Roaming Tales

This is a guest post from Stephen from Manzanilloblog. Stephen describes himself and his wife Tiffani as “chronic travellers”, who’ve recently made the leap and left the US to live in beautiful Manzanillo, Mexico. They are loving the experience so far and started the blog to share their discoveries, adventures, and hard earned lessons with the world. In this post he shares some of the bloody history behind the beautiful beaches.

I’m sitting on the beach watching the waves peel and crash; the ocean looks glassy. The sea-scented air feels refreshing, and the sun radiates a warmth that is more than skin deep. Children and their parents are playing in the white wash, giggling as each crashing wave seems to catch them by surprise. Grandparents look on from under umbrellas, shouting warnings, laughing and complaining to one another. “We didn’t have waves in my day… these kids don’t know how good they have it…” It’s peaceful and beautiful; almost paradise.

It’s hard to believe this lovely place has such a bloody past. History in Mexico is a record of one ferocious conquest after another. In the 16th century, not far from where I’m sitting now, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés built a port in Santiago, retired here, cut down all the old growth Manzanillo trees, for which the area was named, and built an armada to bring his greedy conquest to the the Philippines. He and his kind destroyed an ancient culture in search of gold and in the name of God. Cortes and his conquistadors crucified thousands of Indians, watching them slowly roast at the stake after oiling their feet so they would burn better.

Yet the Spanish were not the first to commit horrible crimes here. For hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Aztecs slaughtered thousands every year to appease their gods and ward off catastrophe. In one week they offered 20,000 hearts of murdered slaves to their gods. Entire towns and cities were wiped out. They painted their famous pyramids yearly in the fresh blood of their victims. You don’t hear about that on the tourist tours.

In Cortés’ wake came a regime of cruel dictators who enslaved and oppressed on a mass scale. These dictators created a caste system, rating the worth of the natives; they ground the people down under their well-polished heels. Failed attempts at uprising led to revolution in 1910. Even now there is a brutal war going on against the drug lords of Mexico; decapitations, assassinations, and mass executions are in the news every day.

We are told never to forget the holocaust, so that it may never be repeated. But it seems the holocaust was one instance in a long line of heart-wrenching atrocities that man has committed against each other. Mexico’s story is not unique; nearly every nation in the world has a bloodstained past. It seems to be the human way.  What will it take to rouse our collective consciences?

The atrocities of history are dulled and forgotten with time like so many sand castles and footprints in the surf. It’s the crimson sunset that tells humanity’s true history. Can the tides of time wash all of that away?

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I’m delighted to be hosting the Carnival of Cities for a second time on Roaming Tales. This is the 30 April edition and we have a bumper crop of great posts. We seem to be confined to North (and Central) America and Europe this week, though we still have a lot of diversity, from Carcassonne to Miami. Happy reading!

Carnival of Cities is a blog carnival - where one blog hosts and other blogs submit posts on a particular theme. The theme for Carnival of Cities is cities and towns. You can see the 23 April edition of Carnival of Cities on Family Travel. I look forward to seeing Carnival of Cities on Leslie Carbone’s blog next week.

Anywhere

Any city: Ecosalon on new guidebooks that highlight a city’s independent businesses.

Europe

Stockholm: EuroPride is one of the biggest events on the gay and lesbian calendar in Europe and this year it’s taking place in Stockholm, Sweden, according to Eyeflare.

Alicante/Valencia: Information on the ferry service (or lack thereof) from Alicante to Valencia in Spain on Costa Blanca Webcast.

Barcelona: Me, My Kid and Life has a post about an open-air market in Barcelona, Spain, including pics of all the yummy food from fish to ostrich eggs.

Edinburgh: A review of the Red Fort Indian restaurant in Edinburgh on the Europe A La Carte blog. A £6 buffet sounds like good value!

Rome: Culture Shock finds accommodation in Rome last minute - and it was surprisingly nice.

Carcassonne: France Tales pays a visit to the medieval French city of Carcassonne. (This has been on my list since reading Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth - not a brilliant book but it did bring the setting magically to life).

Vienna: Mes crazy expériences has written about a visit to Vienna on a rail trip of Europe in 2005.

Salisbury: Traveling Mamas passed through London and stayed in Salisbury as a base for a visit to Stonehenge.

The Americas

San Francisco: CatSynth on a weekend filled with art, music (and cats) in San Francisco.

Washington: Leslie Carbone on the very wonderful Smithsonian museums in Washington DC.

Miami: Photo post of the South Beach in March on the Seabird Chronicles. And a review of South Beach bar Ocean’s Ten on SoloFriendly.

Honululu: Homespun Honululu gets political with a post on the grassroots protest against plans to build a rail network in Honululu.

Cincinnati: If you have a taste for the finer things in life, check out Cincinnati Locavore - this week’s submission has a post on an award-winning distilled vodka only available in the Ohio city.

San Antonio: Intelligent Travel has a post about the River Parade in San Antonio, Texas - lovely pics too.

Granada: And finally, my own post on Granada in Nicaragua - a colonial city on Central America’s biggest lake.

Submit your blog post to the next edition of the Carnival of Cities using our carnival submission form. Please only submit one (non-spammy) post and keep it on the topic of cities and (midsize and bigger) towns. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Like its famous namesake, Granada in Nicaragua is worth visiting for its relaxed atmosphere and beautiful historic architecture. It might not have the Alhambra but the streets are lined with Spanish colonial buildings in vibrant colours, from blue to cherry red. The town was founded in 1524 and the town has kept its historic flavour, with Spanish-style columns and facades adding a touch of grandeur, while terraces and garden courtyards provide a welcome retreat from the heat.

Granada Cathedral, a splendid building in yellow and white, sits opposite the town square, while municipal buildings and grand hotels line the other three sides. A few streets away, the Guadelupe Cathedral, an unrestored but no less imposing building, has a bell tower with fantastic views of the city.

The Old World Granada has the dramatic mountain backdrop of the Sierra Nevada. The New World version is perched on the edge of a vast freshwater lake with views of the nearby volcano. Lake Nicaragua is the largest freshwater lake in Central America and is almost the size of Lake Titicaca on the border of Peru and Bolivia. It’s worth taking a boat trip in one of the long covered motor boats to explore ‘Las Isletas’ - the islands - where many of Nicaragua’s richest families have holiday homes. Or you can rent a kayak or take a sailing lesson instead.

It’s also the cleanest lake in Central America and in a cafe by the water you can eat delicious freshwater fish caught wild that day, then lightly battered and served with salsa. Granada itself is packed with restaurants, with everything from fusion tapas to Italian on the menu. The city is only 40km away from Managua, the rather less charming Nicaraguan capital, so it gets a lot people coming for the day or the night. This also makes for a buzzing night life, with establishments such as Cafe Nuit and the Safari Lounge providing entertainment in the wee hours.

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I didn’t need 80 days to travel around the world but the last month still feels pretty epic.

Since leaving London in early March, I have been to eight countries on four continents. First stop was Australia, where I spent a couple of weeks visiting friends and family in and around Sydney and Brisbane. I then flew to Houston via Los Angeles to make connections to Nicaragua for a week researching a travel story. Back to Los Angeles for one night, and then a 15-hour flight to Hong Kong. Still on assignment, I went from Hong Kong to Thailand, then a loop around South-East Asia that also took in the Angkor Wat area in Cambodia and a day in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, before returning to Bangkok. I flew back to Hong Kong for my flight home to London (the itinerary had changed but the ticket didn’t).

I was only in London for one day - just long enough to visit the laundromat since the washing machine had packed it in during my absence. Then I caught the train down to the Arvon Foundation centre in the Devon countryside for a fiction writing course. It felt like a retreat after all that time on the road, staying in a pre-Domesday thatched cottage, with lots of time to be creative and go on long rambling walks across the fields. The hope of seeing otters in the river did get me down there at 6.30am - I didn’t see the otters but I did see this beautiful sunrise.

Now I’m back in London, very glad to see my partner and looking forward to getting back to normal life - and the eight stories I have to write from the trip. Travelling is fab, even though the schedules can be intense, but I’m always happy to return, knowing that the next adventure is not too far away. Mongolia might be next.

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Things work a little differently in Nicaragua, at least when it comes to officialdom.

Scene 1: Border control

The immigration officer checks my passport and asks for $US5 for the on-the-spot visa. This takes me slightly by surprise since I had been told there was no visa but thankfully I still have some US currency in my wallet. I pull out the five-dollar bill, still newish but with a tear in the corner.
“Do you have another?” the man asks.
“No, I’m sorry, but surely this no problem. The money is still good,” I replied.
“It is a problem for us,” the man answered. “The Nicaraguan banks will not accept this.”
He asked me to go outside to either get money from the bank or from my hosts who would be meeting me in the arrivals hall. So he kept my passport while I went into his country and back again. But the bank did not accept my card and my hosts were yet to arrive, since the flight had landed 15 minutes early. Fortunately I spied Kiwi Jim, who I met at the airport yesterday, and swapped my five-dollar bill for one of his. He’s been here before and had loaded up on pristine currency before he came.
Later I saw some of the local money - some of the oldest, dirtiest and most dog-eared bills I’ve ever seen.

Scene 2: Baggage claim

My impromptu stay in Houston meant that my luggage arrived in Nicaragua yesterday. There is just one man on the delayed baggage desk, with about a dozen anxious passengers filing reports and claims. There are three of us whose bags are already here but he cannot leave his post to go and get them. It is 11.30am and the countdown is on, since at midday the Customs staff will go on lunch break for an hour and if we don’t have our bags we will be locked inside the terminal until they return. There are no food shops and there are people waiting for us outside.
The baggage officer radios for help but the only other airline representative is working on the plane. Meanwhile, over a dozen men in airport uniform are lounging around, sitting on the inert baggage carousel and leaning against the columns and walls. For them it is “cafe cito” time already.
Finally, the officer concludes his business and whisks the three of us through Customs and retrieves our baggage with moments to spare.

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