Laguna de Apoyo

or; the Waters of Support are not enough

After five days in the hot hot heat of León, suffering from what I had diagnosed as travel fatigue, a certain kind of tired-in-the-bones hollow feeling that you can’t shake, I had decided to seek restoration in a place called La Laguna de Apoyo, or the lake of support. The mineral waters of that lake are said to contain healing properties, and I thought a few days of swimming and relaxing in a natural environment might cure me. But to reach those waters I would need to spend a day traveling.

Packed up my things and walked down to the street to Cafe Imatibe for the fourth day in a row, hooked on their greasy, delicious gallo pinto topped with fried eggs. Lingered there drinking my granadilla (passionfruit agua fresca) and doing my best to read the local newspaper, baseball and crime stories, not ready to brave the heat. But I finally got up the courage and went out to the street, hailed a taxi for the bus station. On arrival there I was immediately pegged as needing a microbus to Managua. In fact it was my route — really unless you are going north or east from León you are going to Managua. They put me up front in the middle, and I crammed my legs into the tiny space under the dashboard. I suppose it was a good view, but a little disorienting being right up above the road, the front of the flat microbus disappearing below.

Managua, an hour away, was a very decentralized, sprawling, gritty and dirty place. While to be fair, I didn’t see the center, nothing I saw inspired further viewing. Traffic and modern-ish concrete buildings for miles and miles. We got to the VCA bus station, which really just seemed like a few parking lots in a row along a road teeming with people and vehicles, and I was whisked right onto a bus for Masaya, my second connection of the day. This bus left me an hour later on the side of the highway at a supermarket, apparently ten blocks from the bus station. So baggage in tow, I made my way into the town. Next to a chaotic market, the people at the lot called the terminal told me that the bus for Laguna de Apoyo wasn’t leaving for three hours, so I had time to get a look at Masaya.

The thing to see in that town is Lago Masaya, a crater lake with a volcano. But it was on the other side of the city, I had no place to leave my bags, it was mid-day and the sun vengeful. Not being able to think of anything better to do, I set out to see the lake. Walking through the streets of Masaya, all cheap tiendas with someone at the door calling out their wares, streets busy with shoppers. I found that I had gotten off the gringo trail — as far as I could tell, I was the only one in town, and people in the street looked at me that way. Walked until I got to a plaza at an old church, and doused in sweat, I took a seat on a circular bench under the shade of a grand old tree. Bought a bag of mostly flavorless watermelon, and talked to a couple men sitting on the bench next to me. They said it was too far to walk to the lake with my bags; I should take a taxi. They asked where I was from, if I liked baseball and what team — they preferred the Dodgers. Sorry for your loss, I said.

I carried on until I got to the central plaza and rested again, watched some men playing chess with a small crowd of onlookers, kids playing in little plastic cars. People eating ice cream. A good vibe there. On my next push, I made it to the malecon, an amusement park without rides, a tourist trap without tourists set on the edge of a steep cliff. The sun was obscured by clouds and the day had gotten less intensely hot. Hundreds of feet below lay the Lago, a huge gray-colored crater lake, wooded on all sides. The lake was entirely deserted. I asked some people walking by why no one was down there, no one swimming, no boats. Contaminacion, they said. On the far side, the broken peak of Volcan Masaya spewed out a thick stream of smoke. A strange and melancholy vista which suited my fatigue.

Sat out at a little comedor and ate a sandwich de pollo, then walked part of the way back to the centro. Passed an abandoned purple colored baseball stadium with grass and weeds two feet tall in the outfield, bottles and trash scattered throughout the infield. When a taxi pulled up next to me and asked “taxi?” I conceded, and caught a ride back to the bus station. Just a yard behind the mercado, covered with litter, people coming and going, barkers shouting out destinations, your standard Central American bus terminal. Perhaps a few months earlier this place would have been unsettling, but I was used to it by now, and made my way through the noise and commotion and found the chicken bus marked Laguna.

Got one of the last seats in the back; by the time we were ready to leave it was stuffed to the gills, the aisle full of people standing. I had two women on my little schoolbus bench seat, and then they just put a little girl on my lap. I was a bit shocked, but she was very cute, and didn’t think twice about sitting on a gringo. Turned around and smiled at me. As we pulled out, everyone sweating on each other, ancient schoolbus shocks reeling over bumpy roads,reggaeton blaring, I found a certain peace with all of it. The utter lack of personal space and comfort, the chaos. I felt like a part of the scenery — an odd part of it, but a part nonetheless. Maybe I was too tired to care anymore. After about forty minutes, the bus route ended at the crater rim high above the lake, and I started walking down the mountain on a paved road amidst thick forest. Soon I saw my first glimpse of the lake through the trees. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had come to a good place.

It was a little cooler up here in the forested hills, with a good wind off the lake. A few hundred feet down, a taxi pulled up and said he’d take me to the Hostel Paradiso for thirty cordobas, a dollar, which was good enough for me. I got the last bed at the hostel, a charming place with several different levels of thatched roof buildings, terraced patios and gardens going down the hillside to the lake. I dropped my bags in a crowded dorm room and went straight down to the water. It was dusk.

After six days of tropical heat I felt massively better with just a few minutes in the water. The Laguna was a dark shade of turquoise, slightly salty and buoyant, warm but not hot. Healing waters indeed. I just floated and soaked for awhile, then swam out to the floating dock and sat on the edge. People were playing with standup paddleboards and kayaks, floating in inner tubes. Back on the shore I got a beer from the bar and watched the sun set on the crater rim across the lake.

The hostel was full up with gringos, mostly of the young european variety. They were panicked due to the upcoming prohibition on alcohol sales: forty-two hours surrounding the national elections the next day. The ban started at six o’clock that night. Their response was to order four or five drinks each from the lakeside bar to get them through the evening. It all seemed rather distasteful to me, tables chock-full with cocktails and beers sweating in the heat, everyone looking stressed out. When I walked back up to my room to change, two British guys were coming in with backpacks full of gallon rum bottles, and they looked sheepish, said something about a long weekend. Back on the gringo trail.

I decided I wanted to get away from this scene, and seek out a less expensive dinner than what the hostel restaurant was offering. There were rumored to be cheaper restaurants farther up the lakeshore, and I walked up the road towards the locals’ village. Found a little dirt road leading down towards the lake, but no signs indicating anything. As I stood there pondering, a flashlight approached on the road. It was a woman and a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of bags and various home objects, the woman carrying a large fan. I asked them if there were restaurants down this road, and they said yes, siga al fondo — just follow it to the bottom.

Came upon a house that might possibly contain a restaurant, but was deserted. Further down, there was another house with a banner reading Bar Maria; several men drinking beer in plastic chairs, slouched around a table, music playing. It looked like it could be an establishment or just people hanging out at their house. I said good evening and asked if the place was open, if they had food, and they said yes and yelled for Miguel. A young man came out of the house and showed me to a table in the corner of the patio.

I pushed my luck and asked if they had beer, my own quiet revolution against the alcohol ban, and young Miguel said yes, of course, and brought me a Victoria and a menu. My hopes for a cheap dinner were dashed; the lowest priced meal was over six dollars, not cheap for Nicaragua. Oh well. I decided I might as well just go for it, if a cheap meal was out of the question, and ordered the plate of costillas, pork ribs. Opened up my Complete Collection of Ernest Hemingway Short Stories, took a swig off my illicit beer, and read about a road trip through fascist Italy in the thirties. This yellowing book, which I found at a used bookstore at Lake Atitlan, was my first encounter with Hemingway’s short fiction. He is a master— every story a poignant view into a different world.

A few pages in the lights went out, the music stopped, and I began to wonder if I’d get my dinner after all. The slouching guests called it a night, drained their beers and paid. When my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see for the first time that this patio overlooked the lake, and a silvery-white almost full moon was rising over the crater rim. Miguel brought me a candle in a beer glass, apologized, and I said maybe it was better, que romantico. He looked embarrassed and went away. The candle was just enough light to read by, and I could still see the moonrise. My ribs came after half an hour, a giant plate with plantains and shredded cabbage and rice and the kind of watery salsa you find here and the ribs were melt-in-your-mouth good. Worth every bit of the two hundred and forty cordobas.

When I walked back up the road it wasn’t dark anymore, but now lit for elves and night magic. To walk a Nicaraguan country road under moonlight was one of those moments when I knew why I came all this way. Usually those moments seem to have to do with the sky. I got back to the Paradiso where the power was working just fine, sat at the upper terrace cafe and found myself part of a good long conversation with some genuinely interesting folks. A woman in her 50s from the Netherlands on a long travel, an American guy and his Nicaraguan girlfriend who both worked for an NGO in Masaya, and an American woman from Colorado on a 10 day trip. Our conversation ranged from brains and psychology, Freud and Jung, to advertising and politics and Nicaragua and we all drank free tea until it was late and it was the best conversation since I’d said goodbye to Jenny. The kind that makes your mind grow a little bit, and I went to bed feeling better about life.

Late at night one of the Brits who had been stockpiling the rum got dragged in, propped up by his girlfriend. Much stammering, stumbling, falling down, laughing and loud making out ensued. Apparently the rum here is effective. The next day, in late afternoon, emerging from a terrible stupor, the guy did apologize: “Sorry, mate, crazy night” and introduced himself. His name was David and I definitely gave him a little bit of a cold shoulder. But while they were still deep in a passed-out sleep that would last many hours, I woke up tired and went out into the sunshine, got a cup of tea from the restaurant and took it down to the water. The lakefront bar was closed til afternoon, the beach empty.

I savored the peace and sat a table and drank my tea and read a Hemingway story about an aging boxer who has bet fifty grand on himself to lose. When I finished the story there was still no one around, so I took a paddleboard out, way out on the lake. In the center, I realized how tired I was, lay down on my back and floated for awhile, watched the clouds drifting along. After a while I put my hat over my face and closed my eyes and just about fell asleep. In late morning I came back in and got a Desayunos Tipico from the restaurant, eggs and gallo pinto and pico de gallo and fresh cheese. The people I’d talked to the night before were all checking out, and big groups of people were coming in for day passes at the lake, mostly gringos but some Nicas too.

In the afternoon I got into playing ping-pong on one of the terraces with a group of day-passers. There was this blonde French girl drinking white wine and running the table. She’d been a tennis player, and played like it, wide full-arm strokes, twisting her body to get into position. No one could beat her; we took our turns fetching the ball over and over when she’d slam it and it would roll down the hill.

That night the volunteers at the hostel organized a murder-mystery game at the bar in lieu of alcohol, though some people had their own stashes that they were keeping under the tables. We were all given parts in a story that unfortunately was quite convoluted, having been translated roughly from Italian. Each table was one character, and we were allowed to ask each of the other tables three questions to try to solve the mystery. In the end, it didn’t totally make sense, lots of red herrings and strange connections in bad translation, but we all had fun playing at detectives. With a mystery it isn’t so much finding out the solution as just trying to figure it out.

The next morning I woke up with a sore throat, and was thinking about leaving. I went up to the upper terrace to drink tea and practice my Spanish with the two language apps I was using as teachers. Right there where I sat a morning yoga class appeared all around me, and I decided it was fate, so I joined in. My first real stretching in many moons. The peaceful feeling I had after an hour of yoga took away any desire I had to leave. I opted instead for another desayunos tipico — I had now eaten gallo pinto with eggs for six straight days — and a kayak trip out on the lake. Afterwards I felt exhausted, and took a spent most of the afternoon in a hammock on the top terrace, napping and reading. This place was indeed paradisical.

In the early evening I was approached by a group of cute Dutch girls. There was a game of bar trivia that night, and they had come to recruit me for their team. They flattered me a bit by saying that last night during the murder mystery game I had seemed smart, which was entirely unnecessary — a group of pretty Dutch girls don’t have to apply much pressure to get their way with me. So though I knew what I really needed was rest, there I was a few hours later in the bar drinking beer — the election was past and they were selling drinks again — huddling with my team and competing hard at trivia.

The first category was Greek Mythology, the next was Space, and the third was History. It would have been hard for them to construct a better trivia game for me. Needless to say, our team won, the prize being a bottle of rum, and after the trivia game was over, I ended up staying up late with the Dutch girls to help finish it. It should not be surprising that the next morning I woke up, without any question, sick. I felt feverish and my head full of wax — I needed to get out of this dorm and find a place to hide away and convalesce for a few days. My own room. I packed my things and caught the ten a.m. shuttle for Granada, half an hour away.