Hostelling and the Cloudy Cloud Forest

The Bearded Monkey. Just the name suggests the kind of quirky atmosphere that one finds entering the dark hallway into a jungly courtyard surrounded by hammocks wooden tables, a small bar, and three rooms of dorm bunk beds. The courtyard is open to the cloudy sky above, which intermittently dumps rain on the shingled roof, creating a square waterfall in the center of this square communal space.
I am beginning a bit of sight seeing in Nicaragua, meeting my first fellow extranjeros viajeros, and wandering the streets of Granada, a Spanish colonial city founded in the beginning of the 16th century, just after Colombus reached Nicaragua in 1502. The buildings are the pastel blues, pinks and oranges characteristic of Latin America and the Caribbean, ringed with arches, open air courtyards, pillars, and gardens. The streets are narrow and not well paved, full of street vendors. All of the streets that run east to west end up on the east side at Lake Nicaragua, the largest fresh water lake in Central America (and home to the world’s only fresh water sharks, a fact of which Nicaraguans are fiercely proud). In the bay, one can see the hundreds of isletas for which Granada is also famous, literally an archipelago of hundreds of small islands supposedly created by an eruption of Volcan Mombacho, which looms just south of the city.
Volcan Mombacho was the object of yesterday’s excursion, a trip to one of Nicaragua’s most renown natural reserves, into one of her two cloud forests. And a cloudy forest it was! Boarding the bus with Martin, a Nicaraguan friend who lives here in Granada, Violeta, a German exchange student, and Emma, a Scottish traveler, we shared the ride to the park entrance with sacks of potatoes, chickens, and many Nicaraguans. Crammed in the back of the bus, my 18 inch North American comfort bubble was forced to shrink even further than normal in Latin America, to three of four inches, less when the lurching bus catapulted me into the body of the person standing in front of or behind me. Oh, what a ride.
Arriving at the park, we had to wait 45 minutes for the departure of the Eco-Movil, a gigantic Soviet Truck that is one of the few vehicles that could actually climb the tiled- 1000 meter highway, which heads basically straight up the side of the volcano (To the extreme that at times I thought we were not going to arrive, but rather slip back down the wet one lane road to our doom in coffee fields below). As we trekked up the mountainside in our trusty truck, we were pelted with a heavy rain, and gradually enclosed by a thick mist. For this, it is called a cloud forest.
Reaching the pinnacle of this 1500 meter volcano, we had a ten-minute orientation, and set off on the hiking trails, only to learn the true meaning of being in a cloud forest in the rainy season in Nicaragua. As we stepped up to the breathtaking and beautifully constructed lookout points, with signs describing that which we should see, from the city to the crater, to hot springs, we took a deep breath, and saw… white clouds! Laughing, we took photographs of the trees one could see for about a hundred feet, followed by the thick misty fog that blocked everything else from view. An impressive photo of me surrounded by damp fog will be my physical memento of this soggy, amusing trek.
While in some ways disappointing, this laughable and largely charming, though wet experience, reminds me in many ways of the fact that my time in Nicaragua is coming to an end, and of the number of things that are left which I would like to do. Three months is far too short to even begin to see all that a person would like to; for example, the view from Mombacho in the summer when the clouds and rain part or rise to reveal the views for which the park is famous. In the brief period that I have spent in this country, I have been impressed by so much, from the scenery, to the people, to the history. As I begin my travels during these last three weeks, exploring more of the country that I feel I am only beginning to know, I already find myself thinking of when and how I could return, feeling the anxious anticipation that comes from wanting to know and experience far more than one has time for. Pero así es la vida. Full of wonders too numerous to be imagined, and far too plentiful to be completely experienced. So, in the meantime, I will try to take advantage by walking the malecón overlooking the lake, talking to people in the post office, staying up til 4 am watching the motorcycle diaries, and reflecting as I am doing now…