Incidents of Travel in Latin America

by Lars Holger Holm

  Typically, the central plaza of Granada houses market activities along with soccer playing youngsters, a representative selection of dogs, cats, horses and birds, old men gathering under the panoply of trees, protected by their sombreros to watch the younger generations criss-crossing the park to and from their schools and work places. No such plaza would be complete without its crew of shoe shiners and food stands. Nor would it be authentic without commercial megaphones announcing everything from ripe avocados to children’s shoes.

  A square not surrounded, or crossed by intense motorcycle and scooter traffic, would be another anomaly. During festive days and hours, music comes out of every corner while adjacent restaurants and bars offer large TV-screens showing sports event, notably European and Latin American soccer games. Many towns take pride in the variety of trees and bushes in their public gardens and the central plaza should have its fair share of trees springing into bloom at various times of the year. Beyond the perimetre of the plaza cobbled streets parading colourful one- or two-storied haciendas, relentlessly absorbing heat and light, stretch out in a straight grid pattern. Behind these walls and barred windows, just like in the ancient Spanish haciendas, there are shaded galleries, tiled loggias, gardens, fountains, flowers, chirping birds and butterflies.

  Nicaragua’s Granada, here being the example under scrutiny, is no exception; the central park, with its tall trees, vending stands and water kiosks, is particularly spacious and inviting. Along the street in front of the Hotel Plaza Colon (what other name would be possible for the town’s flagship?) the horse carts so characteristic of the street picture are lined up waiting for tourists. From this plaza the town reaches out uniformly in all directions with the nearby Calle Atravesada as its always bustling market street. Here the commerce is so lively that it’s hard to blaze a trail through it. Sometimes the best thing is to just follow behind a car trying to make its way through the human thicket. Surprisingly, or typically, vehicles are an integral part of this pedestrian market place, so the honking of horns is a sound background as constant as the vendor’s a million times repeated mantra: ‘A la orden!’ (At your service).

  Over the years I have become acquainted with some of the local hotel and restaurant owners in Granada, although I can’t say that I ever had any real friends there. Moreover, a local owner here is often a person of European or North American extraction, some of whom I have briefly met with before dispersed by the capricious winds of destiny. There was for example the Dutchman of rural background (I did once meet with his peasant parents) running the locally prestigious Hotel el Club. During his tenure, disco nights were still organised on the premises of the hotel but there was no price reduction offered to the hotel guests who had to put up with the noise until early morning. Nonetheless I often stayed in one of the rooms on the second floor at the very back of the hotel, since the noise could be held at bay there by the closing of a door in the corridor. I liked the place, even though the young girls staffing it were a bit inexperienced, not to say simpleminded. But the Dutchman sold the establishment and nowadays the disco nights, according to the hotel website, take place in another though nearby location.

  Then there was Jimmy Threefingers who had ended up in Granada with his two Harley Davidson bikes for reasons unclear to me. He was the rather bohemian owner of another hotel/restaurant/bar in town, and would happily join his guests at the bar for cocktails. His bikes were parked, day and night it seemed to me, in the street outside of the hotel and I naturally asked if he wasn’t afraid that somebody would knock them over or steal them, but he answered ‘They wouldn’t dare’. I said: ‘You’d kill them, eh?’ To this day I have a hard time believing the assurance that followed: supposedly he had never in his life owned a gun and never laid his hand on anybody...

  There are people you could actually believe their saying so. But although Jimmy Threefingers — apart from only have three fingers on his right hand and two Harleys, was indeed a romantic, perhaps even a poetic soul — I was never able to overcome the sensation that part of the explanation for his hiding in this small Nicaraguan town was that he must have been doing time back in the US and now needed a little timeout. This assumption might be completely wrong, even insidious, and I have to say that in his dealings with me he was always kind and generous. Consequently, in connection with my latest trip to Granada, I tried to look up both him and his hotel, but they had vanished so completely that I couldn’t even find the entrance to the building where it had once been located.

  Personnel at a laundry facility further down the street eventually told me that he had gone back to the United States without leaving a physical forwarding address. I tried to send him e-mails to the address he had given me previously, but to no avail. It seems Jimmy again wanted to disappear for a while. But if I know him right, (and I’m not talking about knowing him intimately, only about knowing the impression he made on me) he’s got to be somewhere else in Latin America right now, because that’s where I think he belongs, and I certainly wouldn’t mind running into him somewhere and again shake his three fingers. Besides, his spare ribs and other meats were excellent and I remember him reproaching me, as I wanted to order French fries to go with my my steak: ‘Fries, that’s for kids! You can do better than that!’, where after I ended up with a large portion of haricots verts, prepared with butter and garlic in classical French style.

  Last but not least it was from Jimmy that I learned the background to one of the more melodramatic events taking place during one of my visits to town. Opposite the Centro Cultural Convento San Francisco, in the corner of Calle Cervantes and Calle El Arsenal, there is a gringo style breakfast place called Kathy’s Waffle House, named after the owner’s young and vivacious wife. Since she was in charge of the place all regulars would have met with her and been duly impressed by her beauty, energy, and charisma. In connection with my breakfasts I also frequently met with her husband, an expat Jew from New Orleans with a remarkable marital record. Kathy, not even thirty years old, and thereby fifty years his junior, was his eighth or ninth wife. His last one before Kathy had been a tica (Costa Rican woman) and it was also in Costa Rica he had allegedly spent some time in jail for the possession of marijuana.

  As for now, he would typically sit at one of the terrace tables at Kathy’s, amicably chit-chatting with his guests while always managing to either boast of his wife (her whereabouts or actions) or making sure we were overhearing his telephone conversations with her. I can understand it flattered his ego to have such a perky young woman at his side, but I also felt that he overstated his pride ever so slightly. Like so many men in his age and situation, he seemed to have fallen prey to the common idea that the love and affection of a young woman is not only a natural thing, but something based on a mutual physical and emotional attraction rather than on the attraction that money exerts on beauty. This fatal misunderstanding really was at the root of subsequent events, though I still have a hard time understanding why she had to make the outcome so irrevocable.

  One morning, as I approached Kathy’s Waffle House to have brunch, the building had been cordoned off with black ribbon. Knocking at the door to find out what happened, I was told by an employee, peeping through an ajar door, that there had been an accident. The official story varies slightly depending on whom you listen to. But it’s agreed that Kathy had been found dead by the police in the couple’s bedroom with a big bullet wound in her chest (others say it was her in in her head), fired from her husband’s Taurus Magnum, calibre 357 (another source states it was a Colt). The husband was questioned, but any suspicion of homicide was soon written off as at the time of her death the bedroom door had been locked from the inside and Sandy (the husband) together with somebody else had tried in vain to gain access to it. Also the police only found gunpowder residue only on Kathy’s clothes and not on Sandy’s. Everyone was duly shocked, Sandy apparently more so than anybody else. Nobody seemed to have any idea whatsoever what could have moved thi
s exuberant young woman, a legend in her own time and town, to take her life.

  Sandy’s and Kathy’s marriage, as well as their joint business venture, had all seemed such a perfect illustration of the tale that love knows of no limits and can make even vast differences in age between two lovers immaterial. Then this. It was literally a lightning from a clear blue sky. Kathy’s funeral was held in the Cathedral, her coffin carried to its final resting place by the city’s largest horse carriage adorned with flowers and surrounded by mourners. Her beloved black stallion Lucero, draped with her riding boots and with her sombrero hanging over the saddle, took part in the procession. Kathy’s father, who had organised and paid for the funeral, was heartbroken repeatedly crying out: ‘Kathy, mi hija, mi angel!’ Sandy reportedly shook with deep grief, despairing over his terminal loss. The whole town was on the move, paying her last and enduring respects.

  As said, this is roughly how the drama was presented by some eye witnesses and in the press. Jimmy Threefingers, though, gave me some inside information that helped to explain to some extent why this tragic event had occurred in the first place. According to him, Kathy had entertained a lover during her marriage. She had let him understand that all they needed to do was to wait for the old man to either kick the bucket, or preferably sign over the business to her. After that she could file for divorce and they could get married with some money put aside to provide for future children. As it turned out Sandy unfortunately got wind of Kathy’s illicit relationship and promptly let her know that he had cut her out from his will and transferred ownership of the waffle house bearing Kathy’s name to his daughter, also living in Granada. This draconian gesture apparently so shattered Kathy’s hopes that she saw no other way out of the conundrum than to commit suicide. Whether or not this is the truth, and the whole truth, I can’t guarantee. But Threefingers said — and I do believe him since it was Sandy who on several occasions emphatically had recommended his restaurant to me — that after the funeral, during which Sandy had appeared inconsolable, he and his daughter had spent the evening at Threefingers’ restaurant, eating, drinking, laughing and cheering.

  So much for the old man’s grief. Perhaps having had nine wives had turned him into something of a Knight Bluebeard character, (figuratively speaking) relishing in the fact that every buried wife had been laid to rest in rooms to which only the Knight himself had key and access. Perhaps he was relieved that he never would have to explain to his customers why and how his wife had turned against him. In this way he also freed himself, without the threat of any legal backfire, to seek a tenth wife, unsuspecting of the darker shadows looming in his past. By all means Kathy’s Waffle House, still apparently operating under her name, has changed ownership since. Whether or not the widower is still living in Granada I don’t know. Somehow it would surprise me if he did. My bet is that he was quite happy to get out of there.

  Assuming Threefingers’s story to be largely consistent with truth, I nonetheless find that Sandy could and should have acted differently in order to avoid triggering this melodrama. Being a realist, he could simply have cut his losses, divorced Kathy and reached an agreement. That he took her off his will is understandable. But there really wasn’t anything to prevent him from trying to reach a settlement on mutually acceptable terms. I guess his pride was too hurt for him to consider behaving benevolently towards her. This in turn, as my theory goes, can only be explained by his exaggerated belief in the enduring strength in his own virile powers, whereas he should in my opinion have been old and mature enough to realise that she would never have married him for less than money. As the French moralist Chamfort once stated: female actions directed against males are often the result of vile calculation. In poverty-stricken areas of the world, such as Nicaragua, it doesn’t even take vileness to make the calculus, just a simple will to survive. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Kathy didn’t, and so there must have been some irrationality in her response as well, perhaps a sense of utter abandonment that she couldn’t handle, although she must have understood that her prospects in life were not entirely ruined just because the old geyser didn’t want her any longer. Conclusion: human emotions are a mystery, perhaps not always one that fascinates or merits to be solved, but a mystery all the same.

  Hotel del Pacifico16

  Playa Azul, a stretch of almost-deserted beach some twenty miles to the west of the industrial town and harbour of Lazaro Cardenas, lies at the end of a primitive road on Mexico’s sun-drenched Pacific coast. To the uninitiated eye it seems forlorn. Its thatched beach cafes have something sombre about them, a morose intransigence that says ‘Here we are, here we stays; we’d rather die than change our ways’. In short, there is not very much in the village at Playa Azul to welcome the foreign tourist. When I first alighted there, after a five-hour bus ride through the rough and forbidding hills of the Sierra Madre, I felt like a discus newly released from the hand of a spinning Atlas.

  Although I was the only foreigner here, there was not a single hotel bed to be had in town. All of them had been booked by Mexican holidaymakers intent on spending New Year’s Eve at the seaside. A persistent campaign on my part in one of the hotel lobbies did secure a room for the night, but only on the condition that I vacate it the following day.

  By the time my negotiations were over it was dark outside. Although I had already passed by the Hotel del Pacifico several times, I had considered it only as a last resort. As soon as it was brought home to me that even a last resort was precious, I entered and asked for accommodation. The man at the desk shook his head, and said, reassuringly and with a becoming smile: ‘Come back tomorrow’.

  Tomorrow is too late, I thought, not yet realising the depth of my naïveté. But the next day, when the sun had begun to hammer on the thatched roofs, the palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze, I found myself retracing my steps to the hotel’s plain wooden desk. Again I saw the clerk’s bright smile, as he handed over the keys to a couple of rooms. ‘These are free today’, he said, ‘Take a look around. See which one you like best.’

  I settled for the room nearer to the street. Its window had probably been quite low when the hotel was built. Now, as a result of earthquakes, the building had sunk further into the sand, so that my window was now practically on a level with the pavement. From the small window of my shower and toilet, I could hear every word spoken in the street, and by now the laid-back tones of people’s voices had begun to seduce me.

  There was a ceiling fan in my room, and I took a close look at it. It was encrusted with shells, coral and salt. At first it didn’t work — considering its appearance, it would have been a miracle if it did. Its thick dusty cables, like obscene intestines, were visible through a hole in the low ceiling and at their far end was a very rusty box with six buttons to regulate the fan’s speed. I pressed one after another. Nothing happened. I hammered on the box with my fist. At first the movement was hardly discernible, and it could have been the breeze outside which made the fan’s vanes turn. But soon the rotation became so regular that I was able to rule out this possibility. By the time I turned the speed up to the third level the fan had become an absolutely lethal weapon, furiously circling one and a half inches above head-height. I resolved to turn it off whenever I was moving about the room — one false move with the hand, and…

  The fan went round and round. I opened the window so that there was only the mosquito net between myself and the street. I turned the fan’s speed to maximum, and went outside, leaving the key on its big wooden tag at the unmanned desk. I crossed the street. The sand was sizzling hot, and as fast as I could I got myself into the shade of the canopy of palm leaves. From there I went down to the water’s edge, took a few steps out past the immaculate sand into the warm sea, and was hit by the first enormous wave.

  As I stood on the shore later, feeling the water drip from my hair and face, I saw the façade of the Hotel del Pacifico in its true, immutable aspect. It was perfect: th
e concrete structure with iron scaffolding on its unfinished roof, vacant windows and patches of sun-bleached turquoise paint. In front of it there was the unbroken row of palm-trees, the tall radio mast, and the road facing the beach lined with buildings in various states of disrepair.

  Later, walking eastward along the beach I noticed that the road was coming to an end. Beyond the turning area there were stagnant pools, lizards and a hotel abandoned in mid-construction and never completed, its windows and empty rooms gaping as the rays of the afternoon sun passed right through them. Beyond that point there were no more buildings to be seen. Lazaro Cardenas’ monstrous factories hovered ominously in the distant haze. I continued walking in that direction for some time, but seemed no closer to the city, so decided to turn back before sunset. I found the hotel, went into my room and showered in blissfully tepid water. The fan had already become dear to me, not only because it did its job, but because of its fantastical, encrusted, deep-sea look. It was as if every turn it made told of countless days and nights at sea, stories brought into the room by the untiring winds, an image of the planet itself circling around its moving centre, held in vertical mode by an unimaginable force.

  I put on some comfortable clothes and went down to the beach to eat shrimp and have a couple of Coronas in a restaurant luxurious enough to be lit after dark by a single bulb. With coffee I moved to a chair closer to the sea. And there, in the faint violet and rose light of dusk, the revelation began.