Spanish lessons and religion in Leon

The first of my three weeks' leave in Nicaragua was in the old colonial city - and former capital - of León. I'd arranged a week with a Spanish school, staying with a local family so as to get a better feel for the place as well as more opportunities to practice my Spanish. The lessons went reasonably well although the teacher was more keen to teach me grammar than to give me the conversation practice I wanted.  On the fourth day she was settling down to teach me how to conjugate the pluperfect subjunctive when I rebelled, and just refused to listen!  Perhaps it is an important tense in Spanish, but as I can´t yet communicate in simple terms what I did yesterday, I felt that this was just going too far!

Outside of the lessons, I spent a lot of time just wandering around the city.  León played a major role in the Sandinista revolution, and something about its characterisation as a place of left-wing revolutionary intellectuals appealed to me.  The Sandinista side of its history was certainly evident, from the murals (and graffiti) around the city to the Revolutionary War Museum.  What presented itself even more strongly however was the religious fervour of the place.  The city contains many beautiful churches, and its cathedral is the largest in Central America.  There always seemed to be church services going on and they were always full of people.

The end of my stay coincided with a local festival, the 'Chiquita Gritería'.  This commemorates the time when a local volcano was erupting and covering the city with ash, and a local priest decide to cry out to the Virgin Mary to make it stop, which miraculously (or coincidentally), it did.  There is a mass in the cathedral and a loud cry to Mary, followed by the whirling of some papier mache giant figures in the central square.  Then the townspeople, plus many peasants bussed in from the surrounding countryside for the occasion, tour the city collecting free sweets from houses and businesses who have decided to participate.  You can tell these because each has prepared a tableau in their front room with a statuette of the Virgin Mary with the blue Nicaraguan flag draped around her, and music will be blaring out from the property.



The photo here is one of the more impressive ones, which even includes an erupting volcano.  The people touring the city go up to each such house and ask through the open door/window, "Quien causa tanta alegría?" (who is causing such happiness?), to which the answer comes back, "La asunción de Maria!" and sweets are duly handed out.  Although I found the tableaux pretty tasteless, in some ways this seemed like a nice, social custom that got everyone out greeting their neighbours, but I did notice that some of the peasants looked suspiciously and sadly like this was the only time they would have the luxury of sweets, as they filled carrier bags with as many as they could get their hands on.  Despite the opulence on show in some of the churches, Nicaragua is still a very poor country.

a weekend on the coast

A long weekend on the Pacific coast to relax and hopefully catch some sun had to be postponed in June when I was asked to take on an additional assignment in Egypt, but finally I was on the boat crossing the water to this secluded little lodge in Chiriqui province, my work left behind for a few days.

The lodge (they call themselves a resort, but to me that term implies something much more luxurious) is simple, and quite rustic, but perfectly comfortable.  No air conditioning, wifi only if you ask for the office to be made available to you, and a reliance on solar power means that electricity-guzzling appliances such as hairdryers cannot be used.  The lodge has ten guest rooms in five well-spaced cottages, but for the first couple of days I was the only guest.  So I had all three beaches and all 67 hectares of forest to myself...

Except that I was sharing it with the resident wildlife - the iguanas, white-tailed deer, howler monkeys, vine snakes, hog-nosed vipers, hermit crabs, numerous butterflies, black hawk-eagles, a group of four extremely noisy house wrens, flocks of equally noisy red-lored parrots, and, unfortunately, rather a lot of mosquitoes.  Of course there is other wildlife too that I didn't manage to see - that apparently includes white-faced capuchin monkeys, anteaters, and boa constrictors, amongst others.

I spent a fair amount of time swimming in the sea, and more time swinging in hammocks reading my book, although the rain limited my time sunbathing.  I slept like a log, with the sound of the waves crashing onto a nearby beach sending me to sleep in a way that I wish the traffic noise at home did.  I also ate extremely well, as the owner previously ran several restaurants and bars in the US and could rustle up a mean stuffed courgette followed by pear poached in cream, rum and cinnamon.  Despite all the walking and swimming I suspect I have come home a pound or two heavier.  Certainly, if you can tolerate the mosquitoes, Panama does have some beautiful corners.