Posts on iceflo

Korakas and the pope's visit

Mon, 02 May 2016 00:36:29 +0000

Towards the end of my stay, I spent two evenings visiting the neighboring lighthouse of Korakas by foot (see my last post for a map). The lighthouse was installed on a protruding cliff. Volunteers use it as a post for spotting refugee boats, that they then report to Sea Watch / CADUS and the other SAR groups (in this area mainly Pro Activa Open Arms and the Boat Refugee Foundation). At the same time as it supports the refugees, the lighthouse also attracts refugee boats into the cliffs. As, on EU request, Turkey tightened controls and attacked refugee boats, the boats shifted from daylight to nighttime, making the journey more dangerous. To avoid them crashing and drowning, the volunteers installed floodlights, that can be run on an emergency generator, and life saving equipment at the beach. Once the people are on land, the CK team takes over and provides a first shelter and support in heated tents provided by MSF . The installations at the lighthouse mostly are made out of re-purposed refugee boat pieces. The floor boards and engine hoods provide for benches shelves, bridges, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The rubber hulls make for drainage canals in case of rain and general purpose covers.

While I was visiting Korakas, the authorities were half-emptying the prison camp of Moria and prettyfying it for the visit of the pope. When we were watching the TV showing the pope in the prison camp, my friends noticed that the walls were freshly painted and we all witnessed the nice and clean clothing of the kids meeting the pope…

Despite all the fake niceness that was put up for the visit of the pope, I still feel that is good that he paid the visit to Lesbos and Moria and that he made it clear that the refugees actually are humans, and we should treat them the way we want to be treated. It also was a nice gesture that he took ten refugees with him to the Vatican. Ten more than several EU member countries are willing to accept.

On the occasion of the visit, there were some demonstrations, that were not appreciated by the Greek police. Our boat was not allowed within one mile of the coast in the Mytilini area, so they did a little photo shoot at the dying swan, a refugee boat that had hit the rocks near Palios with about 120 people a month earlier. All aid groups tried to get their share of the press attention to advertise their causes and activities. This also earned us a visit of one of the MOAS vessels, an impressive SAR ship.

Parts of the rescue operation on the dying swan in March.

A few hours later I was on my plane from Greece back to Germany. When we had boarded the plane in Athens we were told that the boarding was now complete and we were free to spread out in the 2/3 empty plane. I chose an empty row and had the feeling that we could have taken a few refugees with us without suffering too much discomfort.

When I had eaten my second ration of dinner (thanks, Lufthansa!), I looked at our position and figured that I just had a very comfortable crossing of the Greek northern border. All those people that are prevented from crossing the border in Idomeni, those kept in the prison camps on Lesbos and the other islands, and those on the other side of the sea I had been observing in the last weeks can only dream of this easy way of traveling. I hope I will see many of them in the streets of Hamburg in the future. I’ll probably not recognize them, but I hope they’ll find their way. Maybe one day we’ll figure out that we won’t die if we let them in but many of them will die if we keep them out.

Lesbos S(AR)

Sat, 30 Apr 2016 23:17:01 +0000

[repeat from the last post]

Floppy, a friend from Greenpeace, told me that he was going to go to the Greek island of Lesbos with a young NGO called Sea Watch, and that he was going to spend two weeks in December driving a rescue boat and plucking people from the Mediterranean Sea. As I was pretty busy during the winter, I decided to wait for his report and, around new years, I contacted Sea Watch and signed up for two weeks of search and rescue in April.

Well, as fast as the number of people reaching the EU jumped up during last summer, it also plummeted again early this year when most of Europe had jolted into the political right wing, and borders were closed with razor wire fences and police and military controls all over the place. Basically, it seemed like the whole EU was going to break apart because nobody wanted people fleeing from war in their country. Finally, the EU agreed to pay billions of Euros to Turkey, if they would accept back any refugees making their way from Turkey to Greece (the main route into the EU until then). This agreement became active just before I went to Lesbos.

[end repeat]

In the meantime, Sea Watch had joined forces with CADUS, and bought a second boat that the two groups share. We ended up with almost two crews sharing one operational boat. For me this meant that every other day I’d get up at 3:25 AM, have some breakfast, go out in the boat around 4 AM and search the local coast for any signs of stranded refugees. Once we were done on the coast, we drove out a bit towards the Turkish border and waited if any refugee boats passed by. In the two weeks, we found exactly zero refugee boats (in contrast to the crews before us). The closed borders on the Balkan Route and the threat of being deported back to Turkey have slashed the number of people escaping into safety on this route.

[new paragraph]

When it comes to actual rescue operations, the legal situation can be a problem. As a basic rule, it is illegal to help refugees get across the border. This means that towing a boat with a broken down engine from Turkish waters into Greek waters can be considered as trafficking by the authorities. Trafficking charges are no fun and can get you jailed for years. One group of volunteers faces exactly this problem as they got jailed in Greece for trafficking charges (they are out on thousands of Euros of bails and the trial is pending). Generally, the Turkish authorities do not allow the volunteer groups to perform SAR operations in their waters. I was told of one case where the volunteers were forbidden to assist a refugee boat in emergency, and people drowned because the Turkish vessels did not make it in time.

In another case, the volunteers could not help a boat with an engine failure just on the Turkish side of the border. In that case, the Frontex (EU border police) vessel picking the refugees up was so friendly as to bring them to Lesbos. I guess, they did not have to face trafficking charges.

Once on the island, there seem to be very particular rules, as to where giving refugees a ride is legal or considered trafficking. Kind of similar to trafficking accusations for people giving refugees a ride inside Europe, while there were overcrowded official special trains providing the same service on the tracks right next to the highway.

Currently, the waters between Lesbos and Turkey are patrolled by the Greek coast guard, and their European Frontex colleagues, NATO warships, Turkish coast guard and warships, several official SAR vessels assisting the Greek coast guard, and a whole bunch of volunteer SAR groups. Collaboration inside each of the sub-groups seems to be good. From what I’ve heard, the NATO warships (apart from being huge lookout posts) seem to play a bit of a referee role for Greek and Turkish coast guards (the two countries don’t get along at all). The collaboration between the official SAR and the Greek coast guard seems to vary depending on the situation and who’s in charge, but seems generally good. Volunteers and Frontex – well, seems to depend on the specific teams involved.

One week after I arrived to Lesbos, Greece deported the first ~200 refugees from the prison camp of Moria to Turkey. These people had not (had the chance to?) applied for asylum. The deportation was announced to the media for 10 AM and actually performed about an hour earlier to avoid protests. Our crew was in the harbor with a banner that they put up in cooperation with Platanos, another NGO doing SAR. The team of Pro Activa Open Arms took the photo, while the Greek Coast Guard decided to photo-bomb in the best manner possible (and tell them off).

What happens to the refugees in Turkey remains largely in the unknown. They get put into prison camps, that even the UNHCR is not allowed to visit. Merkel just visited one for the press, but one can safely assume that to be a Potemkin Village. Conditions in those prisons most likely are worse than in the EU prison camps on Lesvos where there already is a massive lack of food, clean water, medical aid, and sanitary installations. Many (most?) of the refugees get deported back to where they fled from. The total number of people deported to Turkey still is in the hundreds, with thousands of asylum applications currently running in the Moria prison camp, and it remains to be seen how things will continue.

After the deportations, we kept patrolling the coasts and shuttling TV and photo teams around. I spent three of my (probably) six morning patrols with press on board. So far, the result is this video on Spiegel Online [seems like wordpress in unable to embed it]. We used some of the afternoons to practice rescue operations with the team of Pro Activa. They are professional life guards and it was awesome practicing with them. For the practice we used an old inflatable refugee boat that they had scavenged. This way, we could practice approaching refugee boats with two SAR teams, dealing with medical emergencies and evacuating people from refugee boats.

A couple days after the deportations, we paid a second visit to Mytilini. On arrival, a coast guard vessel told us to stay put outside the harbor for some five minutes, because a ferry was deporting refugees and they didn’t want us to interfere. That had already been done by others. A group of swimmers had put themselves into the way of a ferry and had been arrested. We stayed outside the harbor and observed the Nazli Jale on its way towards Turkey. This time, the purpose of our visit was technical assistance by the DGzRS (the German NGO doing the SAR at the coasts) vessel Minden, and their technicians helped us clog a leak in our engine cooling system. Thanks a lot for that! Feels much better to drive a boat that is not leaking coolant.

My third visit to Mytilini was on the day I left the island. This visit coincided with the visit of the pope. More on that in the next post.

After our crew, Sea Watch and CADUS have scaled down the operations with CADUS still operating the shared boat. Most other groups have taken a similar path, scaling down but staying prepared for more people arriving on this route should the deal between the EU and Turkey break at some point in the near future.

Refugees in Hamburg (2015)

Sat, 30 Apr 2016 19:36:18 +0000

[Sorry, it took me for ever to write this post]

When I returned to Germany from the Americas, the number of refugees reaching our country from various war zones and other backgrounds was rising drastically. While there was not that much to do in Bremerhaven, where I was working during summer, the situation was very different in Hamburg.

With the refugees piling up in Budapest, Hungary, in the thousands (the official EU model for dealing with refugees is to leave the asylum processing to the countries on the perimeter of the EU), Angela Merkel for the first time in her office as chancellor actually took a real decision on anything, and, on September 4, 2015, declared that Germany would deviate from this model and accept refugees for asylum processing in Germany without prior processing in Hungary. [A nice German article summarizing the widely varying acceptance rates depending on country of origin and country of applying for asylum (the table is pretty self-explanatory)]

German authorities are reasonably well designed for dealing with business as usual in a very formal and correct manner but definitely not for adapting to a new situation and taking decisions fast. This in combination with – well let’s call them rather conservative – personnel in a lot of positions let to a massive failure of the authorities in providing the refugees with basic needs. A gap that was (partially) filled by an unprecedented volunteer action. People started collecting and distributing about anything from sanitary items via all kinds of clothing up to baby beds and toys. In Hamburg, the city allowed the volunteers to use one of the halls of the fair center for sorting and re-distributing the goods. This was the perfect location, as it was easily reachable by car and public transport making dropping goods of very easy. At the same time, the central location made it easy for volunteers to swing by for a couple of hours of sorting things. In the first weeks, several hundred people populated the fair center and sorted, and sorted, and sorted…

Some people made this activity their unpaid full time job and set up a whole computerized logistics chain. It was impressive to watch the sorting center evolve from a rather chaotic system at the start to a well-organized center with bar code labeled boxes, and managers for all the different classes of items within weeks. Every time I swung by, something, if not the whole place, had changed and become more professional. One of the people I met later started a little company that plans to build housing for refugees from truck trailers called RETREAT. Other volunteers went into the refugee camps and offered German language courses, entertainment programs for kids, joint sport events, or provided miscellaneous other forms of support.

[new paragraphs]

Other gaps were not so easy to fill. Deep into the cold season, many refugees in Hamburg had to live in moldy tents. They got replaced with wood cabins (27m² (290ft²) for 16 people) in late October, after problems and protests had gotten too massive. Others had (and still have) to stay in old supermarket buildings, school gyms, and pretty much anything the authorities can get reasonably cheaply, even the hangars of the old Berlin Airport in Tempelhof. Many of these places suffer from complete lack of privacy, undersized sanitarian installations and so on and so forth. Medical services also are not quite up to the usual standard. This is not something these people have to endure for days, this is for months (years?) without any clear perspective when it will end. Empty office buildings seem to be largely exempt from use for refugees. They remain untouched.

The asylum processing also is one of the areas where volunteers can’t bypass the ~~unwillingness~~ slowness of the authorities. In some areas it takes several months (sometimes more than a year), till people get an appointment to officially file the application for asylum. Then there is the processing time of several months and then finally a decision. If somebody who already has been accepted for asylum wants to bring (usually) his family into Germany in the safe and legal way, this application can take another few (well, seemingly) years, and our government is planning to add another two years of wait-time for a part of the asylum seekers (I can’t really judge what fraction is affected, but it seems to be thousands of people). Not what you want to do if the lives of your family members are in danger. Basically this means that the whole family has to take the risk of the dangerous journey with robbers, rapists, and rubber boats (oh, wait, we are trying to close that option, too)… I found reading Wartime Lies by Louis Begleya good way of getting a feeling of what it might mean to have to flee and be considered illegal where you are.

After helping with sorting clothes by kind and size, I decided that there must be some kind of activity, where I could make a bit more use of the things I have learned so far. Climate modeling didn’t really seem to be the thing that the refugees needed, but there are a few other things I have learned in my life. One of them is driving boats. Floppy, a friend from Greenpeace, told me that he was going to go to the Greek island of Lesbos with a young NGO called Sea Watch, and that he was going to spend two weeks in December driving a rescue boat and plucking people from the Mediterranean Sea. As I was pretty busy during the winter, I decided to wait for his report and, around new years, I contacted Sea Watch and signed up for two weeks of search and rescue in April.

The Corn Islands

Sun, 31 May 2015 14:15:36 +0000

When I first looked into my lonely planet section on Nicaragua, one of the more interesting places, I saw was Little Corn Island, some 50 miles off the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast. Everybody who had been there told me to go, so Little Corn got its place on my inexistent itinerary.

My basic plan for my last two weeks was to puzzle my way from Ometepe to the island, and back to San Jose, my departure airport. The difficulty that was getting harder and harder to ignore was that the boats to the Corn Islands (there are two on a regular schedule) both leave Bluefields on Wednesday morning. With my most optimistic itinerary scheduling my arrival in Bluefields on Wednesday evening, I was in trouble. A little change of plans later, I was on a seven hour bus ride with Daniel and Jakob from San Carlos to El Rama. The bus company had a mission, and that was preaching the word of god to travelers. So, after a bit of religious music from tape, and a flat tire, we got to watch a dvd portraying the perlas de dios (or whatever that band was named), a three brother jesus-group. Another religious concert later, we finally made it to el Rama, waited an hour or so and took the speedboat to Bluefields.

After a guy, who introduced him self as our friend and city guide on our arrival in the harbor, had shown us to a rather uninviting hotel in Bluefield’s harbor- and red light district, we made our way to the first hostel in the lonely planet and spent half the money for a reasonable room. Bluefields got hit by a hurricane a couple years ago and the architectural recovery yielded results that are of a beauty comparable to that of Mannheim or Muemmelmannsberg (albeit smaller).

In the morning, we bought the tickets for the ferry and the joy-ride to Big Corn started. New to the team was Misa, a Japanese gal that spends her life with working to raise money for trips and then traveling the world. She was the only one that handled the trip without getting motion sickness. I got to keep my breakfast but was not feeling too well. Other people were less lucky. Once on Big Corn, we had to decide between staying on the island or getting a small speed-boat to Little Corn. With motion sickness pills in the body we decided to make the dash over to the car-free paradise.

Once on the island, the usual search for affordable, decent housing started and proved to be much more difficult than in other parts of Nicaragua. There is no hostel with dorms on the island. Indoor-camping only very modestly appealed to Misa and me, and the boys didn’t even have camping gear. We ended up at the Shell hostel, Misa and me camping and Jakob and Daniel sharing a room with a double bed. The boys left on the next morning for a better deal at Grace’s Cool Spot (it looks really nice, but there is neither a guest kitchen nor camping), while Misa and I stayed in our tents.

Shell Hostal (named after the conch shells that mark the way to the entrance) is an experience in its own. Gomez, the owner, is an elderly Nicaraguan. As any good Nica, he’s deeply religious and enriched my days here with commented bible passages in hard-to-understand Carribean-English. When he’s not telling from the bible he’s probably cursing the communists ruling Nicaragua, Cuba and Russia, and proclaiming that he’s going to fight in the next civil war to get rid of them. If you can’t find him at the hostel, there’s a good chance of finding him at the Oasis, the cheap bar on the island, where he’s likely to be flirting a bit while having one or another couple of beers.

He very much wanted us to conserve water and electricity to keep his bills low. This has the little disadvantage that the water coming out of the shower hardly is able to get the sand of your skin. I heard that complaining yields a temporarily wider-opened valve. Washing the dishes with almost dripping water is a similar joy.

If you ever happen to need the tourist police on Little Corn, just go to the best place to hang out right now, and you can almost be certain they’ll be hanging out there. I saw them in a hammock on the beach at daytime, at a concert in the evening, …

If it’s night and/or no fun to be outside, just go to bed and try some other time. They’ll probably be unavailable. And yes, there sometimes are problems even on this little island.

Misa and I spent the first day at the north beach where I saw a nurse shark, an eagle ray one or two other rays and the usual bunch of other reef fish on snorkel trips. To add to the Mangos that we had picked up on the way to the beach, I harvested a coconut. There’s nothing better than a self-harvested coconut on a beautiful beach.

The Eagle Rays from Benjamin Smith on Vimeo. Ben is a great guy and a divemaster on a long trip around the world. Check his vimeo account for more beautiful videos.

The next day it was time go deeper and I had two beautiful dives with Dive Little Corn at Patch and Flor de Caña. We didn’t see the oh-so-present nurse sharks, but a whole range of other fish including a moray eel. Next day, next dive. This time the nurse sharks were already waiting to be petted when we descended into my place. When we were done on that, there was a big golden Stingray calling for our attention. I missed the green moray swimming through the sand field, but even without it, I saw way more creatures than I could remember. Several were brought to my attention by Inga, a German teacher and dive instructor on holidays. While we were disassembling the equipment, we teamed up for a night dive. So, be there at 5 PM. That left enough time for an afternoon on the north beach with Genevieve, who had just passed her open water certification.

Patch, MyPlace (probably different dives) from Benjamin Smith.

The night dive was amazing again. Did you know that turtles hide under corals for sleeping? Stingrays will take pretty much any bit of ocean floor for hanging out, or just lie in the middle of the corals. The remoras are nicely stacked in one sand patch next to the reef. Lobsters are watching from there little caves and the octopus is happily hunting and going through rapid color and shape changes. Inga pointed out the biggest puffer fish ever. I’d guesstimate it somewhere near 50 cm. Another highlight was the seafloor disco. Inga pointed out little crabs or other sand critters that yielded little flashes when we moved our hands through the water, and even when we didn’t. After 58 absolutely awesome minutes in the 28 C warm water, we froze our *** off on the way back to the shore.

In their constant quest of outperforming themselves, dive little corn took us to Jarhead on the next morning. While I was decending, I was delighted to be heading strait into a big school of fish waiting just above the sea floor. Always fun to play a bit with the big meta-fish. It kind of looked like they were slightly nervous about something and when we looked around a bit more, we saw six dolphins that inspected this group of strange bubble-breathing fish that had just fallen from the big fish on the surface. Flooded with happiness from this encounter, the main part of the dive continued joyful with a drum fish and a flute fish adding to the formally musical side of the dive and fluorescent blueish corals delighting my eyes. Thanks to Jonas and Ben for taking photos and Videos and to Ben for turning them into this cut version.

Jarhead - Dolphins! from Benjamin Smith on Vimeo.

While the early morning dive was fairly deep and therefore with about 40 minutes rather short, the lunch-dive at White Holes was on the shallow and long end of scuba trips. I missed the call to descend because I was admiring a giant school of Sergeant Major fish. I didn’t attempt to count but they were somewhere between the hundreds and the thousands and hanging out right below and abound our boat so I could watch them just snorkeling. Once in the reef, I found a green moray in one hole and a lobster peeking out of one of the others. With nurse sharks (not up for petting this time) and sting rays spread out over the sandy patches we got our dose of this family of animals. Later in the dive, an eagle ray said hello. Elk horn corals, grown over the centuries provided a beautiful background for observing all the reef fish in the bright daylight of this shallow site.

White Holes (different dives) from Benjamin Smith on Vimeo.

My last two dives brought me to Long Rock, where a big moray eel greeted us and to Sueños Cave, where we could dive below overhangs and through swim-throughs. This was a nice finish for my time on Little Corn.

Long Rock from Benjamin Smith on Vimeo.

Isla Ometepe

Tue, 05 May 2015 03:19:06 +0000

As a little preparation for the Caribbean coast, I went all the way south through Nicaragua to Ometepe Island in lake Nicaragua. After a day on buses, taxi and ferry, I arrived at the Zopilote, a permaculture farm / hippie holiday resort. With the passport as deposit, food and drinks are gladly put on your tap and the first night is all that needs to be paid before checkout.

After the morning yoga I had some locally baked bread (actually realistic) for breakfast and met Geneviève, an artist from Montreal.

The next day I mostly spent walking around and taking photos. In the evening I ate a pizza that I should probably not have eaten. While you never really know what got you in the end, there were quite a few people with stomach / digestive problems at the Zopilote (and not for the first time), and the pizza was a prime candidate.

Under the influence of the pizza, I went up Maderas, the volcano of the southern half of Ometepe with Anna and Nadine. After making our way through the hot and dry lower part of the slopes we arrived in clouds and cloud forest. This contrast was amazing. Another two or so hours of sliding up and down the muddy path we found ourselves on a rather dry slope overlooking a sea of clouds. We decided to take a lunch break before moving on. While we were preparing bread with hummus and cucumber, the clouds opened and we got a beautiful view of the Laguna in the crater. Freshly strengthened we returned, through mud and dust. Meanwhile Nadine’s boots were taking their toll on her feet. Once Nadine practically couldn’t move any more, the gals swapped shoes and the boots took Anna’s feet apart, too.

On the next day I basically waited for the evening when the ferry from Ometepe to San Carlos brought me to the other side of the lake and one step closer to the Corn Islands.

The Highlands

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 04:59:40 +0000

After visiting the volcanoes around Leon, it was time to move on to a place where the towns were a bit higher and thus cooler.

My first stop was Matagalpa. With daytime temperatures around 30C this place was a welcome refreshment. At night I even used the sheet and a T-shirt (in Leon I used neither of the two).

On my first evening there I met Sharon and Naomi. With them I went to the selva negra (black forest) on the next day. This is a coffee plantation in the hills where you can walk on a bunch of trails through the cloud forest. For a mere US$20, I joined a guided tour that showed me around a bit and explained the ways they use to counter pests and the coffee plant nursery. On the way home I decided against watching the cockfights in the nearby settlement.

On the next morning I found a new teammate for the way to to the cross and virgin that are towering above the town. A few bus hours later I arrived in Estelí. The local non-profit hostel Luna proved to be my most expensive hostel in Nicaragua so far. Not having a kitchen definitely did not improve the deal. Let’s hope that the a salary the owners pay themselves is not too high and there actually is some of the money arriving in the community projects as advertised.

One night later I headed over to the Somoto canyon where I met Daniel and Dana from Potsdam, Tillmann, and Julia. Our guide led us through a sequence of walking and swimming sections and offered opportunities for jumps along the way. He also carried a dry bag with our cameras, allowing ample opportunity for photos of the beautiful canyon as we went. The last bit of the canyon, the water was not very inviting and we were shuttled in a rowboat. Lesson of the day: it’s not enough to bring sunscreen. You actually have to apply it…

My second day in Estelí was pretty relaxed. There is not sooo much exciting stuff to do there and if you are not up for reading pages and pages of text in the gallery of heroes and martyrs, this exhibition also does not take too long.

Leon

Wed, 15 Apr 2015 03:36:21 +0000

Leon is one of the most highly recommended places in Nicaragua. Located in the northwestern lowlands, this city does not only feature ridiculously high temperatures, but also beautiful surroundings and exciting history.

The city manages the intricate balance between being attractive to tourists and not feeling like a pure tourist spot. While there are a ton of hostels in and around the city center (I stayed in the El Albergue a Leon, $6/night + pancakes and coffee for breakfast is pretty hard to beat), there also are parts of the university and the streets and places fill with Nicaraguans once the sun sets and temperatures drop to semi-reasonable levels.

To the left of the white cathedral lies the monument for the heroes and martyrs. On the side walls, a mural depicts the history of Nicaragua and hope for the future. It is the result of a Hamburg-Nicaraguan project with Sönke Nissen-Knaack as one of the main contributors on the Hamburg side.

Facing the cathedral, the museum of the revolution invites visitors to dive deeper into the not so distant history of Nicaragua. In 1978 Nicaraguans started a rebellion against the US(backed) dictatorship. If you have a solid understanding of Spanish this museum is an absolute highlight, as the museum guides were part of the revolutionary army and enrich the historic narrative with personal memories. My guide told of attacks by the government army with heavy arms and of revolutionaries fighting the tanks with Molotov cocktails. The cocktails as well as the self-made hand grenades also caused substantial damage when they went off during construction and launching. He told of government prisons that hardly anyone would leave alive, and regretted that once captured many of the government soldiers were killed by the people in revenge for the murders they committed during the war. He remembered the heads of the revolution. Most of them fell during the war while the survivors now serve as high rank government officials (including president Ortega). When we got to the photo of the celebration of the victory in Managua, he remembered the atmosphere and the feelings he had at this time. This all brought the history back to life and made the museum much more interesting than most other history museums I’ve visited so far.

One of my personal highlights was a visit to Pan y Paz, a French style bakery that sells good bread and decent Nicaraguan imitates of European cheese. I went with the big cheese plate for two to three people and rejoiced over the best cheese of the last three months. Now I know that it is possible to make good cheese south of Wisconsin. I don’t know why it’s not done more frequently but it definitely is possible.

This bakery alone makes Leon well with a visit during a longer central America trip. The art museum is pretty decent, too (no photos allowed), while I found the museum of legends and traditions not too impressive, largely due to a severe lack of informational texts at the exhibits.

El Hoyo - lavaboarding, hiking, camping, swimming

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 05:47:16 +0000

After the one-night-hike up and down Telica, it was time for a longer trip during daylight. With the proven team of Quetzal Trekkers a had two amazing days walking up and down volcanoes with a bit of sliding in between.

We started at 7 AM with packing our stuff and a little breakfast consisting of eggs, yucca (imagine tasteless, kind of hard and dry potatoes), and fruits. A bit of instant coffee helped wake up (Rainer, I know now what they do with the good old Sandino Droehnung). Once everybody was fed and had their gear (including about 7-8 l of water) we drove to Cerro Negro.

At Cerro Negro it was time for lavaboarding. We walked up the volcano with lavaboards (wooden boards with a sheet of metal on the bottom and a handle for holding on to it. Once up there, we put on thick cotton overalls, gloves and googles. Protected from the ash, we slid down the hill. The general agreement was that it was nice to have seen it but snow is a lot nicer in your face than sand and gravel.

[Quetzal Trekkers took photos and promised we’ll get them soon, I didn’t want to have my camera graveled.]

After a quick snack we walked up the 5.3 km to el Hoyo in the midday sun. According to my phone’s GPS tracker, we gained 530m, maximum: 945m in a total of about 3 hours. After setting up camp, we did a quick ascend to the sinkhole. This is an almost perfectly circular hole in the mountain. The traditional explanation (that I would immediately support) is that this is a sinkhole. There seems to be the deviating opinion, this was the direct result of an eruption, but to me the whole thing looks to perfectly punched out with no crater rim or obvious outflow, or so. Geologists, any thoughts?

On our way to the summit, we passed by a sulfur/steam vent. After taking a gazillion photos during sunset we returned to our campsite for chili with rice (there is no escaping beans and rice in Central America). Well fed, we went to bed after toasting some marshmallows, or taking photos of the night sky. During the night, the wind gave our tents a thorough testing that, by and large, they managed quite well.

After a porridge breakfast, we descended to a nearby crater(?) lake where we took a refreshing swim, and had tortillas with beans and veggies. Refreshed we soaked our shirts during the following quick ascend to the rim of the lake crater and hiked out to the next road. We caught a ride on a passing truck that ended 1 mile before the intersection with the main road when the truck engine overheated. A bit of walking later, we arrived at the intersection and immediately caught a chicken bus that returned us to Leon.

Telica full moon ascent

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 00:51:41 +0000

What else would you do at night than walk up a volcano? Well, in Nicaragua the night actually is the best time for doing so since temperatures fall to a refreshing 25C (80F), instead of the daily 35C (95F). After having had nice excursions with Quetzal Trekkers Xela in Guatemala, I decided to give Quetzal Trekkers Leon a try and join their full moon Telica hike.

Quetzal Trekkers is one of the most amazing NGOs I’ve seen so far. Founded about 20 years ago as a way of turning tourist money into local aid projects, this group is purely (international) volunteer run with most of them staying for a few months only. Anybody willing to spend at least three months hiking through the beautiful mountains with a group of tourists of all hiking skill levels can apply for joining the group. The most important task apart from keeping tourists from killing themselves seems to be training the new guides and passing on knowledge. This process is highly optimized by now. With the money, they raise, Quetzaltrekkers supports education for street kids in Xela, and underfunded community development projects in and around León.

For the full moon ascent, we met with 19 people at 9:30 PM in the Leon QT office, had dinner with instant coffee and, after grabbing 4l of water each, headed out in the backs of two trucks. After about an hour of reasonably bumpy Nicaraguan roads, we arrived at a little village, got off the trucks and started our walk up the volcano by passing by some hot mud pools.

The trail itself was moderately exciting, very dusty and passed by a lot of little wild fires. One of our guides, a local from Leon, said the fires were the results of people smoking out iguanas for lunch / dinner. As they were practically static, they didn’t pose any serious problem and after a few hours of walking, we all arrived at the crater rim. On the animal side, we saw a toad an a little snake.

Once we arrived at the crater we could look down into the steam cloud and - at times - see a little bit of orange glow from the lava. After a couple of photos we headed a bit down again and crashed in place for an hour or two of sleep. At sunrise we ascended on a neighboring peak and enjoyed the view of the steaming crater and the neighboring volcanoes.

Tomorrow morning I’ll start on the QT El Hoyo hike.

Easter

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 10:00:00 +0000

Central America is deeply catholic. This results in the week leading up to easter (Holy week - Semana Santa) being the big event and travel week, where everything closes except for the churches that ramp up their efforts to new levels.

As far as foreign travelers are concerned this week is dreaded because finding a hostel can suddenly become an issue and prices rise to new levels. Central Americans as well as foreigners tied to school holidays suddenly flood the hostels. Public transport is virtually shut down on Good Friday (and Easter Sunday?) further contributing to the the joys of traveling.

The churches use the lock-down to sell their story. In Granada, I witnessed three processions. On Thursday evening the procession probably was pretty much the same as every other one (they happen pretty regularly), except for a higher-than-usual attendance. Statues of Jesus are carried through town. In the dark, they are followed by a bike-mounted generator and a brass band playing - well - mostly loud.

While I was having breakfast on Friday at 8 AM, Jesus left for another tour of the city. This time carrying his cross and followed by Mary. Some people in my dorm did not fully appreciate the brass band passing directly below the open window. Others didn’t even notice.

During the day, vendors were cashing in on the celebrity status and selling all kinds of Jesus figurines, crosses and other memorabilia in front of the churches.

On Friday evening, Jesus was dead. This celebrity death attracted loads of photographers, both local and international, and gave rise to another procession through town.

With Jesus dead and Saturday not being a holiday, I decided to use my window of opportunity and get on collectivos that brought me from Granada to Leon. Here I basically had to kill time before ascending Telica Volcano with Quetzal Trekkers in the night. More on that trip later.

While the city was pretty empty during the day - no sane person moves more than necessary at 35C+, there were more Jeusus processions during Sunset. Later in the evening I got to witness Jesus being dragged through the streets, quick-trialed and finally crucified in view of the cathedral. The crucification proved a bit difficult with one guy not really fitting his cross (I think it was swapped with the one of Jesus), and Jesus’ hair falling off a couple times. Later there were easter fires in front of the church, followed by easter fireworks after the service.

Leon has one cool celebration that I sadly missed. People fill a whole street with colorful pictures made from dyed sawdust.

Getting there

Sat, 04 Apr 2015 01:06:13 +0000

is one of the repeating tasks when traveling. Usually there is a couple of options for handling the tradeoff between spending time, and money with comfort and safety as other aspects that might be worth considering.

On this trip I feel like I’ve used most options available. On the fast end there were the planes that got me from the USA to Mexico, from Mexico to Cuba, and from Cuba to Costa Rica. On the slow and there were o horse carriage on Cuba and hiking in Guatemala.

I’ve taken boats in Guatemala and to get from Guatemala to Belize. The busses ranged from the Cuban truck-bus to the 1st class+ night bus with massively reclining seats, power supply at the seat, AC and headphone jacks for the sound of the movies in Mexico. The prices ranged from the free hitchhiking on the back of a pickup in Belize to somewhere around $50-70 for a night on the bus in Mexico.

The ways of getting the tickets vary widely. In Mexico ADO has a usually functioning website with all connections and the option of buying tickets. More local transport usually works with frequent collectivos and taxi drivers will strongly offer their service and deny the existence of any alternatives (this actually applies to all countries).

Hitchhiking and the chicken bus work on arrival and are definitely the cheapest options of getting from A to B. Along the Belizian Coast there is a lot of US expats and some locals offering rides. Hitchhiking into the interior on a Sunday proved less successful but there’s always a chicken bus to the rescue.

In Guatemala I mostly used tourist shuttles that any hostel will happily arrange. In Livingston a local trafficker will approach you with offers for the ferry to Belize. It takes a bit of effort to keep the prize from increasing after accepting the offer, though. For short distance transports in smaller places, tuc-tucs offer their services. These little three-wheeled boxes with tuc-tuc-engine and - depending on the owner - a substantial sound system will transport up to three tourists (or a probably pretty unlimited number of locals).

Usually the first step on any trip in Guatemala is to get gasoline. If it’s a longer ride, you can expect one unexpected event. My personal highlight was on the trip from Lanquin to Flores. Shortly after one of the usual rest breaks at a gas station, we drove into one of the villages, our driver sorted some business in a house, then picked up an elderly guy somewhere else in the village and went to the next gas station. There he asked us to leave the bus since he was going to perform an oil change. After waiting for the bus, that still had our luggage on the roof, for something like half an hour we continued our route. I don’t even remember where we dropped off the elderly guy.

The Cuban bus system has schedules and a reservation system online. The only problem is that you usually don’t have internet access and the people at the bus terminal usually don’t know connections in other cities than their own one, so connections are something you can hope for and facilitate by starting early. Plan to spend at least one hour to buy a ticket. In addition to the bus system shared taxis provide a viable option for moving around on the island. In the bay of pigs the rum-drinking local at the main intersection gladly collects a couple tourists for a shared taxi and defends them against other taxi drivers offering a cheaper ride. With a bit of luck, you get an old US-car with a little video system and massive speakers in the back for the music.

Costa Rica has infrequent long-distance buses that work on a french-railway-style system with pretty much any trip going through San Jose. To keep things interesting, the system is split up into a lot of different companies operating from different terminals in the same city, and publishing schedules on the internet is frowned upon. Some people still post local schedules (Thanks to Dan for pointing out the excellent schedule for Domincal!). By asking other travelers coming from the destination, inverting their route and starting early, one can optimize chances of arrival on the same day.

Right now I’m in Nicaragua, where there seems to be a combination of most options available - just not during easter, the main travel week. The only one who’s being transported today is Jesus.

Crossing borders

Fri, 03 Apr 2015 20:59:49 +0000

When moving around in Central America I’ve crossed a couple borders. While the basic story has always been pretty similar (sign out of the old country - sign in in the new country), details vary quite a bit. At some point the governments decided that this is a service that they should charge for. So there are fees for entering countries and fees for leaving countries. How much you have to pay in which way at which occasion varies greatly. Interestingly Costa Rica, while being one of the most expensive countries, was cheapest for me so far ($8 for leaving, entering is free). It’s followed by Guatemala. Guatemala would have been cheapest if I had left it on the land way (no official fee, but the migration officers will still charge you about $2 per direction), but they take an extra fee, that actually seems to be official, for leaving the country by boat. Cuba gets the prize for being the most expensive country with $30 for getting the tourist card for entering and a $25 departure fee. The Nicaraguan border officers get some extra credit for only accepting USD, and not Cordobas, the Nicaraguan official currency.

Besides costing money, these crossings of course also consume different amounts of time. Mexico to Guatemala took about 15 minutes in total for visiting both offices. Costa Rica had a substantial leaving queue and the whole crossing required visiting four different places. First I had to pay at some private agency in Costa Rica, that charges $1 for collecting the $7 official fee. Then I queued for some 30 minutes or so for getting the leaving stamp. After walking about 1 km through no-mans-land, I arrived at the Nicaraguan health check. Managing to present my passport seemed to be enough to earn me a little green piece of stamped cardboard that proved that I was no danger to public health in Nicaragua. With this piece I moved on to the migration office, paying $1 fee for entering the region on the way. After paying $12 to the migrations officer I had a stamped passport and could enter Nicaragua. The whole story took about 90 minutes, if my estimates are correct.

While Cuba charges the highest prize for entering and leaving, I also got a lot of attention from their customs officials. While I was queuing for the immigration counter, a guy with some badge came over to me and asked for my passport. The uniformed officials seemed OK with this behavior and after he had taken a look at my passport and - on request - told me that he worked for the migration authorities (I don’t even remember the acronym - nothing obvious). After a question answer game concerning my work, travel, luggage and I don’t even remember what else, he had about half a sheet of paper filled with notes. With this, we skipped the queue and I was granted entrance into Cuba. Once I had gotten my luggage off the belt, I was accompanied to the x-ray machine where the lucky winners of today’s special treatment got everything x-rayed. After skipping the customs queue I was

in the country and - since I had not organized my stay for the night - I was accompanied to the information desk, where the lady on duty happily directed me towards a casa particular (the Cuban official version of B&B), that would most likely pay her (and thus probably my customs companion) a nice commission. I kind of escaped that service by first going to the ATM and then working my way to the Cubana counter to figure out my luggage limit for the return flight. The website and my ticket only specified a limit of 1 piece - no weight specified. The ladies at the counter started with a guesstimate of 30 kg and after three seconds lowered it to 23 kg. I now know from experience that 21.3 kg is OK. When I was leaving the country, I was moved to a little office, where I was interviewed again. Where did you go? Where did you stay (the casa particulares have to report every guest to the authorities within 24 hours after arrival anyway)? What’s in your luggage? What coastal places did you visit? Show all of your photos! Which Cubans have you had contact to? This took about 30-60 minutes. It wasn’t critical for my departure time because the plane had about 1 hr of delay, which is on the punctual end of Cubana flights. At least for Cuba I’m pretty sure they don’t get access to the databases of Facebook, Google and friends that other governments use to check their guests, and given their neighbor’s countless failed attempts at killing the Cuban president I can’t really blame them for being paranoid.

The other aspect that is highly variable is the permitted time in a country. It ranges from the 15 days till my return flight in Cuba to 180 days in Mexico. Nicaragua - and I think also Belize - only allowed 30 days. Special thanks for not asking how long I want to stay and not notifying about this limit. Looks like I’ll have less time to leave money in Nicaragua than I intended. I’m sure Costa Rica won’t mind.

Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio

Fri, 03 Apr 2015 06:18:20 +0000

I’m going a bit back in time. When I arrived in Costa Rica, I immediately went to Samara, where I stayed at the hostel Matilori. During most of my stay the hostel was entirely German speaking. My first German immersion since I ended my holidays in Hamburg in June. Here I met Sandra and Clara and we decided to head to Manuel Antonio together to visit the national park.

Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio is a small national park in the middle of the Costa Rican Pacific coast. It is, however, the park that has the highest number of visitors per year. Assuming that there is a pretty good reason for so many people visiting the park, we decided to invest the 8 or so hours it takes to travel the 280 km from Samara to Manuel Antonio. Bus schedules were highly inconclusive but it became clear that leaving Samara at 4:30 AM, arrival sometime in the afternoon would be pretty much guaranteed. We left the hostel early in the morning and tried our luck on the Costa Rican bus system. Things actually worked out perfectly with a nice 1 hour breakfast break around 8 AM in Punta Arenas.

At the hostel Vista Serena, it turned out that the 10-bed dorm actually was an 18-bed dorm with one bathroom and pried-open lockers. We quickly opted for a four-bed dorm without lockers ($14 instead of $11).

The next morning, we went into the park and decided to do without a guide. On the first bit of the main path this was a totally sensible decision since tourist groups with guide indicated all the points where you could see the smallest bit of an animal and listening a bit to the stories of the different guides, you could get the general picture. After seeing a miniature bat, a humming bird, and a bit of sloth fur somewhere in the trees, we opted for the sloth trail and got our first real view of a sloth with only a few tourists around. Walking on, sloths kept getting better, and the capuchin monkeys decided to pull of a nice show for us. One of them basically asked for somebody to open a water tap near the bathrooms so it could get a bit of nice potable water.

At the beach trail we were lucky enough to see a sloth crossing the trail just above our heads. In the meantime the capuchin monkeys kept hopping around people and - if there was food in peoples hands - harvest some snacks. Otherwise they left us in peace, and tolerated people using their camera’s flash right in their face. The beaches in Manuel Antonio are absolutely beautiful although some of them are overcrowded, and others are dominated by trees that produce an irritating and poisonous latex.

When the park closed at 4 PM, we had traversed almost all trails, seen at least three of the four different kinds of monkeys (although some high up in the trees), and had gotten our dose of two-toed sloth. If you want to see wilderness, Manuel Antonio definitely is the wrong choice, but if you are interested in seeing a lot of animals in a zoo with paved trails and without bars and glass, this is the place to go.

Corcovado National Park

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 04:17:07 +0000

One of the highlights of Costa Rica is Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula at the border to Panama. Ignoring all the statistics, this is a nice chunk of protected land with a couple of hiking trails that you are only allowed on with a guide and between 5 AM and 6 PM. For a mere $200-ish you can spend three days in a beautiful environment and two nights on a foam mat with a mosquito net under a roof. It’s bring-your-own-food, but that’s pretty much all you have to carry in. Night temperatures are well above 20C (70F), so shorts and a t-shirt are pretty much all you need in terms of clothing and the whole kitchen and stuff are waiting in place. The most challenging part of the whole trip is getting the entrance permit from the park administration. There are only 50 overnight guests allowed at any time and I was very lucky to get one of the last three spots. Otherwise I would have been limited to day-trips or waiting a couple days - not really an option given the very modest beauty and pretty remote location of Puerto Jimenez, my base for this trip.

On Saturday morning, Randall, Miguel, Michael and I first spend a good hour in Miguel’s rental car getting to Carate, the end of the road and then walked about 20km to the La Sirena Station in the southwestern corner of the peninsula. On our way, we saw a lot of scarlet macaws (you can’t not hear them), pelicans flying in formation (they are considered as the Costa Rican air force, as the country has abolished its military in 1948), a bunch of other birds, capuchin monkeys, two (harmless) snakes, a sleepy tapir, two ant-eaters, a lot of nice beach and beautiful rain forest.

With daytime temperatures somewhere around or above 30C, we went through quite a bit of water that we got from a couple creeks on the way. On our arrival at the la Sirena station we passed through the airstrip and got to see loads of toucans that were enjoying the sunset on the neighboring trees. In some of the other trees, some monkeys were having a party.

Dinner was the classic pasta with a bit of extras when Randall scavenged restaurant leftover food for us. At 8 PM the lights went off and we caught a bit of sleep before getting up again at 4:30 AM.

After completely blinding some owl-like little bird with our headlights, we searched green leaves for a green frog with orange eyes. I’m sure I saw about twenty of them without noticing. After giving up on the frog, we found a couple other little critters and - when we arrived on the beach tapir tracks leading across the next little river.

We didn’t follow them (it’s forbidden to cross the river because of crocodiles and - at high tide - bull sharks), but decided to go walking in the woods a bit and come back later for the return of the tapir that was scheduled around 6:30 AM. Well, when we were walking past the airstrip, other groups notified us of a tapir that was having it’s good-day-snack (they are nocturnal) on the side of the grass. After a while of munching on the trees, it crossed the high grass just next to us posing for photos.

We continued criss-crossing the woods during the day and saw wild turkeys, chicken, and a bunch of other birds. When I asked Randall for the presence of tarantulas, he told us to hold our ears to a hole in a tree, where we could hear a low humming noise. He said this noise came from a tarantula a bit up in the hole. On the mammal side we saw a couple coatis (a central American relative of the racoon), and agutis (oversized guinea pigs on stilts). Highlights of the day hikes were a chameleon gecko landing in the dead leaves and changing its color from green to brown and an eyelash pitviper (just because it’s poisonous).

In the evening it was time for the La Sirena acrobatics mini-convention and a bit of workout in the airstrip with Dieter and Sinja from Frankfurt. A Costarican gal joined us for a bit. The other tourists preferred staying in the audience.

On the next morning we left La Sirena at 5 AM to be able to cross a narrow part of the beach before high tide. The hurry did not keep us from looking for a puma that was in the woods right next to us. It however decided to leave without a photo-shoot. Once we had crossed the narrow part of the beach, it was time to have a fresh coconut (thanks Miguel for getting it). A bit later a group of squirrel monkeys went crazy around us and we got ample opportunity to take photos and videos (of course this was the moment when I had to swap memory cards). After a refreshing bath in a crocodile-free river, we headed out of the park - not without taking a gazillion photos of the scarlet macaws.

All in all it was a fun trip that complemented Parque National Manuel Antonio surprisingly well. If you want to visit it, it might be a good idea to call guides and agencies in advance, especially during high seasons like La Semana Santa (Easter).

If you want to see more images, just click on one of them and move around in the photo stream on flickr.

Homeless and unemployed

Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:17:00 +0000

sound worse than it is. Well, at least as long as you spend your time traveling through central America. :)

The last three months brought me from San Diego to Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, and Costa Rica. As it currently stands I’ll continue this trip with Nicaragua before heading back to Germany via Spain.