Volcano Boarding?

At some point along the way, someone with a lot of imagination looked at a live volcano and said, “I think I’ll slide down the side of that volcano on a board. I’ll call it volcano boarding”. This person was a nut. Brilliant, though.

I have to add that, because I went volcano boarding today.

Actually, I have been up and down two volcanoes in the last three days, though I only slid down one of them on a board. Both were live volcanoes, and both had erupted fairly recently (one of them last year, the other in 1999), but for me the comparison pretty much stops there. The two could not have been more different. The first one, which we climbed on Christmas day, was Telica, which last erupted in 2011. It’s a long, beautiful hike to the top, through an alternating pattern of rugged red igneous terrain and lovely peaceful meadows.

San Cristobal shortly before its most recent eruption.

 

San Cristobal erupting, a couple of days after the previous photo. Incidentally, the reddish volcano to the right, just in front of San Cristobal, is Telica.

As we climbed we were able to see another volcano more and more clearly – Telica offers an extremely good view of the San Cristobal volcano, which started erupting the night of December 25th (just hours after the photo here was taken). That volcano is currently throwing out massive quantities of ash and smoke, and a “Yellow” alert has been called for the area – the second highest disaster warning level in Nicaragua.

So. We arrived at the top, by design, at just before sunset, watched the sunset, then walked around the crater to a point where we were able to look down in the dark to see and hear the lava (or is it magma?) at the bottom, about 125 meters down. I lay on my  belly at the edge, found a suitable rock (not having a tripod with me), and held my camera perfectly still for a few long exposures – 6 seconds, 8 seconds, 11 seconds. Here is one of the photos that resulted:

A long exposure of the lava flow at the bottom of the crater of the Telica Volcano in northern Nicaragua.

That was Telica. Cerro Negro, where Cas and I went volcano boarding today is what is known as a basaltic cinder cone volcano. It is almost completely black and lifeless, but for the occasional plant struggling between the rocks.  On one side of it are great boulders (and smaller stones), thrown up by the force of various explosions, while the slope on the other side is a fine grain – not sand, exactly, but too small to be called stones. In the centre is a horseshoe-shaped crater of black, yellow, red and white (carbon, sulphur, iron and iodine) with a bulge in the middle that is slowly growing under pressure from below. We were told today that volcanologists say that it is due to blow some time soon, but that there is a monitoring station that ought to be able to give about 2 days notice before it happens.

Yeah, well. The cone is slowly growing. That’s all I needed to know.  Incidentally, Cerro Negro is the youngest volcano in Central America at only 162 years old (it first appeared in 1850).  It sticks out of the green surrounding area like a black pimple.

So basically, what you do is walk to the top of the volcano. It’s a 40 degree angle, so needless to say you don’t climb straight up but rather wind around the outside a bit, on the “back” side where all the boulders are. You walk along the rim of the crater, and then come out on top. Look at the view. Pose for some pictures. Get into your overalls (we had signed up with a good tour company, which offers these green and yellow coveralls along with elbow and knee pads, in addition to gloves and goggles. We saw some others going down in their regular clothes with just goggles and did not envy them).

Cas skootching down the side of the volcano. At least, we said, if it starts to erupt while we’re on it we will have a quick way down!

Then you get on your board, do a little training session with the guide, and either shoot down like a toboggan or swoosh down like a snowboarder. We tobogganed.

And yes, it was a blast. But not that bad, eruption kind of blast.

Sunset from Telica Volcano.

Iglesia San Juan Bautisto de Subiata

This sun was placed in the ceiling of the church to convince the sun-worshipping indigenous people that God was, indeed, inside the building – or so the story goes, at least.

I’m back in León!

Actually, Cas and I are here together. Cas is my partner in crime (and life) and we decided that a vacation was a good idea, as it often is. And since I was hoping to return to Nicaragua this month or next to continue the photo project I have been pursuing with the community of Santa Julia (on that, more in another post), Cas suggested that a visit to León and the Corn Islands (a pair of islands off Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast) was an idea she could get behind. Needless to say, I agreed, and here we are, for a week in León followed by several days on Big Corn… followed by another week, on my own, in Santa Julia and Managua.

As my friends know, I like to visit places of worship when I travel, and León has several really interesting ones. One in particular, which I didn’t have time to visit last time I was here, is the Iglesia San Juan Bautisto de Subiata (the Church of Saint John the Baptist of Subiata).

Part of the Christmas decorations on the altar at the Subiata church.

Subiata is a barrio of indigenous people, descendents of the original inhabitants of the region. This church was established by missionaries intent on converting the natives.

The problem the missionaries faced was this: that the indigenous peoples worshipped the sun, or at least a god symbolised by the sun. This meant that it seemed ridiculous to them that Christians worshipped indoors, and they refused to go into the church, at least to pray.  So conversion was difficult.

But we should never underestimate the creativity of a missionary intent on seducing someone to his faith!  The priests thought about it and, in the true Christian tradition of integrating the beliefs and practices of other faiths into one’s own, they had a metal sculpture of a sun made. This they placed in the ceiling of the Church to show that God was, indeed, inside. And the story is that the people converted.

Now, I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but it is a cool story, and that sun is still there, very beautifully ‘shining’ from the ceiling of this very beautiful church, which was in the process of being decorated for Christmas while we were there.

That’s it at the top. Happy holidays!

Men prepare the decorations for Christmas day. These banners are pretty typical, but most of the ones I have seen were yellow and white – the papal colours. This is the first time I have seen red, which I very much prefer.

Dedicated to a Newtown School

photo made in the Cathedral in Catarina, Nicaragua – Dec. 8, 2011.

I have started a new blog on my portfolio website, which is http://brucetoombs.ca.  This site is mirrored there more or less (I have to deliberately import), but I’m also writing different things there.

Here is the latest post from that site, put up a couple of days ago, about the Newtown massacre.

– B

I lack words to describe how I am feeling about the Newtown massacre, in which 20 little children were murdered in their classroom. So in their memory I am offering an image and a poem, which William Butler Yeats published in 1919. It expresses as well as anyone every could the horror I feel.

   THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

(source: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html)

Hey León! You’re STINKING HOT but I like you.

I have several things to write about, but a couple of them are going to have to wait until I get home, because the photos I want to use really are crying out for particular edits in Photoshop, and I don’t want to just post the jpgs. I leave Nicaragua tomorrow morning, alas, but at least that means I can get to the computer next week at some point and edit a few of the … well, lots and lots of photos I’m bringing back with me.

Naturally, I’ll post some of them right here!

So I am in León, which is one of the main colonial cities of Nicaragua, north of Lake Managua (Lago Xolotlán, to use the aboriginal name for the place, which is commonly used here). Except for an hour or two passing through on the way to the beach, I had never been here before, and little did I know how much I was missing out! León is great.

The great Nicaraguan writer, Rubén Darío, is buried in the Basilica de l’Asunción in León, which is the city’s main cathedral. The cathedral has several lions around and inside it, of which this one, in perpetual mourning, guards the poet’s final resting place.

In Nicaragua, there are two large cities I consider tourist spots : Grenada and León (nope, Estelí isn’t in the list. But you should go there). Grenada is polluted by tourism, though. The whole place feels like one big tourist trap. Also, a lot of foreigners have moved there and some of them have made asses of themselves, which doesn’t help a bit.  Don’t get me wrong: Grenada is beautiful and worth a visit, and from there you can see many of the things every tourist in Nicaragua must try to see – the Laguna de Apoyo, the Mombacho cloud forest, Las Isletas de Grenada, Catarina and the Pueblos Blancos, and … well, you get the idea. But Granada itself? I am sure there are many people who would disagree, but I would stay for a day or two at most.

Four of these guys hold up the Cathedral bells. I took advantage of the roof tour to take more shots like this than shots of the view.

León, on the other hand…! Aside from the almost unbearable heat (it’s a two or three shower a day climate and I’m not a big fan of hot weather), this is a vibrant, lovely city with cultural sites worth visiting (a very good gallery of Latin American art, for example, which also had a couple of Picasso and Miró etchings I had never seen before), good restaurants (I recommend Bar Baro, not all that far from the cathedral and the gallery), and at least one great hostel (La Tortuga Booluda, where I stayed, but I understand a lot of them are excellent). The fact that it is a colonial city founded in 1524, that it served a couple of times as Nicaragua’s Capital City, and that much of the original architecture survives… well, none of this hurts one bit.

So all that to say that I have been having a stellar time here, and I hope to come back ASAP, but this time for more than just two nights. Maybe next summer.

Another cat picture.
Many of the houses in León are painted in these kinds of bright colours.

Iglesia Pilar de Zaragosa, which is not far from the hostel where I am staying. Pigeons have taken up residence in the bell tower.

It’s hard to get a straight-on shot of the Cathedral these days, as they are renovating the park in front of it and there is a high metal wall blocking access to it from the street. I got this shot by standing on a hunk of concrete and carefully lifting my camera over the top of the fence… all the while trying not to cut my arms on the edge of the corrugated zinc.

Walkabout in Panamá Soberana

Last Thursday I went walking around Estelí a bit, taking pictures as I went. Without further comment, here are some of them.

(As always on this trip, I am not able to edit my photos much, and these are jpegs more or less straight from the camera (I have been doing minor adjustments in the Microsoft Picture manager in the cyber cafe I work from. Needless to say, it is not a subtle tool). I’m looking forward to getting home soon, where I will be able to dump all my RAW files into Lightroom and Photoshop!)

And of course, there I go – offering further comment after promising no further comment!

To the photos!

in the barrio of Panamá Soberana, on the other side of the river from downtown.

A view of a kitchen in Panamá Soberana, where Nacatamales are made. Nacatamales are cornmeal and/or rice with various spices and meat, wrapped in plantain leaves and boiled until done. Very tasty if done right. A mushy mess when done wrong.

Also in Panamá Soberana.

Also in Panamá Soberana. If I were into selective colour, I would probably select for green in this photo.

This is the bridge leading into the barrio of Panamá Soberana, where most of these images were taken. The view here is away from that Barrio and towards the main part of the city.

Looking away from the bridge, upstream along the Rio Estelí (Estelí River). The water is low right now, but when it rains heavily it can sweep you away.

Making furniture in Panamá Soberana. I really love the name of this Barrio, and it has quite a few small workshops like this one.

Nice Dog, living two doors down from where I am staying, NOT in Panamá Soberana (in case you were wondering).

Washing up. This was taken in the family home where I have been staying for most of the last six weeks.

And that’s all! See you in a couple of days.