by Randy Denmon
Seismologists say the city remains at a high risk today, the frequency of the big ones roughly fifty years apart. It’s been forty-two years since the ’72 quake, almost the exact time between the ’31 and ’72 quakes. Maybe we could get out of town before the city fell down around us.
• • •
I had some tasks to tend to. Most notably, it was time to refill my pillbox. Have I told the reader that since reaching my forties, my body has started to fall apart? I’ve been lucky in one regard. I often pass for someone in his thirties. On the flip side, I sometimes feel like I’m sixty-five. Yes, there are a lot of miles on me after three decades of sin and pleasure, but you can’t take the organs with you—might as well use them up.
I’m a Southern Baptist, at least by birth, and in fact do have some things in common with Southern Baptists. Southern Baptists like to drink on the back porch. I like to drink on the back and front porches. There are also some major differences. Southern Baptists have some strict social norms. I myself can think of nothing good associated with the word “chastity.”
Have no doubt—I am a Christian. I just believe in a more contemporary type of salvation. I prefer to ask for forgiveness. Actually, if it weren’t for sinners needing to repent, there’d be no need for churches or preachers.
But my liberal lifestyle is beginning to wear on my strong Southern bones, and now, in my mid-forties, the cold reality that I’m mortal is hitting home. Hangovers used to take hours to get over, now they take days. I’ve been to the doctor more in the last few years than the entire first forty.
I dug through the car for my now essential travel companion, something most everybody over eighty has, my two-week pillbox. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. To date, the doctors seem positive, and I’ve felt few effects outside of occasional morning stiffness. My life is generally unchanged except for the daily ritual that is my concoction of pills.
I dumped the last of the tablets in my hand, tossed them in my mouth, and gulped down the remnants of a sixteen-ounce water bottle. The directions with some of the drugs instruct me to consume them with light food. Hell, some of the pills are breakfast, the size of mini-sausage links.
Aside from my official medical conditions, I have the typical problems of most aging men. Even before my diagnosis, just the slightest indulgence packed on the weight. A good, long weekend might add six pounds to my beer- and pizza-belly.
My new dose of steroids daily, though very small, puts fat on me at a new and alarming rate. Merely looking at a cheeseburger adds a pound. Now, anything appetizing adds to my mass at almost the actual weight of the food. A sixteen-ounce sandwich with any trimmings seems to add sixteen ounces to my overblown spare tire.
I live the utterly miserable life of a twenty-year-old runway model: daily exercise, eating like a parrot, and hopping on and off the scales three or four times a day. Try that in Louisiana where everything from shish-kabob to green beans is fried or dipped in some coon-ass sauce that makes butter seem like diet food. Hanky-panky for me nowadays is with my shirt on, at least until the lights are off.
All of this weighs on my mind, though thankfully not constantly, at least not yet. Literally, painfully, I’m getting older, and the reality is I don’t have plenty of years left to do some of the things we’ve all taken for granted. I don’t mean to be fatalistic, but it seems like yesterday I was just out of college, but in the last year alone, I’ve twice had the awkward job of scrolling down my phone’s contacts to delete a name. That takes your breath away.
My body drained, dehydration cramping my calves, my stomach turning woozy from my prescribed snack, I dug around the car for a can of Pringles I’d bought the day before. The bright midday sun reflecting off the white car shot into my eyes. Did I mention my eyes have gone too, probably from decades of staring at a computer screen? I can see next to nothing at less than a foot, and even the mildest light makes me squint. I paraded over beaches and crossed deserts all over the world in my youth and never even knew what sunglasses were until I was forty. Now, I find myself reaching for them in traffic at dusk. What a pansy I’ve become.
• • •
The chips weren’t in the car. Dean’s sorry ass must have eaten them. I didn’t really care. I looked over to a mall beside the hotel, then to the tumultuous streets, a boiling pot of life and energy. Under the thick canopy of green trees and exquisite Spanish buildings, the reinvented Nicaragua displayed itself proudly—urban, but also old-world, decaying and shiny, fast-paced, but not in a hurry. Two old men in Panama hats argued as three tall, curvy Nicaraguan beauties strolled by in high heels, their long, dark hair flowing and their faces partially hidden by big, chic sunshades.
I had time to goof off and relax. I’d go get something to eat, enjoy the Nicas and Managua, fumble around and explore while I could. This time tomorrow, no telling what kind of debacle we might fight through in hopes of getting us and the white sedan down the road.
In Mr. Twain’s Footsteps
By eight the next morning the car was fully charged. The previous evening, the charging had popped another breaker. This really confounded me because it was 40 amps. It was not a big deal, right beside our cord, and I reset it and lowered the charging to 18 amps. The blowing fuses were a good thing, an indication that the power grid had ample safeguards, but they wreaked havoc on our sleep. We were now forever getting up during the night to make sure the car was charging.
The phone interview the evening before with EV World and Bill Moore went well, probably almost an hour. Our story astonished and baffled the EV expert. Bill recorded almost thirty minutes of it and said he would put the story and a podcast up on his web page the next day.
That night, my heart rate settled down for the first time in days, and I had a chance to mull over what we’d accomplished—driving two thousand road-miles south of the United States in an electric car. A part of me couldn’t believe we’d actually made it this far. Barring a wreck or theft, we’d likely make it to Panama. The reality of it all was hard to grasp, my mind numb, the last few weeks like a rush, a dream, something not quite real.
A peaceful calm sank over me as I plotted the next day’s trip. I spent little time trying to figure out how to get out of Managua. The Calle Colon beside the hotel went to Masaya. If we made a wrong turn, we’d just work our way south until we got back on the right road.
Planning for the day’s drive required an approach similar to preparing for a military operation. It doesn’t really matter how much planning you do, as soon as you hit the ground everything goes to pot, and you’re left with a bunch of false assumptions and changing circumstances. Having options available is the best course. In the end, we’d get there like the Army got most of its important things done, with American ingenuity and a can-do spirit. We’d improvise. In our case, we’d just keep going south. That was the only plan, and to date, it appeared to be working.
As I checked out of the hotel, the manager who spoke perfect English, Eduardo, told me the price for the charging was 150 dollars. Actually, this wasn’t that bad after how well we’d been treated—the laundry, the use of the business center, and the hotel posting a guard to watch the car. Considering the pinch we’d been in and applying basic economic laws of supply and demand, 1,000 dollars would have probably been the market value. Still, I decided to haggle a little—150 dollars for 10 dollars worth of electricity was a little over the top.
I produced a big smile. “Eduardo, you’ve been watching too much American TV. I’m not a movie star or internet millionaire. Just a regular American.”
With a shiny bald head and warm grin, he rolled his eyes at me. “What do you think is fair?”
“Only cost about ten dollars in the States.” I motioned to the computer. “Look it up.”
Another young man appeared beside Eduardo, taking interest in the conversation. The two conversed briefly in Spanish.
It was time to pitch in, aid our new Nicaraguan friends in their reinvention—a l
esson in capitalism. I gently slapped my hands together. “How about fifty dollars? I purchased one of the hotel’s suites and have already spread another forty around to the staff. This will work out fine. We got a much-needed service. And the staff and the Crowne Plaza will make a nice profit. And I will be out of your hair and off to see Masaya.”
The two men looked at each other, each thinking silently before Eduardo made a few short, quick nods. “Okay, that is good.”
We made it out of Managua with only one wrong turn, passing a lot of churches and parks, and even a baseball field. The churches and plazas had all long since started to look the same, but not the baseball diamond, an everlasting testament to American intrusion here. So great was our presence in the last century that baseball instead of soccer is the national sport. I inventoried some of the buildings, many looking like they were only an earthquake away from cinders. Central American building and electrical codes must be similar.
On the road, we made another wrong turn in Masaya, forced to drive down the lakefront during the morning rush hour. Every form of life and mechanical equipment competed for space on the tight road. Off to our left, perched on a high hill, the stone fortress of Coyotepe watched over the town.
A century earlier, in a storied assault, American Marines stormed the hill and took the fortress, killing one of the country’s first revolutionaries, General Benjamín Zeledón. His body was then thrown in an oxcart and paraded through Masaya on its way to a cemetery south of town, probably via the main street’s ageless brick road that we now bounced over.
We did get a brief glimpse of the caldera lake that protects the city from the active Volcano Masaya. Just outside of town, you can actually drive up to the rim of the Santiago Crater and look down at the bubbling lava pool constantly venting sulfur dioxide, called the “mouth of hell” by the Spaniards. I’d heard that if the wind is right, you can smell the sulfur in town, but all I got a whiff of was the manure from the horse-drawn buggies.
Dean turned up some rock and roll—AC/DC thudded from the Tesla as we rolled through town.
“Dude,” I said, “put on something more mellow. Like maybe Frank Sinatra. We may attract some gangsters. Not to mention the fucking headache you’re giving me.”
Dean turned his camera to a distant volcano. “Nicaragua’s the coolest place we’ve been. Ain’t no gangsters here. And I might get some good footage of that volcano if I could ever film just one minute without you dropping every curse word you know. I’d like to be able to show some of this to my mother.”
“At least you’ve gotten out from behind the wheel to film. And if anybody understands my issues, it’s your mom.”
“My filming behind the wheel wasn’t any worse than your driving and digging around for your cigarettes, or gum, or potato chips.”
Back on the road, we passed through Nandaime, moved here hundreds of years ago when the original town was buried in a landslide from the nearby Volcano Mombacho. The land here is active, an integral part of the changing times. I feel for the civil engineers here. I thought being a flood-control engineer in Louisiana was bad enough with large portions of the state below sea level and water assailing us not only from the hurricanes, but also the thirty-one states that drain into the Mississippi River. Here, they had hurricanes, volcanoes, landslides, and earthquakes. I bet everybody bitched at the engineers.
Back on the Pan American Highway, the land beside the road got more rural by the mile. We scooted on to Rivas through mango trees and parakeets, the landscape morphing into broken, windswept plains spiked with volcanoes, and covered with a patchwork of farms and ranches.
The isolated splendor of the rugged landscape evoked a placid delight. Though populated, humankind’s mark on the land was minimal. Overlanding here, I never got the sense that I might stumble out of the bush and onto an interstate, the sound and sight of cars and cargo rushing to be somewhere breaking me from a surreal trance.
We finally moved onto the shore of Lake Nicaragua, the tenth-biggest lake in the Western hemisphere and home to the planet’s only freshwater sharks. This area had long been cherished by Americans. During the 1849 Gold Rush, Cornelius Vanderbilt operated a shipping company to get Americans from the East Coast to California. The mogul ran steamships up Nicaragua’s San Juan River and across Lake Nicaragua, requiring only a fifteen-mile overland trip to reach the Pacific.
This was also the area of the first proposed canal joining the oceans. In 1885, the US Navy sent the renowned hydraulic engineer A. G. Menocal here for an official survey.
Feeling liberated, I drove with less urgency than in previous days. The topes all but gone, I reveled in the exploration of the unknown road ahead, especially via such a rare means of transport. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with famous tales of exploration and discovery, man’s conquering of space and time. The exploits of the world’s great explorers—John Fremont, Teddy Roosevelt, or Richard Burton to name a few, and their sojourns to the far corners of the world—have always entranced me.
Against the beautiful, spotless sky, an airliner was on its initial approach over the lake, probably bound for San José, Costa Rica, 175 miles to the south. The comfortable passengers, relaxing in their leather seats, were likely enjoying a book, watching a movie, or sipping wine. They’d be safely there in fifteen or twenty minutes. It would likely take us seven to nine hours of hard battling overland, if we were lucky, to get to San José. What a contrast.
On the banks of the lake, ten miles from the Costa Rican border, we drove through the huge Amayo Wind Farm. The windswept Isthmus of Rivas has some the highest sustained winds in the world, funneling off Lake Nicaragua to the Pacific, their average speed almost 30 mph. I’ve driven through some of the wind farms in western Texas and outside of Palm Springs, but this one looked bigger, probably because of the linear length and narrow width.
The wind howled today. Talk about cool. We drove right under the gigantic turbines, heard their gears grind, the shadows of their blades racing across the road. We stopped to take a picture. I guess the Americans aren’t the only ones tired of giving away their wealth to power their toasters.
Off to our left sat Ometepe Island, with its two 5,000-foot volcanoes. Somewhere to our right was San Juan del Sur, the western point on the old transcontinental crossing. In 1866, Mark Twain crossed right around here on a journey along Mr. Vanderbilt’s shortcut. He left to posterity the following description of San Juan del Sur:
We found San Juan to consist of a few tumble-down frame shanties—they call them hotels—nestling among green verdure and overshadowed by picturesque little hills. The spot where we landed was crowded with horses, mules, ambulances and half-clad yellow natives, with bowie knives two feet long, and as broad as your hand, strapped to their waists.
And of Ometepe Island:
Out of the midst of the beautiful Lake Nicaragua spring two magnificent pyramids, clad in the softest and richest green, all flecked with shadow and sunshine, whose summits pierce the billowy clouds. They look so isolated from the world and its turmoil—so tranquil, so dreamy, so steeped in slumber and eternal repose. What a home one might make among their shady forests, their sunny slopes, their breezy dells, after he had grown weary of the toil, anxiety and unrest of the bustling, driving world.
Things haven’t changed much in 148 years. As we said goodbye to Nicaragua, I couldn’t help but be reminded that it’s my favorite of the countries we’d visit. I’d been here once before, but the place is just downright nifty. With few tourists, it’s like a huge, untamed park, the vast stretches of wild savanna pockmarked with captivating volcanoes looming over vaqueros practicing their trade as they’ve done for centuries. Between the bush, the ancient Spanish cities teeming with life, good rum, poets, reformed Communists, and the local beauties, real-life versions of Barbara Carrera (the Nicaraguan actress who played the Bond girl Fatima Blush) strolling under the tall palms. Though I’ve never been, I hear the beaches are some of the best in the world
.
Nowhere in Central America is there more promise. If you want to come and see the real Nicaragua, you better come soon. It looks like the Nicas may decide this free-market democracy is to their liking, the gringo money and American lifestyle more important than their way of life. Before long, this place may look like a mix of the Champs Élysées and Woodstock. And of course, this earthquake-prone country would also be better seen before the Big One rattles it back a few centuries.
Just Another Border Crossing
“Costa Rica here we come,” I said as we pulled up to the border crossing. Many Americans experience the dizzying maze of disorder that is a Central American border crossing, but often by bus or taxi, which doesn’t include 75 percent of the headache that crossing with a car involves. The crossings make American bureaucracy seem like a fine-oiled machine. Fortunately, the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border crossing on the Pan American Highway is one of the best managed in all of Central America.
Arriving at the Nicaraguan side of the border, we slowly pulled forward through the crowds of people and a few random buildings. We rolled up the windows and locked the doors as the hawkers assaulted us. These sophisticated con men had shirts that were almost identical to the shirts worn by officialdom. The word “Nicaragua” was embroidered on them, but without the government seal. And they had fake badges or cards that looked official, but a close inspection revealed they actually said something like “South Nicaraguan Tourist Company.”
We’d learned through experience that typically we had to process out through immigration and then customs. Usually, there are no signs or directions. Today was no different, but we saw a long line, probably fifty people, lined up under a roof behind some bars. That must be immigration.