Like Water and Chocolate

Managua – Grandada, Nicaragua

Today had four distinct phases. 

The surprisingly grueling climb up out of Managua that led to the Laguna de Apoyo. The Laguna de Apoyo itself. The glide into Granada and our chocolate tour with Sylvia. And, finally, our dinner – complete with our coincidental meeting with Doug from Mankato, and Doug’s friend, who will remain nameless, from another town in Minnesota.

Let’s not spend much time on the surprisingly grueling ride. Suffice to say that what Managua lacks in charm it makes up for in chain stores from America. And I shouldn’t forget to mention the seemingly never ending gradual climb up cobblestones roads before we arrived at the Laguna. Oh, and we also passed by Masaya National Park – complete with what sounds like is a very cool live volcano. We didn’t go, though – one of those less-is-more decisions that, I must say, we are very happy with. 

Laguna de Apoyo. 

Okay, that was cool. 

The Laguna is a big lake – maybe 10 miles around? – that is something like 200 meters deep. I guess the bottom of the lake is the lowest point in Central America (not the deepest lake – I think that is Lake Atitlin in Guatemala – but Atitlin is, as we know very well after our ginormous climb to get there – is super-high up to start with . . . So while it is the deepest, the bottom of the lake is still above the elevation of the bottom of the Laguna). 

Laguna de Apoyo is, I guess, the remnants of a volcano that blew up like 23,000 years ago. The explosion left a big empty crater, and over thousands of years that crater filled up with water – forming the lake. Super cool. Better yet, there is still some leftover thermal activity – so the lake has its own geo-thermal heating – meaning it maintains a constant temperature of around 80 degrees F. 

Diana and I went to the Laguna Beach Club. You pay like $6 and you get nice bathrooms, towels, swim docks, kayaks and stand up paddle boards, free coffee, WiFi, hammocks and just general niceness. There are no crocodiles or alligators. No one mentioned any sea monsters. It’s pretty fantastic. You swim or kayak around in this giant bowl that is literally the remains of the old volcano. And it is super unspoiled – with only a few residences and/or resort type things. We swam and kayaked. Pretty special experience.

Let me skip ahead for a second to Lago Cocibolca – better known to Americans as Lake Nicaragua. This is the biggest of Nicaragua’s lakes, and the town of Granada, where we are now, sits on its shores. Lake Nicaragua has fresh water sharks that can grow to 11’ long and 500 pounds. Oh, and crocodiles. But people still swim there . . . We’ll see more of it tomorrow – but I mention it now because I’m starting to see why Nicaragua is the Land of Volcanoes and Lakes. 

And after seeing all this I’m wondering if we should have a sister state type relationship with this place. I mean we’re the Land of 10,000 Lakes. And, admittedly, we have a lot more lakes and they’re pretty cool and all. But we don’t have any apex predators swimming around in our lakes. No crocodiles. No lakes formed out of old volcanoes. So it seems to me that we would have something to gain by the association. Maybe we could do a fish exchange? Bring some sharks up to Lake Superior to spice things up a little. Maybe send some walleyes down here? 

Along these lines – and skipping ahead again – it seems like there is already a bit of a people exchange going on. Meet Doug from Mankato. We met Doug, his friend, and his friend’s girlfriend, Cesi, who’s from Managua, at dinner tonight. 

Doug and his friend have been coming down here for like 20 years. They seem to love it. So much so that Doug purchased a house here in Granada and drove down here this fall with his car and all his stuff. Took him nine days. And, he said, cost him like $10K because the border people in places like Guatemala gave him such a hard time about the car and all his stuff. I guess he should have just bikes down…

But let’s not forget the chocolate part of things. After checking in to our hotel here in Granada we stopped by the local chocolate store and museum. Our new friend Sylvia gave us a tour. She explained that there are (at least) three types of cacao trees – the trees that chocolate comes from. 

I didn’t really understand the whole cacao-chocolate production process – but the one thing that I did get was that she said that the flowers are so tiny they can only be pollinated by mosquitoes. So there you go. All those people who say that mosquitoes have no useful purpose in the world . . . Ask yourself if you would rather have no mosquitoes – even if that also meant no chocolate. I mean, I don’t really have a dog in this fight because mosquitoes don’t really bother me that much, and I could live without chocolate. But I’m thinking this could introduce a real existential crisis for people like Diana. Just think about it . . . Tomorrow they figure out how to wipe out mosquitoes. But the side effect would be no more chocolate. What do you do? 

The other funny moment on the tour for me . . . Sylvia is explaining something about the percent of chocolate versus sugar or something, and Dr. Liu – who, in our cupboards at home owns like 17% of all worldwide reserves of baking chocolate – asks whether in Nicaragua they use 100% chocolate in their mole. 

“No, this is Nicaragua!” comes the response from Sylvia. (It’s not often that Diana gets an undercurrent of “dumb question” when she is asking about chocolate use in cooking . . . I think she has an honorary PhD. from Harvard on this very topic . . . You go, Sylvia!)

But it was okay. Because Sylvia was amazing and gave us several amazing samples – like chocolate liquer, chocolate sangria, chocolate tea, chocolate . . . well . . . chocolate. And she recommended the very good restaurant we went to. 

All good. 

A very nice last full day in Nicaragua.

Tomorrow? Theoretically on to Costa Rica. I say theoretically because there’s a little bit of a border mystery going on. Google Maps seems to show that the Penas Blanca border – where we are supposed to cross – is closed. We can’t find any other information that would tend to corroborate this point – but this is Central America  – so you never know . . .

One last footnote. Have these Central American countries ever heard of the separation of church and state? They all seem to have crosses and Virgin Marys all over the place – and particularly in their public squares. 

But Nicaragua seems like the most extreme on this topic. I know the Sandinistas were pretty leftist. Did they just merge the Catholic Church and their political party? Or is this all an Inheritance from the chummy relationship that Spain and the church had for years? 

Because it seems to me that if we are going to have a sister state relationship – and exchange fish and all – we can’t have a bunch of Catholic sharks trying to have mass in Gitchi Gummi now, can we?

Or, worse yet, confessionals. 

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”

”What have you done my toothy friend?”

”Well, yesterday I ate three swimmers, two trout, and a sail boat . . .”

”Oh, that is very bad. Say two holy rosaries and don’t eat any more trout – they are too fatty . . . And now that you are in Minnesota you are going to have to learn to enjoy lutefisk – like all those stoic Norwegians . . .”