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(1) into Nicaragua

(2) Nicaragua, an unthought-of tourist country

(3) A Volcano Island in the Lake

1. (1) into Nicaragua

During this journey, I often heard from the local people that Japanese are intelligent and decent. Apart from this "intelligent", I have recently come to understand the other word "decent" is very important. For, decency is related with human value gained by his / her philosophy or ethics. The reputation of this kind is given to the Japanese or their offspring who have lived in these countries. During a large part of the six months in Honduras, I stayed in a small town, Santa Barbara. I had Japanese food at a Japanese restaurant "Sakura" every night. In the restaurant I met three Japanese of the Japanese Peace Corps who also came to have Japanese food. Two of the three were Nakajima and Ota. They were young, but the other was 46, whose name was Inamoto. All of them were well qualified for the reputation of "intelligent and decent", but unfortunately all men. In January, the sky was clear on New Year's Day, but later the weather was bad for the following one week. As I don't like riding in the rain, I left Santa Barbara for Nicaragua on a day when it stopped raining three days before my schedule. I arrived at El Paraiso, a border town between Honduras and Nicaragua on the 13th of January. It was a small town of nothing special and I was thinking about leaving the following day, although I still had permission to stay till the 17th. When I talked with the owner of the hotel on that night, he told me there was a Japanese woman living in the town. She was supposed to be a member of the Japanese Peace Corps. I said, "I want to see her", then he answered, "I will tell her when I see her walking on the street in front of the hotel". Later I went back to my room and kept working with the PC to repair the malfunction of mailing software till six in the morning. At noon I was awaken by a knock of the door, saying "There is a phone call for you". The person on the line was a Japanese woman.

Her name was Naoko Wada. She was from Kagoshima, Japan and in fact a member of the Japanese Peace Corps. She had been teaching piano for an year and a half and had half an year left for her cooperation. She looked to be 22 - 23 years old to me, but she would soon be 27. Besides piano, she was planning to open a cozy coffee shop in the town in cooperation with the US Peace Corps. I joined the meeting. Her Spanish was perfect. I, on the other hand, hardly understood their conversation even after traveling in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries for a year and two months. I thought I would have to work with the local people after all. I was deeply impressed by her brightness and the beauty arising from her intelligence, when I listened to her speaking excellently to other people. In addition, she was a good-looking woman. The women in Central America are, in most cases, most beautiful in their age between 15 and 20. After 20 their wonderful appearance are rapidly degraded and in thirties their belly becomes more prominent than the breasts. On the contrary, I suppose not a few Japanese women increase their beauty toward 30. Does this result from something beautiful in their inner world? The encounter with her made me extend my stay in El Paraiso by two days. She cooked Japanese food for me for two nights. She was also a gentle woman. It is highly understandable that local people evaluate Japanese as "intelligent and decent". Concerning the Japanese Peace Corps as well as that of the US, I believe that their cultural exchange through the communication with the local people and the resultant mutual understanding are more important than the successful results of their cooperation. I thought I would have to make sure not to spoil the good reputation like this though a mare traveler.

I have once visited Honduras before, but Nicaragua and the countries in its south are unknown world to me. This journey begins, in this sense, from now. Nicaragua is a country where Michael, my old friend in California, volunteered for the medical cooperation about twenty years ago. The monthly reports on his activity were sent to me by way of the US. In those days he also sent me a book, "Where there is no doctor". The book insisted that not modern medicine but medical care suitable to the land should be given. I happened to find the Spanish edition of this book in the library of the Culture Center of El Paraiso where Naoko works. I felt like meeting Michael in his younger days. A mountain road lasted in the area around the border. I was heading south to Ocotal, the nearest town from the border, to get a shelter from the rain. I saw a traffic sign "Somoto" at the entrance of the branch road to the east. I remembered I had read the name in Michael's reports. Then, the Sandinistas destroyed the long-term dictatorship of the Somoza family and were promoting their revolution. The area must have been the place where Michael kept devoting himself to the cooperation, fearing the possible attack from the Contras, the counterrevolutionary military groups that were supported by the US and sent from Honduras. I also remembered that during the same period, our Asia-Africa-Latin America Affiliation Committee, where I learnt Spanish then, sent bicycles to Nicaragua as an international aid. Are those bicycles still in use, although it was a long time ago? As the mountains following the Rocky Mountains lower their elevation in the further south, the prices of things become lower and lower in Mexico, Guatemala and then El Salvador. Finally in Honduras the charge of a cheap hotel has become US$5 to 6 a night. The charge is almost the same in Nicaragua. To have low prices of things is good for tourists, but this means the local people are poor. In Nicaragua the number of beggars increased. And, they are not only children, but also adults. If El Salvador is a country of prostitutes and Honduras of AIDS, then Nicaragua might be a country of beggars. I hear the prices will be higher in Costa Rica in the south. I think I want to stay longer in this inexpensive country, but unfortunately I was given a permission to stay for only a month. In the beginning of August of the last year I arrived at Santa Barbara. The town was in the rainy season, however, it had shower only for an hour in the evening or the night. In December, the rain began to fall even in the morning or in the afternoon. It is written that on the Caribbean coast it rains all the year around, but that the wettest months are from September to January or February. In the beginning of January I made a 4-day trip to Ceiba on the coast. I left the bike and took a bus. I was right. It kept raining. Santa Barbara is closer to the Caribbean Sea and the town is affected more by its weather. It rained almost every day like a rainy season in Japan. Besides, the temperature rapidly dropped in October and I had to use a sleeping bag at night. I left Santa Barbara under the rain cloud and rode three and a half hours toward the Pacific Ocean to Tegucigalpa. The weather suddenly cleared up in the capital on the top of the mountain range. Coming down to the Pacific coast in Nicaragua, I found myself under the scorching tropical sun. There is no possibility of rain. The distance between the two coasts is short, however, it is a dry season on the Pacific. And it is hot. I wear only underpants in the hotel room. Without the ceiling fan, I can't sleep. I have come again to the place where I badly need beer.

I will be in Nicaragua for a month and then maybe will take more time in Costa Rica or in Panama. Probably I will fly with the BMW to Columbia by May. Looking on the map, Pan American Highway keeps going through the low land along the Pacific to Panama City with only exception of San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica with an elevation of 1150 m. There is no worry about rainy weather and the cold shower at a cheap hotel anymore. My physical condition was not perfect because of a slight cold, but it has recovered thanks to this hot climate. During the five months in Santa Barbara my speaking ability of Spanish was a little improved. I left, by the way, unnecessary things and books in Taichiro's place, including the textbooks of Spanish and HTML, which I had copied into a CD-R by a scanner that Taichiro bought. So my luggage is a little lighter than before. In Santa Barbara I found a way to connect my computer with LAN to make a direct access to the server of AOL, and I can now send emails in several minutes from any cibercafe. In addition, I got a valuable piece of information in Santa Barbara. On the Internet I came to know the two riders from Japan, Doiura and Iwabuchi, who are both traveling by motorcycle around American Continents. They wrote to me in the emails that the "carnet" (a certificate to import a vehicle at no cost) is not necessary in South America. I felt a little easy, because it is written Columbia and some other countries in South America require it. My partner BMW, which I have never taken care of, is in good condition as usual. I am now ready to go to the unknown world.

1. (2) Nicaragua, an unthought-of tourist country

Managua, the capital of Nicaragua is located nearly on the midpoint of the Pan-American Highway that crosses the country near the Pacific coast. One million out of the whole population of 5.2 million live in this capital. In comparison with the capitals of other countries that I have ridden south from Mexico, this largest city in Nicaragua doesn't keep the remnants of the colonial days. It is a new city as if sprawl occurred. Originally Leon, 100 km northwest of Managua, was the capital of the country. To have a compromissary solution to the conflict between liberal Leon and conservative Granada, 170 km southeast from Leon, Managua was constructed as a capital between the two cities in 1857, which was close to the end of the Feudal Era of Tokugawa in Japan. Afterwards, a violent earthquake destroyed the city in 1931 and 1972. Probably from this reason, the area with hotels for the tourists from the world close to the bus station of Tica Bus traveling all through Central America looked like a quiet residential area in a country town. In the neighborhood there were a few shops and the restaurants didn't have their nameboards. I didn't feel like being in a capital. I never visited the capital like this before. In return, thanks to more green it is said that iguanas walk around the city in a matter-of course way.As well as in Honduras, fortunately everything is inexpensive in Nicaragua. The hotel where I stayed in Managua charged only US$3.3 a night. I met Kandori, a university student from Osaka. Against my anticipation he traveled not by motorcycle, but bus. He told me that he had taken a one-and-a-half-year leave of absence to make a trip to India, Nepal and some Asian countries before. He started this travel to Central America in the middle of November last year and will stay long in Cuba till the beginning of April when gets a job. He bought a six-month-open round-trip ticket to the West Coast of the US for $500. 30 years ago, I made a trip to a foreign country for the first time and the ticket to Europe cost me $2000. I had to pay more than four-month salary only for the ticket. It is unbelievably inexpensive to go abroad now. He told me that his budget for his trip was $10 a day, but that he had spent around $12. He will get a job at a company in April. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to travel anymore if he was assigned to work in Tokyo where things are too expensive to save money. I drank and talked to him till 12:30 at midnight.

The following morning I had a hangover as usual. I had received an email before from Inamoto, a senior member of the Japanese Peace Corps whom I met in Honduras. He suggested me to see Mr. Kuzasa, his friend from Kyoto, who is a very interesting man with casual atmosphere even though he works for the Japanese Embassy in Managua. I kept calling him at the embassy from past one to before five in the evening and finally caught him at the fifth call. He soon came to see me at my hotel by car. The car he drove was unusual. It was a box-shaped car with an 800-cc engine and designed for the very practical use with six seats. He treated me with Japanese food at his home. He had been staying in Central America for 20 years and his background was as unusual as his friend Inamoto. After finishing the graduate school at the Fishery Department of Hokkaido University, he took a job with the Prefectural Government of Hokkaido. About three years later he left there and came to Honduras as a member of the Japanese Peace Corps when he was 27. He got married to a local woman and he is now a father of seven children. He moved to Nicaragua four years ago. At the embassy he is now responsible for the construction of schools and hospitals in Nicaragua. His house in Managua is big. He lives in such a big house that only rich men can enjoy in Japan. He told me he had had a ranch in Honduras. He still has another house as large as 3,300 square meters. He hopes to sell it for more than $250,000. This is really a great sum of money in this country. The interest of Nicaraguan banks is around 10 %. He could live a life of luxury only on the interest in Nicaragua where the average income of the people is $85 - 125. On that night I drank and talked with Kuzasa till two in the morning. On account of hangover I slept till nine in the morning. When I got up, he was gone to the embassy. This is the very difference between him and lazy me. His daughter of 14 was waiting with breakfast prepared for me. However, I couldn't eat anything and only had orange juice. It was absolutely delicious. One of the sons took me off to the street where I could catch a taxi. They were all good children. Which is the reason of this, the good education system of this country or good education by Kuzasa?

Leon and Granada, having the capital Managua in between, are both old and small cities. Leon has a population of 142,000 and Granada of 85,000. In both cities old buildings from the colonial days are conserved. Probably to see it, tourists from the world visit the two cities. Nicaragua gives rather a dark impression, because it had a civil war by the revolutionary Sandinistas and later suffered from the bitter war against the Contras sent by the USA from its neighboring countries. I found it a little surprising that the country has, nevertheless, lots of tourists、while there were not many tourists in El Salvador or Honduras. Kuzasa in Managua told me that among the members of the Japanese Peace Corps who had finished their cooperation in Nicaragua and Honduras, more people came back to Nicaragua as a tourist than to Honduras. Mayan ruins that are found far into Honduras don't exist in Nicaragua anymore. The prices of things are not lower, but roughly the same as in El Salvador and Honduras. There are not so many beautiful women in this country as in Santa Barbara in Honduras. In addition, it's hot here. It cannot be said that the people here are exceedingly friendly. Under the condition like this, why are there so many foreign tourists in this country? It is surely true that Leon and Granada still keep colonial buildings. However, do tourists visit only for this reason? Or, is it because Nicaragua has the large Lake Nicaragua, the only lake in the world where freshwater sharks swim around? Unfortunately, the water of this lake is not clear because the tide stirs up the mud on the bottom of the lake. I don't feel like swimming even if it is scorchingly hot. I am not saying this because I am afraid of the shirks. It is written that the shirks have lost the population and as a result rarely seen. Or, is it because Nicaragua is a little safer than the other two countries mentioned before? Or, do the tourists want to see what has happened in the end by the Sandinista revolution? I don't know well, but lots of tourists are walking around especially in Granada. Probably due to the influence of tourism, there are restaurants that give the bill including a tip or sometimes ask an obligatory tip.

Nowadays I see more couples among the young men and women who travel in the world. During the hippie age when I made the first foreign trip 30 years ago, most were single travelers and the men often wore long hair. Strangely, not a few of the men who now travel with a woman also have long hair. Besides, most of the travelers including women now smoke a cigarette, instead of marijuana smoked before, in this worldwide strict non-smoking age. They probably miss smoking badly in their own countries. There is another change from those days. More travelers of today, including men and women, adorn themselves with tattoos and a nose ring that is popular among Indian women. And, somehow the women look stronger than the men. The world has changed. It must be a worldwide tendency, not only in Japan, that among the young, women have become comparatively stronger than men who have lost mental energy. Relatively more women travel in a group with the same sex. I guess they do this because of security. There is a rumor that dead bodies are found on the streets every morning in the dangerous big cities of Honduras. However, I remember I didn't feel any danger and enjoyed the nightlife till midnight when I visited there 25 years ago. Is it due to security or due to the result of the conservatization of their mind, evading an adventure or an encounter with other unknown travelers and seeking only for stability, that young people travel in a group? I feel jealous of those young couples, but on the other hand I find something missing in them as a lone traveler who fantasize a trip into the hippie world after many years.

Mountain ranges end and a flat land extends both at the narrowest part of Mexico and in the area near Lake Nicaragua. Probably because of this, the wind is strong. In Mexico I was scared by the cross wind trying to blow the bike away. The riding near the lake was also difficult. In the area near Rivas, a border town to Costa Rica, a 20km land trip brings you to the Pacific after your sailing upstream to Lake Nicaragua from the Atlantic. This part of the country was used for crossing the American Continents before the construction of the Panama Canal. I took a ferry to Ometepe from a port near Rivas. It was an hour sailing. The small ferry pitched and rolled by the high waves caused by the strong wind flowing over the lake as large as the sea. I was worrying about my bike that was not well tied by the rope.The hotels in the island were all inexpensive. The charge was only US$2. It was the most inexpensive during this journey. In return, there was not a bathroom in the room. In Granada facing Lake Nicaragua in the north, I also stayed in a hotel room only with a bed paying $5. As it was hot, however, I neither felt like pissing so often nor found it so inconvenient to take a shower thanks to fewer clothes. Two scorpions came out in the hotel of Granada and I felt uneasy, but in the island, strangely enough, even mosquitoes weren't seen. It was cool at night and I didn't need an electric fan. However, the room of the hotel was so small that I couldn't find enough room for the luggage, and the small bed had the width of shoulders. So, when I saw the room, I asked the owner of the hotel if he knew some other hotel with a parking space. He willingly gave me the information of other hotel. I was surprised and at the same time impressed by his kindness that would result in the loss of his income. As the parking of the other hotel was not close to the room, I didn't move there in the end. I didn't want to carry my heavy luggage from the parking away. A motorcycle trip places restrictions on the selection of hotels.

I had supper at a restaurant of a cheap hotel nearby. The hotel was better than my hotel in spite of the same price. So, there were more guests. But unfortunately there wasn't a parking. I met two women from Quebec, Canada at the supper. One of them asked me if I missed Japan in the long trip. My answer was definitely "No". To tell the truth, before I left Japan, it worried me a bit that I would be in a mental slump after traveling for half a year or one year. It never happened at all. What I miss about Japan is solely its hot spring resorts.

After supper I went back to the hotel at ten. I was afraid that the gate would be locked, but it was open. All the rooms were unlit. I was the only visitor. I hadn't seen any names in the visitor's book during the preceding one month. I felt as if I was staying in a big house although my room was small. My BMW was parked in the hotel entry as large as a gymnasium in front of my room. Without anyone, it was absolutely secure. I didn't have to lock the door when I went to the shared bathroom. I remembered the easy life of the secure Japanese society where a lock is not necessary. Security is really important in Central America. It is true that the room was small, but it was better than a tent. The room had electricity and even an electric fan. However, there were some inconveniences as it was not a luxury hotel. Because there was not a pillow on the bed, I used a bag packed with dirty laundry instead. When I got undressed for shower, the water didn't come out. Because there was no light in the bathroom, I had to carry a flashlight when pissing. It was like a campground. Nevertheless, I had the absolute luxury to drink rum of $6.5 per 1.75 litter and to smoke a cigarette of 65 cents a pack, listening the songs by Mariko Takahashi.

Returning the town, after supper I met, for the second time, Udo, a young motorcycle traveler from Germany who had stayed in the same cheap hotel in Granada. When he was drinking with Edward, another rider from Texas in the US who will go to the southern end of South America on a BMW-F650, in a restaurant across the street, he found me who came out of the other restaurant. Udo is also making a motorcycle trip and has been on the road since he left Germany two years ago. He has traveled all around South America by a Triuｍph-850 and is now heading north. He is taking a reverse route to mine. He took a ferry from Portugal to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Maybe I will take the same ferry. I was leaving the island as the permission to stay in Nicaragua would expire soon. To catch a 12:30 ferry, I rode to the ferry port before noon. Udo soon came there to see me off. I waited for the ferry after saying goodbye to him. The ferry didn't arrive at four when the next one was planed to leave. While waiting, I talked with a middle-aged local man who has motorcycles and lives in the island. According to him, the ferry was late because a truck carrying a full load of bananas rolled over on the ferry. On that day my stomach was in a bad condition after a long time and I was feeling like throwing up. He bought me a sort of hot soup made of milk with ingredients of wheat flour and herb for my bad stomach. Instead of begging, he gave alms to a man who has probably more money than himself. The life of the people in the island seemed to be poor, but the mind of them was rich. We waited for the ferry, talking about the political situation of the world or the economic condition of Japan. I was able to understand his Spanish comparatively well. I gained a little more self-confidence. Under the circumstances, the time waiting for the ferry turned to be a good Spanish lesson. As I was informed that the ferry would leave at six in the evening, I went back to the hotel at five expecting to take a ferry of the following day. The public transportation of the island including buses and ferries is not reliable.

But, bad luck invited good luck again. I went to the usual restaurant and happened to see Astrid, a Dutch woman whom I had met on the previous night. We had supper together. She is also a government worker who likes traveling. Talking to her, I came to know that she chooses a long vacation rather than her promotion as I did in Japan. However, she takes four months while I took a month. I found a big gap between Europe and Japan. She is from a multilingual country. She can speak five languages including English. However, we spoke in Spanish that is never easy to both of us. Recently the common language between the tourists from the West and me in Latin America has become Spanish rather than English. As this is a part of the world where Spanish is spoken, Spanish is, needless to say, better than English as a common language. But, I feel sad it is not Esperanto.

Motorcycle trip is really convenient because you can go to any place at any time if you don't make a mistake. But on the other hand, you don't have any partner to talk to, and you can hardly expect a happening if you ride well according to your good plan. I took a bus and a ferry in the island. And, happenings occurred. But, they brought me good results instead. Without mistakes or accidents, traveling might be boring.