Peru: San Pedro de Casta Meets the New Age

I found out about San Pedro de Casta because the village is the access point for Marcahuasi, an allegedly ancient archeological site high in the arid western slopes of the Peruvian Andes.  Here, people said, humans had lived for 10,000 years and left behind sculptures that depicted the various races of humanity and a wealth of other oddities.

My kind of place, in other words.

I rapidly discovered during the late 1970s that there was no public transport to San Pedro.  So, how did one get there?  The only option was to take an early morning bus from the squalid market area off Plaza San Martin in downtown Lima, head for the resort town of Santa Eulalia, and then hitchhike the road that leads to Huancayo, but make sure to get off at the fork that led straight up the sides of a steep valley to San Pedro.  An easy, no-brainer task.

I had arranged to visit San Pedro with my English friend, Michael,  but had my reasons to linger in Lima, as the expression goes.  We agreed to meet in San Pedro after a few days.  He would make the trip first, arrange accommodations, and we would hike together to Marcahuasi.

He departed a two days before I did.  The morning I exited a modest hotel to the marketplace bus stop, my head was dizzy from an all night rap session with a young Australian female acquaintance.  I am quite sure we solved all the world’s myriad problems that night, but come morning our brilliant ideas had disappeared with the rise of the sun.

I made my way to the proper bus and boarded.  The vehicle, a form of inexpensive and rickety transport, was full to the brim with local campesinos.  The only available seat was a spot at the rear on the floor.

The bus departed in due time and made its way through the barrios jovenes that ringed Lima.  But soon we began to climb from the desert, and the sun appeared as we gained altitude and left the coastal garua below.  I was happy to have gotten away from Lima.  One grows weary of the endless traveler babble sessions in the hotels there, and the empty promises, made during furious mental processes,  to change the world.  Yet here was a promise I had kept, perhaps more simple than most, but still, I was on my way to a remote village to meet Nichael and hike to one of the most controversial archeological sites in South America.  What could go wrong?

The first trouble arrived unexpectedly at a police checkpoint, some distance from Lima.  Officers boarded the bus and began to shout at the passengers, demanding identification and other proof of their right to travel.  The burly men, dressed in ill-fitting uniforms and who handled their assault weapons with sloppy indifference, soon tired of questioning the Peruvian travelers when they spotted me, a lone gringo with a British army surplus field pack, surrounded by my other meager possession in the back of the bus. “Get up here and off the bus!” they shouted in my direction.  I complied with haste.  Once outside the old Bluebird, they noticed a plastic baggie hanging from my shirt pocket.  “What do you have in there?  Show us!”  I produced the bag, which contained Dutch Drum tobacco.  “That’s marijuana! ¡Vamos a la comisaría!“  So I tagged after them into a one-room adobe shack by the roadside.  Indoors, they rifled my belongings and found another baggie, this one filled with white powder.  “Cocaine!” they cried.  “You are under arrest.”

By now I had tired of the harassment.  First, I rolled a cigarette, lit the thing and blew smoke in their faces.  “See, this is tobacco, not marijuana.”  They were skeptical but couldn’t deny the smell.  Then I took off a shoe and thrust my foot on  the desk of the commandante. “Look, I have athlete’s foot.  The white powder is sulfatiazole, which helps alleviate the symptoms.  Here, put it up to your nose but don’t inhale.  It’s toxic if taken internally.”  The cops did not believe this story.  I then stated, “I am a tourist who has come to see your beautiful country and to help foster understanding between your citizens and ours.  How dare you accuse me of being a criminal?”

With that comment they relented, returned my plastic bags,  and reluctantly gave me permission to board the bus, whose driver had waited to see the outcome of my interrogation.  Almost all the passengers burst into applause when I climbed the stairs.  Score one for the good guys!

The bus trip ended as advertized in Santa Eulalia.  This was a quaint town with many restaurants and river-side pensións, where Limenos with sufficient means came to spend weekends away from the grovel of their home city.  Otherwise the place had little to recommend it.  So I stuck out my hand and flagged down a passing truck.  The driver was headed to Huancayo and he let me off at the intersection of the road that led up the hills toward San Pedro de Casta.  I made friends with a few men who were standing at the intersection. They asked me what the heck I was doing there, so I explained my mission.  One of them was about to walk up the mountain to San Pedro, and he invited me to accompany him. By walk, I mean that he was planning to trek some 7000 vertical feet uphill, on a barely-negotiable path.  I declined.

No other traffic passed by that day, so I pitched my tent by the river, behind some trees to keep out of sight, and spent a restless night listening to the flow of the  current and to all manner of strange unidentifiable noises.

The next morning, feeling stressed, tired, and hungry, I managed to secure a ride on a truck that was going to a town near San Pedro.  The driver, who held a bottle of aguardiente in one hand and a bag of coca leaves in the other, appeared ready to set a land speed record for mountain travel.  But by now I was too burnt out to care, so I launched myself into his cab and we took off, tires screeching in the dirt.

The road zig-zagged up the mountain.  At every hairpin the driver, after helping himself to a nice belt of moonshine, fishtailed around the corner, coming within inches of falling off the road and thousands of feet down to the valley below.  Then he would turn to me and grin, the wad of coca leaves in his mouth showing a bright green tint on his teeth.  Luckily my fatigue prevented me from having a nervous breakdown – I hate bad driving, especially when I am not the one engaging in the hazard.

He finally let me off at another intersection, where I saw the village of San Pedro, perhaps an additional six kilometers distant.  The view was magnificent.  But I had a long uphill walk ahead of me, with no prospect of any vehicular traffic passing to hitch a ride with.

1) San Pedro village perched on its mountaintop location, as seen from my drop-off point.  A lot further away than it looked.

2) The road to San Pedro.  The planted crops are potatoes.

3) Another view of the road

I reached the village just before nightfall.  The town was small, so small that my Brit friend saw me approach an hour before my arrival.  “You made it!” he exclaimed.  “Did you bring any food?”  “Food,” I replied weakly.  “Why would I do that?”  “They don’t have any to spare here,” he said.

Oh boy.  That was great news.  “Do we have a place to stay?” I now asked.  “Yes.  They gave us a house.”  Sure enough,  Michael led me to a one-room hovel with a dirt floor and a piles of organic garbage stuffed into the corner.  No furniture, no electricity, just a front door.  A thatched roof completed the list of its charms.  “How much do we have to pay?”  “Nothing, they gave it to us for free and said we can hang out as long as we like.”

“Where’s the outhouse?” I said.  Michael shrugged. “They don’t have them here.  You go out back into the fields to shit or whatever.”  By now he could have told me that we were required to take our dumps in front of the town council every morning and I wouldn’t have cared.

“Hey,” Michael now informed me. “Know what? The hillsides are covered with San Pedro cactus.  There’s mescaline everywhere growing wild. When we go up to Marcahuasi we can take a batch.”  “Whatever,” I said, only wanting to unroll my sleeping bag and get some rest.

We lingered in the village for a few days gathering information about Marcahuasi and related subjects.  The locals had seldom seen outsiders – we were there before the place became a New-Age pilgrimage focal point – and so they were delighted to share their experiences.

First, the village was a hot spot for UFO activity.  Night after night strange lights appeared in the sky, we were told, and on at least one occasion a saucer had dive-bombed the town.  The Catholic priest, who did not want to hear such nonsensical news items, told the villagers that these sightings were devil’s work, so the town promptly kicked out the priest and closed the church.  This was the only place in Latin America where I ever heard of the Church in modern times being run out of town.

Old men told us of cave entrances that could only be seen by moonlight at certain phases of its orbit around the Earth.  What was inside these caves, I wanted to know.  Entrada gratis pero no hay salida, came the invariable answer.  In other words, you can check in but you can’t leave.  Don Henley and Glenn Frey would have appreciated that line.

4) The moon over San Pedro

I also asked the villagers why no one dressed in traditional clothes any more.  The hamlet was laid out in its original pre-Hispanic street grid, and clearly the modern world had yet to intervene.  They replied that in recent times, people had dressed the same as their forefathers, but no longer was this the case.  Their castaway rags of Western clothing belied the sadness behind these remarks.

As for Marcahuasi, they believed fervently that the site was indeed special, and had been settled long by an unknown civilization before history began. Go visit for yourselves, they said.  You’ll see what we mean.

At last Michael and I made the necessary preparations and hiked to the top of the mountain above the village, to the site of Marcahuasi.  The summit formed a plateau around 3500 meters above sea level, with ravines and deep valleys cutting into the land.  We took sleeping bags, food, and mescaline, but didn’t bother with my tent, so as to save weight during the hike.

Well, we explored Marcahausi  after spending an absolutely frigid night camped under the stars.  The Milky Way shown like a giant headlamp crossing the night sky, and lights buzzed back and forth between the stars until dawn.  A to their nature I cannot say, except that these odd lights moved in non-lineal fashion and did not behave like any airplanes I have ever seen. The mystery remains.

We saw the famous “Monument to Humanity” as it is sometimes referred to, a rock that is supposed to depict  different human races from selective angles.  We walked around it.  I believe that this formation is a natural structure, and any human shapes that appear are the result of our brains’ tendency to make pattern recognitions in otherwise random features.

But we did see ruins, lots of them.  Mostly low stone structures that had been built as mausoleums. Crawling into one I saw skulls, clay pots, jewelry and other offerings, but did not touch the objects out of respect for the ancient peoples who had placed them there.

In due time we returned to San Pedro, staying in our hovel a few more days and making more friends whom I would return again to visit in later years.  These were the nicest people, poor in the extreme, but happy to share whatever they had without asking for money.  We did experience hunger most of the time, but the villagers had enough potatoes on hand to keep our bodies  functioning.

5) The village as seen in the morning from the second story of the municipal building

When we did depart San Pedro for the long walk back to the road that led gradually back to the modern world, we were reluctant to leave.  As well as bidding goodbye to some amazing people, we understood we were saying farewell to a way of life that was vanishing fast.

Nowadays every UFO freak and New Age adherent includes San Pedro in their Peru itineraries, and you can even travel there with groups.  The old ways are gone.   You can check in but regrettably you can now leave.

6) On the way out of town: Photo by MC Couture

Belize: Camping on a Deserted Island

Shortly after arriving in Belize City I discovered quickly that the town held few charms.  Very few, to be honest.  Despite its quaint clapboard houses and tropically colonial British architecture, this city on the shores of the Caribbean was replete with unemployed young men who had little to do in life except prey on the unwary tourists who wandered its precincts.

Once again I consulted a map, obtained at the local travel office conveniently located near the swing bridge over the Belize River.  It showed the major offshore islands, of course, as well as a few uninhabited cays not so far from the coast.  Uninhabited? I asked my traveling friend.  What’s that all about?

We made discrete inquiries along the riverfront, which was lined with docks and fishing terminals, not to mention a plethora of run-down wooden sailing craft in various states of disrepair.  The smell at low tide was awesomely powerful, like that of  a strong cod liver oil potion given by Mom during the 1950s to ward off both illness and good humor.

We showed our map to a number of riverside gentlemen, most of whom shook their  heads at our notion of securing a one-way passage to a random island.  We now had one locale fixed in our minds – Goff’s Cay.  This island looked promising for a number of reasons.  It wasn’t very far away, lying only about 10 miles east of the river’s mouth, but distant enough to be outside the polluting influences of the city.  The map showed another island nearby with a lighthouse, so if we found a ride to Goff’s, we would not be too distant from civilization in the event of an unforeseen mishap.

Now, who has never thought about spending time on a deserted island?  The more we considered the concept, the more plausible and attractive the idea became.  We finally located a friendly, if somewhat peculiar character who agreed to take us to Goff’s Cay.  His price was steep,  perhaps $20 for a one way ride.  We were not prepared to spend so much money for the return trip so we told him, “Don’t bother to come pick us up; we’ll hitchhike a ride back to town with a passing fishing boat or yacht.”  He thought this plan crazy, but twenty bucks was twenty bucks. We agreed to meet the next day to begin our journey.

We spent a frantic afternoon purchasing supplies.  What would we need and how long would we stay on the island?  Educated guesswork formed the only  source to our answers.  We bought canned sardines, lots of rice and beans, snacks, rum, and other supplies to keep our spirits afloat during our self-imposed isolation.

Our boat driver was at his dock on time the next morning and we departed without incident, after giving him his fee up front.  He had a mad glint in his eyes that matched his skinny build and toothy smile.  Soon we cleared the river and left the city behind.

1) Departure downriver from Belize City

The weather was clear,  beautiful, and sunny, but the seas ran high.  Our redoubtable pilot, no doubt thinking he was being paid by the hour, allowed no leisurely comforts  as we shot over eight-foot ocean swells, his entire 25 ft. plywood boat jumping clear of the water every time he powered the vessel over a wave. I began to wonder if the craft would hold together under the strain.  The pilot held his position at the outboard throttle just forward of the boat’s stern with that mad smile fixed to his face. He didn’t talk much, other than to point out our destination, which grew from a green-hued smudge on the horizon to an actual island that slowly resolved into a marvellous view of coconut trees and beautiful sandy beach.

After what seemed like hours of pounding through the seas, we coasted to a stop in the shallow water on the windward shore.  Our pilot helped us unload our gear, asked again if we didn’t want to arrange a pick-up, and soon departed, leaving us to the quiet  of our private island.

Goff’s Cay encompassed about an acre of land, mostly beach with a raised hummock where a few mature coconut trees provided shade. Previous visitors, probably fishermen, had built a rude thatched structure to shelter themselves from the wind, but it lacked a roof and looked pretty rough.  So we pitched our tent under the palms and sorted our belongings.

We spent three tremendously fine days on the cay.  With plenty of books to read, water to drink, and food to munch, all our needs were well met.  We had time for reflection, to lie on the beach and make sand angels,  and to gaze at the brilliant star-studded night skies free from the maddening effects of city lights, with only the sound of the wind, waves, and the seabirds to pierce the harmony of nature’s silence.  Occasionally a small skiff would pass close to the island, its occupants observing us with questioning looks, but we would smile and wave them away.  Our time on Goff’s Cay was a special one, the sort of experience a person stumbles into by accident but is never able again to repeat.

2) Our campsite on the island

Four days after our arrival we had a visitor. The lighthouse keeper had seen our evening cooking fires and had wondered if a yacht might have been shipwrecked near Goff’s, which is surrounded by an imposing coral reef.  He decided to hop into his runabout and come to make sure all was well. By now our food supply had dwindled, along with our cigarettes and rum.  We appreciated his offer to take us, for free, back to his lighthouse for the rest of the day and then transfer us to Belize City.  We bade goodbye to our island paradise and once again crossed the turquoise sea.

The lighthouse was a fine example of British-inspired infrastructure, and the keeper proudly showed us its mechanisms and lenses, along with the tiny cottage he called home.  He was a gentle soul, living by himself as a kind of hermit. Not unlike ourselves, really, lost and far from home.  At the end of the day he returned us to the Belize River, to a dock near the one from which we had departed.  After one more night in the city we headed south, determined to find another Caribbean hideaway that would match our island discovery.  We were never quite successful, but to travel involves embarking on a quest, not to reach a destination.

I hear Goff’s Cay welcomes squadrons of cruise ships these days and has developed into a day-trip spot for hordes of fast-tripping tourists.  The place has moved on, and so have I.  Now older, I dream of the Marquesas, the Tuamotu chain, and Vanuatu.  My dreams have expanded their reach while the world continues to shrink.

Tikal: A Photo Essay

When I visited the famous Mayan city, located deep within the Peten region of northern Guatemala, getting there was  an arduous task.  First, I had to make my way overland from Belize into Guatemala, to the island city of  Flores.  The second stage involved traveling by public bus over an atrocious dusty road for 70 kms.  The journey took at least three hours.

Upon arrival, visitors were given two choices for lodging.  The first, a “luxury” hotel, had prices far above my budget range and looked like a bad deal.  The second option was a rough campground, hewn from the jungle more than a kilometer from the archeological site.  We could stay there as long as we liked, as long as we didn’t mind getting too familiar with the various jungle critters that abounded in the forest.

I chose the campground and stayed there for a week. Every morning my friend and I would walk the long jungle track to the park entrance.  At that time, during the 1970s, visitors could roam the ruins and temples at will with no restrictions.  One could climb any pyramid, risk life and limb on top of the huge structures, and basically there were no watchmen to ensure that tourists behaved themselves.  To the best of my recollection, everyone’s conduct was exemplary.

1) The main attraction: central plaza and the Temple of the Jaguar. Climbing the pyramid was test of ones tolerance to vertigo.

2) Star Wars fans will recognize this view as representing the rebel stronghold at the end of “A New Hope.”

4) Palace complex near the main plaza

4) The scenery from Temple IV; a friend of mine fell from the rickety metal ladder that provided access to the summit and broke her back.  She had a miserable experience returning to Flores in a rear of a pick-up truck before being airlifted to Guatemala City.  I doubt they allow tourists to climb here now.

5) Another pyramid-top view

6) An unexcavated ruin in the forest.  Tikal at the height of its power covered an area of more than 16 square kms.  A photo very similar to this one in a grade-school history book launched my life-long passion with archeology

Guatemala: Up the Creek with a Paddle and a Jaguar

1) Rio de la Pasion

After visiting the great Mayan site of Tikal in the Peten, my friends and I decided that the time was right to head south into the Guatemalan highlands and explore the rest of this wonderful Central American country, populated largely by gentle people of Mayan extraction.  But we were far from the southern mountains and volcanoes, stranded in the town of Flores, an island inLake Peten Itza 70 kms. south of Tikal.

We consulted our maps.  Sure, the local commercial airline flew directly from Flores several times a week to Guatemala City, but this option sounded boring, and besides, we’d miss traveling through the jungles that lay between Flores and  the mountain ranges further south.  We noticed a town not far from Flores called Sayaxche, hard on the Mexican border.  The Rio de la Pasion flowed from south to north here.  Well, the choice was obvious.  The only decision we had to make was in which direction to follow the river.  The river’s  name had a nice ring to it, too.   Very sonorous.

I’d already spent 3 months in Mexico and did not wish to return there, so we thought, why not hitchhike river boats upstream further into Guatemala.  So we took a local bus from Flores to Sayaxche, arriving in the late afternoon.  Our first task was to cross the river to the town center, and we easily secured passage on a dugout canoe that plied the river crossing.

2) Crossing the river in Sayaxche – a local woman on board the motorized dugout with her baby

The colorful scene of the river town enchanted us.  A mix of wooden shanties, commercial warehouses that held lumber and other products for the trade between Mexico and Guatemala, and other nameless structures all perched on the river banks like so many matchstick houses, lending an air of a frontier post to the town.

Once on the far side of the stream, we gathered our gear while nightfall rapidly approached.  After a few questions to the local residents we ascertained that Sayaxche had no hotels of any description.  We sat at a simple outdoor bar and considered our choices.  Fortunately someone suggested we knock on the door of the police station and ask if we might hang our hammocks on their front porch.  An excellent suggestion.

By now darkness had fallen as we picked our way through the muddy streets to the cop shop.  Of course the town had no street lights, and in the dark I slipped and fell.  At the time I was carrying a liter-sized bottle of honey I had just purchased as part of our supplies for the upcoming river trip, which we were given understand might entail a ten-day itnerary.

As I fell, the bottle of honey, still in my hand, smashed on a rock. I felt no pain and it was too dark to see if I had damaged any body parts.  We carried on to the police station, where an lonely electric light kept the veranda brightly illuminated.  The shock now hit.  My friends said, “Your arm is covered with blood!”  Sure enough, still feeling no discomfort, I looked at my left arm and blood was streaming from my hand in a steady flow.  Upon closer examination I realized that the honey bottle, when it broke, had cut the little finger of my left hand, slashing the portion near the nail clean away.  I could see the bone of my finger through the cut, which looked almost surgical in its precision.

Oh Christ, what now?  Sayaxche had no medical facilities and we were getting ready to embark on a ten-day river trip deep into the rain forest.  Should I turn around and go back to Flores, a bigger town that surely possessed a doctor’s clinic among its other amenities?

Nope.  I had some antibiotics, plenty of bandages, aspirin, and mercurachrome  in my personal medical kit.  I’d just have to manage.

So I wrapped up my finger as best as I could after washing it a water tap that hung from the outside of the police station. The cops themselves were friendly but unable to assist, other than by assuring us we were welcome to stay the night on their porch.  So we went to sleep.  At least the bleeding had stopped.

Two days later, after downing a great many tetracycline pills and changing the bandage on my finger every morning, we secured passage upriver on a cargo dugout.  These craft traveled from town to river town with supplies for the residents who lived on its banks.  We  a different ride every couple of days, slowly making our way upstream.  Small cataracts provided thrills as the boat pilots struggled, with outboard throttles at full power, to navigate rapids and fast currents.

3) Churning through rapids on the upper stretches of the river

In one village we were told that we would have to wait at least four days for another boat. By this time I had largely forgotten about my injury.  My finger never did hurt, and my finger exhibited no signs of infection.  So one afternoon, in the blazing heat of day, I decided with one of my companions, a guy from Toronto, to take an impromptu hike into the jungle.  Chicle gatherers had hacked good paths through the forest to collect the sap from the trees of the same name.  The word chicle is the source of the brand name “Chicklets,” and the sap is used to make chewing gum base.  Seemed like a piece of cake to follow one of these paths for a couple of hours and then return to the village.

Well, as I now understand, all jungle trails look alike, as does the forest around them.  Rain forest areas have no landmarks to guide the uneducated hiker.  But oblivious to such woodcraft, my friend I and hiked deep into the forest.  As it was midday, the fauna, smarter than we, were nowhere to be found, so we had little to observe except for impenetrable thickets and huge fig trees, along with hardwoods and their attending epiphytes.  But we had fun.  Finally the trail stopped at the bank of a tiny creek.  Here, pulled on shore, lay a tiny dugout canoe, complete with paddle.  It probably belonged to a chicle gatherer who stored it here when he didn’t need it for his work.

We looked at each other innocently.  Why not borrow the canoe and paddle down the creek and see where the waterway might lead?  Surely the owner would understand.  So we hopped in the boat and headed into a swamp.

3) In the borrowed dugout, heading deeper into the flooded forests near the Rio de la Pasion.  Up the creek but at least with a paddle.

After about half an hour we started to freak out, to use the term freely.  What if the owner came back and found his boat missing?  What if he had a shotgun?  What if he hated gringos?  All sorts of scenarios played themselves in our heads, most of them ending badly.  So we turned around and returned the canoe to its original resting place.  For some reason we had a pen and some paper with us, so I left a note in Spanish, telling the anonymous owner that we had borrowed his boat and was grateful to have made use of it. I think I also left a pack of cigarettes as an offering of thanks.

We now attempted to retrace our tracks and return to the village.  It took about five minutes to realize we were desperately lost.  Which track was which?  Numbers of them branched in several directions, tracks we hadn’t even noticed during our inward passage into the forest.  We arrived at a major junction of the trails. One forked left, the other to the right.  I said to my friend, rather stupidly, “You go one way; I’ll take the other.  Maybe we’ll recognize something.” Yeah, right.

But that’s how we proceeded.  We had each covered a distance of about 20 meters when without warning, between the two trails, a mighty roar issued from under a bush.  Yikes!  A jaguar, sleeping through the afternoon heat, had been awakened by our blundered through the woods on either side of him.  I am not sure who was more frightened, the cat or my friend and I. Everyone took off at full speed.  Fortunately the jaguar elected to run in the opposite direction from us.  I got a glimpse of his tail and spotted rear end.  This was no ocelot, of which I’d seen a few near Tikal, but rather a full-grown Panthera onca.  We bolted as fast as we could down the path, charging along for a good twenty minutes, wondering when the beast would leap at our throats and tear us apart, then snack leisurely on our fresh gringo meat.  Certainly our other buddies at the river village would never have found us.  We’d end up on missing posters at the Canadian Embassy in Guatemala City for a few months, and then that would be the end of our lives in the spotlight.  Not to mention our time on Earth.

But our run proved providential.  We soon recognized that we were actually closer to the village than we had thought, and saw agricultural clearings for maize and yucca.  Gradually the forest thinned and we regained the river.  We’d learned another lesson.  To paraphrase the guy chased by the tiger in “Apocalypse Now,” Never get off the boat; never get off the boat. Or, in our case: Never walk into the jungle alone, never walk into the jungle alone.

4) jungle tree near the river

Eventually we finished our river journey when further navigation became impossible, and hitchhiked to Guatemala City. The Canadian Embassy referred me to a doctor to look at my finger, which was still raw and unhealed.  But he pronounced me to be in excellent health, and said, “You had exactly the right kind of antibiotics, and you changed your bandages in exactly the right manner.  You’re damn lucky not to have contracted gangrene and lost the finger.”  And lucky not to have become snack-food lunch for a jaguar, too.

The 1972 Managua Earthquake – A City Destroyed

In 1972 an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 struck Nicaragua and destroyed its capital city, Managua.  The events following this devastating natural disaster contributed greatly to the Sandinista Revolution a few years later.

I visited Nicaragua at the beginning of the civil war.  My first inkling of trouble occurred at the border, where Customs officials treated travelers with rudeness and physical abuse.  My companion and I managed to enter the country without incident after paying a hefty “visa fee” but we were shocked at the behavior displayed by the border guards.  Normally in Central America visitors were greeted at international frontiers with a measure of tolerance, occasional friendliness, and at the worst, indifference.  But here, violence was already in the air.

Times were changing in Nicaragua.  After spending some days in Masaya we made our way to Managua.  We constantly met Sandinista supporters who informed us bluntly that they were about to overthrow the government.  We soon discovered their motives.

Downtown Managua, smashed by the earthquake six years previously, had never been rebuilt. Never cleared, fresh housing never constructed for the victims, nothing, nada.  We walked around the ruins of the central district like survivors of a post-apocalyptic future and marveled at the devastation.  Trees grew from swimming pools in residential districts, office buildings lay in crumpled heaps, and what few areas had been bulldozed free of wreckage were vast empty fields of weeds and grass.  It was as if the city had been bombed like Koln or Coventry during Word War II.

Squalid shantytowns encompassed the central district,  where refugees lived in conditions of grinding poverty.  We stayed in a bad hotel outside the city center, one of the worst I ever encountered in Central America.

The reason the city had never been restored was explained to us by many Nicaraguans and was not difficult to appreciate nor to understand.  After the earthquake the Somoza government immediately appealed for and received substantial international aid to help its citizens rebuild; the politicians and their henchmen quickly stole almost all of the donated money.

As a reasonable person can imagine, the citizens of Nicaragua became increasingly angry.  During our stay in Managua we met a pharmacist who lived above the city in a nice neighborhood, not far from the Intercontinental Hotel made famous by the journalists who covered the civil war. While we ate dinner and looked down at the city, still mostly without electric light, the pharmacist and her husband – upper middle class folks who one would not normally associate with a radical revolutionary movement, explained that they and their peers planned to take down the government by force.  They had weapons and were getting ready to use them.  And so they probably did.

We met many other citizens who later became Sandinista fighters.  We would talk on street corners, in bars, and in public parks. I threw my support to them, encouraging these simple individuals to take up arms and defeat the rabid dictatorship that had ruined their country.

I have a personal connection to the theft of the aid money.  In my hometown of Lennoxville, a local elementary school that many of my friends attended, Ecole St. Francois, took up donations to send to Nicaragua to help the earthquake victims. The kids raised a few thousand dollars, a lot of money in rural Quebec for grade-schoolers in the 1970s.  Some months after forwarding the money directly to the Nicaraguan government, the school asked how the cash had been used to aid the earthquake victims.  The hubris of the response was astounding.  Not even bothering to make up a plausible alibi, the Nicaraguan embassy in Ottawa told the children that the money, alas, had never reached Managua but had been “lost.”

A German woman I met a few months after the revolution, with whom I became a close friend,  was with the revolutionaries who stormed the presidential palace.  A picture of her drinking champagne in Somoza’s bathtub was widely disseminated at the time in the international media.

I stayed with her a few years later at her apartment in Berlin. Unfortunately she became increasingly radical herself, to the point where she was reluctant to explore her own city with me, for fear of being perceived as supporting the bourgoise society that she believed Germany had become.  I haven’t seen her since 1980.

A lot of time has passed since 1978.  The Sandinistas, like so many idealistic movements who have won power in their homelands, were corrupted by their own success and fame.  Ronald Reagan decided they were terrorists and funded a long dirty war against them, adding to the endless misery constantly endured by average Nicaraguans.  Eventually Managua was partially rebuilt, and I understand that now luxury shopping malls and apartment buildings grace the city outskirts.  Even the central district has finally undergone restoration.

But I still wonder if the original refugees have benefited from these changes, or whether they inherited the same abysmal economic conditions as their parents and grandparents suffered under the Somoza regime.

In 1978 I took many photos of the ruins of Managua.  Most have been lost, but a lucky two images have survived the years:

The Bank of America building in Managua. Locals told me that all the floors pancaked during the earthquake.  Luckily the quake happened at night when few workers would have been inside.  The other structures in the photo were uninhabited and dangerous wrecks.

Managua’s cathedral.  Six years after the temblor authorities had yet to authorize workers to sweep the floor clean of debris.