Walking the Americas

by Levison Wood

  ‘It’s one of Nicaragua’s most active volcanoes,’ I told him. I’d read about Masaya volcano in the guidebooks and had wanted to visit it for as long as I could remember. ‘It’s known as the mouth of hell,’ I said.

  Local tribes used to believe that the volcano was home to a lava-spitting devil and would appease it by sacrificing women and children to it. Rumour has it that during the civil war in the 1970s, Somoza, the military dictator, would have rebels thrown from his helicopter into the crater of the volcano. Hellish, indeed.

  ‘It’s becoming more and more active,’ said Maria, a local woman. ‘The government says we shouldn’t live here anymore.’ Security for visiting tourists had been stepped up, but in spite of this, locals still lived and worked in this perilous region. As we walked closer to it, I wondered what life was like for those who made their homes in the shadow of such a devilish place. I had bumped into Maria Morales in the street outside her home and we’d got chatting.

  The village of Salgado, home to a couple of hundred people, sat right in the lava flow of the volcano. As we peered towards the smoking mountain, puppies frolicked in the mud and Maria’s daughters eyed me with shy curiosity. It was a surreal sight to behold.

  Grey smoke loomed over the village. ‘Aren’t you scared to live here?’ I asked Maria.

  ‘Well, of course’, she said, ‘but I don’t have the money to buy a piece of land, so we are stuck here. We live here out of necessity. The ground here is not bad for farming, but when the gas comes out of the volcano, it causes problems. It damages our crops and makes the children cough.’

  ‘And do you think it will erupt again?’ I asked.

  ‘I think so, yes. There was a big eruption in 2012. We have evacuation drills every so often and the government has warned us that it will erupt again soon, but we cannot leave.’

  I glanced at a nervous-looking little girl, who had wrapped herself around Maria’s leg. She peered up at us, examining her mother’s face and then mine. Around me, her children played, gathering in earnest at the sight of a stranger in such a small settlement that tourists don’t visit.

  We said goodbye and left the village. It was saddening to think that this family and their fellow villagers lived every day in danger, left with no choice but to live so close to this powerful force of nature, which at any moment could spell their doom. If Masaya were to have a similar eruption now, molten rock would course down into the villages at speeds of up to 450 mph, destroying everything in its path. In less than a minute, Maria Morales’ little village could be totally wiped out.

  We carried on south, passing a vast and fertile lava field. It extended three miles into the distance, up towards the peak of the volcano – the remains of an eruption that took place centuries ago. Underneath our feet were the sponge-like black rocks, full of holes in weird and twisted shapes; the result of pockets of gas escaping the solidifying lava. I couldn’t help imagining what might have existed here before the burning-hot magma ironed out every rock, tree and settlement in its way.

  It was a bleak and humbling reminder that the force of nature in a place like this is not to be messed with.

  15

  Land of Fire

  We set off early from Masaya, heading east towards the old colonial city of Granada. The temperature was steadily rising and with each day it got hotter and more humid. Howler monkeys barked down at us from their shady spots in the trees and I envied their protection from the sun. I’ve found on these long expeditions that there sometimes comes a point when you grow tired of walking. Until now, I’d enjoyed the comforting routine of putting one foot in front of the other, taking it slowly and observing the world around me. Alberto’s company had kept me in good spirits for weeks on end, but when the sun is beating down and the air is thick and sticky, even a sublime view and good chat isn’t always distraction enough. Today was one of those days. We’d been searching for something to eat for hours. Alberto had gone quiet and we trudged along in sullen, hungry silence.

  At around eleven o’clock, we saw a little stall at the roadside, only a few wooden planks with a rickety tin roof. But the sight of the makeshift restaurant was enough to make us pick up the pace and perk us up a bit.

  There was a woman serving up quesadillas.

  ‘It looks different,’ he said, ‘not like the Mexican ones.’

  I had to agree, the contents did look a little mushier than usual. But when you’re hungry and don’t know when the next meal is coming, it doesn’t pay to be fussy. And anyway, whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than bush rat in Uganda or termites in Belize. I’d chowed down far worse.

  ‘What’s the meat?’ I asked Alberto, out of interest, while the lady slopped it onto the tortilla and grilled it over an open barbecue.

  ‘It’s pork,’ he said. ‘A local delicacy. She says that they make sure to waste none of the pig at all.’

  The lady noted my question and with a smile she handed me a plastic bag with what looked like liquid offal and blood.

  ‘It’s exactly what it looks like,’ she said. ‘It’s blended pig’s head. Bones, cartilage, blood and brains. This is what we put in it.’ She laughed. ‘Brain quesadilla.’

  It would have to do. We wolfed it down, trying to disregard the contents, which can only be described as tasting like a black-pudding paté with a hint of crème fraiche, and then we carried on.

  It wasn’t long till Granada came into view. We walked into the town, which seemed to have defied the passing of time. Old Spanish-era buildings and cobbled streets made the scene look like something from a period drama. Narrow alleyways led to garden courtyards and wooden street-carts overflowed with handwoven shawls, cashew nuts and pet iguanas.

  We walked through the maze of alleyways with their terraced porticos and pink facades. It was a beautiful place and we would have liked to have stayed for a few days, but there was something else that really fascinated me. On the eastern edge of the city, we came to a lake that stretched out as far as the eye could see: Granada sits on the shores of Lake Nicaragua – the largest in Central America. In the distance, in the middle of the lake, a volcano jutted from an island created by ancient eruptions. Eagles soared above us and waves lapped against the grassy beach.

  ‘You want to go see it?’ a voice came from across the road. Two young men introduced themselves as fishermen. ‘We have a boat. We can show you the islands and you can meet my family,’ said Alex, a stocky lad with the look of an entrepreneur. ‘We don’t get many visitors and my grandfather would love to meet some gringos.’

  I’d wanted to see the famous lake for as long as I could remember.

  ‘It’s one of the only places in the world where you get sharks living in freshwater,’ he said.

  The sharks were the reason I had wished to see it and so we agreed to go on a little day trip. It would be a nice break from the walking for a few hours.

  ‘For years the scientists didn’t know how the sharks had got here, and how they ended up being able to live in the freshwater. They thought that they must have got stuck here hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But then they worked out that the sharks had jumped upstream, like salmon, along the San Juan river up the rapids, all the way from the Caribbean Sea,’ said Alex, clearly knowing his stuff.

  I peered down at the murky water. This made it one of the only places on the planet where there were sharks and crocodiles in the same place. I’d had my fair share of close shaves with oversized reptiles along the banks of the Nile, and even in the rivers of Nepal. As for sharks, well, I think I was subjected to the movie Jaws by my grandfather at far too young an age.

  ‘Are you sure it’s a good boat?’ I said to the eager captain, as we clambered onto the little fibreglass vessel.

  We set off and rattled past dozens of islands, the result of a volcanic splurge millions of years ago, which spewed molten lava into the lake creating four hundred islets, some barely a few metres across, and yet others the size of a football pitch.

  ‘Nowad
ays they’re all being bought by rich Nicaraguans from the big cities, and gringos, too. These millionaires come, they go past in their boats, then point at an island they like the look of. Then they build their mansions there,’ Alex told us. ‘My family have been living here on the lake for hundreds of years, but our way of life is changing now.’

  After an hour, Alex’s home came into view, an island no more than twenty metres wide with a couple of rough shacks nestled between the palm trees. The whole family was there, his mother and grandmother, his grandfather and brothers, and dozens of children, not to mention several dogs.

  ‘My family have lived here for five generations now, or maybe six, and all the men are fishermen, although sometimes we have to go into the forest on the mainland to fetch fruit.’

  ‘What about the sharks?’ I asked, still intrigued. ‘Are they dangerous?’

  ‘The best person to talk to is my grandfather,’ Alex told me. ‘He’s ninety.’

  He was called for and an old man with leathery skin appeared, looking every inch the fisherman with his bare chest and blue cap. He introduced himself as Simon Canales.

  He welcomed us and invited us to eat a lunch of tilapia fish and rice while he told his tales of fishing the waters of the lake. He regaled us with stories of storms and men lost to the waves.

  ‘And what about the sharks? Have you ever heard of one eating someone around here?’ I asked him.

  ‘Of course, I’m more than ninety years old now, and have lived here and worked these waters for my whole life so I’ve seen a lot of things. It’s been a long time, I think maybe fifty years, since that happened. Some people were bitten by a shark at Playa Grande. The shark was this tall.’ Simon motioned to a point on a pillar about a foot above his head.

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked him.

  He launched into his tale. ‘There were two men in the water, swimming. One of them saw the shark, you hear me? One of them saw the shark. He warned his friend, then jumped back into the boat. As soon as he was in the boat, he reached for his friend’s hair, to pull him in. But the shark ripped him to pieces, there was only his head left.’

  ‘The sharks aren’t the only problem around here,’ Simon told me. ‘There are many things that are dangerous for my family. I’ve got fourteen children and forty grandchildren. Can you imagine? It’s impossible to keep them all safe all the time. There’s crocodiles who hide in the shallow water and I’m always worried when they swim in the lake. And then there are hurricanes, flooding during rainy season, the volcano erupting and also earthquakes.’

  Despite the idyllic beauty of Lake Nicaragua, its seemed as if the people were in a constant battle with nature just to survive.

  That evening, the boys dropped us off on the shores of an empty beach to the south of Granada where we’d been picked up. In the distance, a volcano churned out dark smoke that merged with the clouds. I looked around and it seemed we had nothing but palm trees for company. It felt as if we’d stepped into the world of Robinson Crusoe. It occurred to me that apart from a couple of tins of beans, we didn’t have any food left, so, remembering our training from Aron in the jungles of Belize, we quickly hung our hammocks and set about lighting a fire before going in search of food.

  The only fishing to be had was on some rocks at a nearby headland, so we left our gear and picked our way through thorn bushes and rockpools. Just before reaching the place, I slipped on the rocks and bashed up my shin as well as slicing open the soles of my feet on a razor-sharp piece of coral. Alberto ran over.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  I was in agony, as blood poured out into the brine of the rockpool.

  ‘Dammit,’ I said, plus a bit more I would imagine. It was the worst place to get an injury. Tomorrow I was going to have to walk on that foot and I could only imagine what might happen if it got infected. I quickly wrapped up the wound with my neck scarf and hobbled after my guide.

  We tried to fish and ended up a with pathetic catch of five microscopic tiddlers that wouldn’t even make a single meal. But it was late, so we wandered back to the camp site. To make matters worse, we arrived to find an aggressive-looking man in a filthy uniform poking around our camp. I was hungry and needed to dress my leg properly and was in no mood for placating security guards on the make. But as we got closer, I noticed that he was carrying a shotgun and realised that my exhaustion would have to wait – this situation would require patience and some diplomacy.

  ‘What are you doing here, this is a restricted area,’ he barked at Alberto and me.

  ‘But the people we spoke to in Granada said that this beach was permitted, that it is not a problem if we camp here, and anyway we’ll be gone by tomorrow, you won’t even know that we were here,’ I reassured him.

  But he wasn’t giving in.

  ‘No, you will need to pay me a fine so that you can sleep here. Otherwise you leave.’ He patted his shotgun and I looked at Alberto. With the sun already setting, it was unlikely that we would be able to find anywhere as good as this, so reluctantly I handed the opportunistic security guard a few of my dollars – pretty sure that they would go straight into his pocket.

  After a sleepless night plagued by sandflies, we set off along the coast. I soon realised that although the beach was the easiest route in terms of navigation, we were going to have to cut through the jungle in parts where the rocky headlands became too steep. We followed the jungle trails parallel to the shore, but my foot and my shin were giving me grief and slowing us down considerably. I was trying to keep the sea in sight, but eventually the thick undergrowth scuppered my tactic. I recognised that we were in deep jungle and soon enough I hadn’t the faintest idea of which way to go. I was reluctant to tell Alberto that we were lost, but I was slightly starting to panic. If we didn’t reach a village by nightfall, we were going to be very hungry indeed.

  ‘Lev, why have you stopped?’ Alberto was on to me, and I thought I may as well own up.

  ‘Well, to be honest, I think we are a little bit lost. Let’s have a rest and then we’ll look for a stream to follow out of here. It’s already taken us a few hours to get this far and I don’t know how long it will be before we find the shore.’

  After a few swigs from our water bottles, we set off again, keeping our eyes peeled for water sources that might be flowing towards the lake. Thankfully, we soon heard a rustling and a little boy appeared from behind a tree.

  ‘Chico,’ Alberto smiled. The boy was nervous. This was a known drug-trafficking route and he probably thought we were smugglers. But Alberto gave him a friendly handshake and offered him the last of our emergency biscuits. It did the trick and he pointed us the way to get through the jungle and back onto the beach.

  Luckily, when we emerged from the trees, I could see that there was a small settlement. This must be San José del Mombacho, I thought, looking at the map. We were saved. Alberto was relieved, but it seemed that for the first time on the journey he was also pretty pissed off. I hoped that it was only the hunger and that he hadn’t entirely lost confidence in me.

  We carried on south, following the coastline. One day we were having a rest on a beach and filling up on some much-needed food, when a young man approached us.

  ‘You need anything?’ He was selling knick-knacks from a board: handmade jewellery, necklaces, sunglasses, keyrings and the like.

  As he crouched down next to us, I had a chance to look at the dodgy street vendor. He was covered in tattoos and had a shaven head. I knew at once that it wasn’t only trinkets that he was trying to flog.

  Normally I would have politely declined and got back to the task in hand, but there was something about him that exuded a sense of positivity and he had a generous, kind smile, with a cheeky glint in his eye. There were no tourists around and he didn’t have anyone else to sell his stuff to, so I let him continue with his patter.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked. We told him, and he immediately started chatting to Alberto in Spanish.

  ‘I used
to travel to Mexico all the time,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’ I asked.

  ‘Work,’ he winked.

  ‘What kind of work?’ I asked, before getting a sharp look from Alberto.

  On second thoughts, I realised I ought to have known better.

  ‘You aren’t journalists or police, are you?’ he said.

  ‘No, we’re just walking, but I am writing a book.’

  He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘OK, well I’ll tell you, but you can’t know my real name.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What shall we call you?’

  He thought for a moment, then smiled again.

  ‘Tony,’ came the response, ‘like from The Sopranos.’

  ‘Tony’ was twenty-six years old and had grown up in the shanty villages around Granada. He told us about his brother and how he got to be a drug dealer.

  ‘It all started when we were both just young boys. Our father committed suicide after our mother found out that he was sleeping with another woman – he shot himself in the heart. We had no money, and we had brothers and sisters who needed to eat, so I started selling marijuana on the beach. I was aged twelve then, I guess. I only did it sometimes, and only when I couldn’t get other work. But soon, it wasn’t enough money for all of us to live. Someone told me that I should sell cocaine. I would make more money, that guy said. Then by the time I was sixteen, I was taking it to El Salvador and Honduras and even all the way to the Mexican border with the USA.’

  ‘How did you get it across the borders?’ I asked him, fascinated by all the smuggling techniques that I’d heard tales of over the years.

  ‘We’d take it on boats mostly. Two hundred and fifty kilograms of cocaine inside bicycle frames, or sometimes in fake medical kits. We had a boss, “El Doctor”, and he thought it was funny.’

  Tony continued: ‘But then I got busted doing a deal in El Salvador and got sent to jail. It didn’t last long, though. The wardens were so stupid. One of my guys smuggled in a nail file and every night when the Christians would do their hallelujahs and sing from the Bible, we would saw away at the window bars. Eventually we got completely through the window bars and nine of us got out.’