The Worst Marching Band in the World
My next stop was the island of Ometepe, formed by two volcanos connected by an isthmus in Lake Nicaragua. The crew from Granada parted, each heading our separate ways. I found myself in a bit of a sour mood as I made my way to the island, probably due to an overly expensive cab ride and an overly expensive lunch, which was crap. This was quickly dissolved by beautiful scenery as we approached the island (by boat), my favorite being National Geographic quality views of flocks of white birds flying low over the water, with lush jungle behind. The boat arrived in Moyogalpa, the largest town on this island of 35,000 people. I made a last minute decision to head to the other side of the island, to Altagracia, the second largest town, which was recommended to me by another traveler, since it has less tourists. What a cute little island. There were cows running all over the place, walking down the street, to where I don’t know. Tons of pigs (this is the first country where I’ve seen pigs), and, well, chickens and roosters aren’t even worth mentioning anymore…they’re everywhere. I got into town at dark, found the hotel that was recommende to me, laid down my bags and went for a walk around town, mostly to search out where this loudspeaker blasting music and somebody’s announcements was coming from. It turned out to be some little store…I have no idea why they needed such attention, but so it was. On the way around town (which is small), I was joined by a local named Jonas, who insisted we speak English. He didn’t speak too badly, but it was peppered with swears and a sort-of ghetto sound to it, and I was quite curious about where he had learned his English. Anyway, it ended up that he worked at the pharmacy that was part of the hotel I was at, and was pretty interested in taking me around the island, which didn’t really jive with what I had in mind. To get rid of him, I just had to go back to my room at the hotel.
Miss I-Can-Sleep-Through-Anything gets the challenge of her life
I had a little bit of some trouble sleeping that night. The loudspeaker fromthe store went off around 7, when the place closed, but was replaced by the music and crowd from some local bar. This all ended around 11, around when I went to sleep. It was at this point that I realized (perhaps I realized this before, but it hadn’t affected me so dearly until now), that roosters do not only crow at the crack of dawn. They crow during the day, at night, whenever. And it’s contagious…one crows and they all crow. Tonight, it seemed to be slightly worse, perhaps because I had one just outside my window, though I did eentually fall asleep. I was woken up around 12:30 by some people coming in to the hotel (even though I had my own room here, the walls didn’t go up to the ceiling, so there was just a high roof over all the individual stall-like rooms). I fell asleep after a bit, and was woken up later by some loud blaring music. It was awful, and it didn’t stop. As I slowly woke from my delerium, I realized that it sounded like a marching band. It was pitch black outside. Maybe some of the drunk guys fromthe bar threw on some bad recording of who knows what over the loudspeaker and are just being assholes. That was my initial thought. Now, I usually don’t look at the time using my super-nifty Indiglo watch when I wake up in the middle of the night because the light wakes me up more, but at this point, I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon. 4:20am. The music stopped a few minutes later, and my body went back to its relaxed state, trying to fall back asleep. A few minutes later it started again, and I’ll be damned, it was a marching band. Were they practicing? Was there some high school nearby and they were practicing or, well, I didn’t even know what to think. They were awful; sometimes you could hear some sort of melody, but mostly it just sounded like people were just blowing through the horns. But, they were getting further away. Maybe they were going to the next town or something. And then they stopped. Back relaxed again. Without fail, they started up again, and now they were getting closer. This time, I blurted out, in a very frustrated loud whisper, “What the hell?”, and I think I heard the other girl in the room next door laugh a little. Well, I had to go check out what the hell was going on, so I grabbed my camera and headed out. Sure enough, there were a bunch of guys, just dressed in jeans, walking down the street with trumpets, tubas, trombones, drums, and even a clarinet. I saw some girls in the street and asked, “What’s this?”, and they kind of laughed and explained that it’s some sort of festival and they do this to wake people up (or something like that). Sure enough, there were a good amount of people in the street, though they had hardly succeeded in evoking the entire town from their homes.
I eventually made it to bed after not too long; I put the pillow over my head and the band stopped after a little while, though I did have to compete with the rooster outside my window who crowed like a loser. Did get a bit more sleep, woke up, and met Jonas again, who was still intent on going with me around the island. Since I wasn’t interested in him going with me today, he suggested that he come find me the next day. Not a good idea, I tried to convince him. The lady at the hotel told me he was a little screwed up in the head, and I think he may have seen her make the universal sign for crazy, pointing at her head, and he was visible distressed, asking me what she told me. He finally left, and I headed for the bus to the southern part of the island. At this point, the marching band had started up again, and I was glad to leave. Jonas made one last attempt to join me, hopping on the bus just before we left, and I once again got rid of him, telling him he was now being rude.
I was headed to Merida, a town on the southern part of the island. It wasn’t too far, maybe 10 miles. It took 2 hours to get there, though, and it was a long, hard ride. The seats of this school bus had been stripped down to just the wooden boards, the roads were half washed away, marked with holes, large rocks, and huge puddles whose depth was not known until the bus fell to one side, as all the passengers grabbed for the seat in front of them. I made a note to self to wear a sportsbra on the inevitable ride back.
I ran into Regina, the German girl I met in Granada. I also met a mom/daughter couple from Cleveland who were traveling together; Dyna was taking her 1st semester of sr. year of high school off to travel with her mother, Mariah, in Nicaragua. Dyna was probably the most mature 17-year old I have ever met, and her mom was just great, a very liberal fight-the-fight woman. The four of us did some kayaking the next day; we checked out this “Monkey Island”, a small little island where people put these monkey, presumably for tourists, and I think it’s just awful. Apparently we just missed one of the monkeys get the crap beaten out of him, and was exiled from the island (I guess it started swimming away, though I don’t really think monkeys know how to swim, and some locals brought it to the main island). We saw the aftermath…this poor little monkey sitting on the main island all by himself, looking upset.
We also took one morning to volunteer at a local preschool, bringing them some hot cereal and playing with them. The kids ranged rom 2 to 8; I’m not exactly sure why the older kids weren’t in normal school yet. Some dog with a twitch accompanied us to the school, and while we were pushing the kids on the swings, a pig even just walked its way into the schoolyard, of no concern to anyone. There was very little discipline, and we tried to teach the kids how to take turns and share, something we noticed was clearly absent, but undoubtedly our one-day efforts won’t amount to anything.
Tags: Nicaragua, Tag Index
Tania
November 25th, 2005 at 11:00 am
The folks afffiliated with “Tuba Christmas” might be interested.
If not, maybe The Salvation Army!