars are just rooms with a couple of big fridges and some picnic tables.

It turned out one of the guys was actually from an indigenous comunity situated about 20 minutes out of town, and he asked me if I was interested to visit his village. Of course I jumped at the chance; I was expecting some jungle tribe with spikes through their noses and ears, and only leaves covering the essentials. Sadly this wasn`t the case; the indiginous community was just an incredibly poor version of the suburbs of Puerto Ayacucho, the people lived in one room concrete houses, wearing old tatered western clothes and had little else. It seemed they had lost a lot of their traditions, although their native language was still strong - most could speak both Spanish and their native language.