Waves and Rocks

My wife recently took a week off in one of our favorite Central American destinations. No, not Costa Rica, but the Pacific Coast beach town of San Juan Del Sur, and one of the nicest hotels we've stayed in:

Piedras Y Olas means Rocks and Waves and is the brainchild of a friend of ours who sailed to Nicaragua decades ago and never got around to leaving. It's been a long struggles but Chris has created a world class hotel on the slopes above the little town of San Juan, using his hotel to improve the lives of locals and give visitors a world class destination resort:The hotel is built of local materials in the local style, a cascade of paths and vegetation between the rooms, the pools and the two restaurants on the property:

Chris keeps an assortment of refugee animals on his hotel grounds, local residents abandoned or ill treated who find refuge at Piedras Y Olas, including a pelican who I am told helps in the raising of kittens born on the property. Apparently the pelican keeps an eye on them and if they wander he scoops them up in his bill and returns the kittens to their mother:

Monkeys are frequently to be found abused and abandoned, often suffering severe personality defects as a result of their treatment by humans:

You get extraordinary views from the three infinity pools scattered around the grounds of the hotel, whose website is http://www.piedrasyolas.com/: The pools also offer ringside seats for the sunsets, as famous in San Juan as they are in Key West:

Part of the hotels raison d'etre is to provide a place for locals to train and learn how to work in first world hospitality industries. The American chef teaches Nicas how to cook gringo style using local ingredients:

All served under the Ramadas:

Development has come to San Juan, not only in the variety of businesses around town but also at the government docks that used to be pretty much moribund but nowadays see recreational boats lined up for maintenance:In the hills above the waterfront sits the Pelican Eyes resort, Piedras Y Olas, hidden in the foliage while on the beach there sits a multi story monstrosity that prosperity has brought to the town. San Juan's first high rise bang on the beach:

Hotel guests can opt for a day long excursion on the hotel sailboat, the 43-footer that Chris sailed down from California and that he has used to offer Nicaragua's only sailboat excursions ever since. The sailboat lives at anchor in the harbor and guests board via a trip from the docks on a motorboat.The sailboat is again met by the lancha, at the destination beach down the coast. The crew on the motorboat has previously landed the fixings for a beach side picnic and then takes the guests safely to the beach through the swells, from the anchored sailboat:Classic Pacific Coast shoreline in the tropics, abundant vegetation, granite rocks and long sandy beaches washes by tall tides and strong waves:

To gringo eyes I think it takes a certain amount of bravery to contemplate spending the best part of a day braving the swells of the Pacific Ocean in a wooden fishing boat with an uncertain outboard for company:

A view of San Juan Del Sur in the approaches. Beyond the last hill, twelve miles from the town lies the shore of Lake Nicaragua, a huge body of fresh water that generates powerful down drafts of wind along this section of Pacific Coastline:The ride back from the beach is usually less windy than the ride out but sailors will notice the double reefed main and scrap of head sail only, which is the remnant from the wild ride out to the beach:

And so, back to the anchorage, a final ride in the lancha to the docks and a short cab ride back to the hotel for a drink and dinner and a sunset view:

My wife admitted I was right, it was the restful week long vacation she needed and the boat ride was the highlight as always of a vacation spent in San Juan Del Sur.

Poorhouse Lane

Poorhouse Lane is a name that frequently evokes a grin. It sounds slightly daft in this day and age, but getting sent to the poorhouse in the 19th century was a dire fate on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. All that's left of the Key West poorhouse is the name, on the lane that fronts the cemetery at Windsor Lane:

Poorhouse Lane is one of three entrances to Bill Butler Park, written about previously in this bog. There are no benches in the park thanks to the collective punishment mentality that wants to deny the park to idlers, thus preventing others from resting there. And dog walkers are a common sight in this part of Old Town:
I was quite impressed by the canopy towering above my wife's borrowed Vespa.

And in the land of endless warnings and no trespassers we have a minor variation, "caution with the dog" doesn't carry quite the menace of the English language equivalent:
I was wondering at this next house who it was gets the step ladder out when the cook calls out for a handful of chives? Perhaps it's just grass growing up there - the lawn type I mean, not the smoking kind:
Poorhouse is a decidedly odd lane. I next found, rather like Alice in Wonderland, a cat behaving like a dog, I was quite surprised it didn't cock it's leg at the end of it's inspection:

Up above a taste of summer, those Bahama shutters thrust provocatively forward, offering shade and airflow, or at least airflow if the air conditioning were on the blink:

Of course no parking in the little alley, which is why I keep saying off street parking is so important in downtown Key West:

And in my continuing search for the Art of the Peculiar I found this thing that looks like a car tag but clearly is not. What it is I couldn't rightly say, but it appears to originate in Brazil which is exotic enough for most people:

Some people might dream of Copacabana, but others lust...

...after the simple life, a bicycle, a shady porch and thee, their little Conch cottage, Brazilian beaches be damned!

Turtle Beach

It is kind of weird to come to the end of White Street at 2:30 in the morning and find oneself fumbling for the high beam switch on the left handlebar. It's reminiscent of Key West after a hurricane to find the city plunged into darkness.

Parked on Smathers Beach with street lights out all that's left are the headlights of passing cars, or my headlight pointing at the Bridle Path on the inland side of the street. It's turtle nesting season from April 15th to October 31st and as a gesture to help the process along the city dims it's lights. Where there is no beach on South Roosevelt Boulevard, where the seawall fronts salt water directly and without the intercession of sand, street lights and hotels are lit up as normal:The idea is that turtles lay their eggs in the sand and leave them to get on with it. The hatchlings in the fullness of time appear in the sand and are apparently programmed to head for the moonlight reflected on the water. If the moonlight is overwhelmed by human made light inland the hatchlings will head for that instead: Because turtles are endangered lots of human changes have been made to help them along. Commercial fishermen have turtle excluder devices built into their nets which allow turtles to escape drowning (and fish too the fishermen complain). In Key West we dim our lights:

It's one of those gestures that help us believe there is good in the world and we can be part of it. But even though a dark beach is a thing of beauty, a darkened street can be rather nerve wracking, to my surprise.I read about the black out in World War Two England and it seems in their attempts to deny targets to night time bombing they inadvertently created a perilous situation for drivers and pedestrians in their darkened cities. Apparently the accident rate shot up even though fewer vehicles were on the roads and streets owing to war time restrictions. Trundling around our darkened beaches I am not at all surprised.

So, in the end this is what it looks like along the southern shores of Key West, anywhere there is a beach where a turtle could land make a nest. Dark in a good cause.

Long Way Down

The face of Africa, as seen through the eyes of Festina, a Zambian woman who raises children orphaned by HIV. If the movie I am reviewing here had been focused on her, with the best will in the world, no one in the West would have seen it. So instead a young Scottish movie star and his side kick get some donated BMW motorcycles (GS1200s of course) and they roll cameras for 15,000 miles across the Dark Continent:
I have little idea what a North American never exposed to the wilds of the African Third World would make of this movie, but interestingly enough the stars themselves have no experience of Africa either and their fear and awe and amazement should translate well. Ewan McGregor is known to audiences around the world as a Star of recent Star Wars movies (though no one recognized him when he played the tourist on the former set in Tunisia!):
McGregor's refusal to take himself seriously gives the film added charm and when we are introduced to his very average family (including a motorcycling Dad) in Scotland it's obvious that no one in his real life is going to let his success on screen go to his head. His sidekick Charley Boorman, son of a movie director, is the goof of the film, an accomplished rider and someone not afraid to say what's on his mind.In the background, McGregor's wife, who in a moment of charged controversy, decides to ride along with the boys on one short leg of their three month trip.
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This is the second movie made by Boorman/McGregor following on from the success of their Long Way Around a documentary of their circumnavigation, which I thought carried more drama and uncertainty as they struggled across Siberia and Mongolia testing themselves and their format. In this film the formula is written, the crew includes survivors of the first film including the extraordinary Swiss rider and cameraman Claudio who does what they do, while recording it silently and beautifully for all to see. This is a professional film made to the highest standards which my paltry pictures do not in any way convey. Whether or not you agree with the premise that a couple of naive goofs loose in Africa on excessively complex motorcycles is worth seeing is another matter.

They admire Roman ruins (in Libya), the pyramids (in Egypt) the Nile (in Sudan) the mountains (in Ethiopia) the wildlife(in East Africa) the skulls (in Rwanda) and the lake (in Malawi) all with due reverence and respect. They inflict themselves on villagers in an effort to understand their lives, they say, and they alternate between roadside cafés and luxury hotels and campgrounds: They cross 32 borders into and out of sixteen countries and if nothing else I hope this film will convince you not to think of the African continent as one country. Of course this is a 9-episode television show with 8 people traveling in two cars and on three motorcycles with a budget of God-knows-how-much, so they have "fixers" in each country to guide them through. Boorman and McGregor ride every mile of the way on fully loaded 800-pound 1200cc motorcycles, carrying their clothes and camping gear with them. But this is not a shoe string operation, not with three cameras, a doctor and well stocked spare parts boxes, all in attendance...
Because this is a motorcycle movie on dreadful roads and because these people are British they enjoy making fun of themselves and the ridiculous challenge of riding come what may, sand, rain, wind and tedium included. They get tired and fractious, they argue and disagree and they make up when it's time to get riding. Some of the riding is appalling in dreadful conditions, and McGregor's wife is shown learning to ride on her short section "with the boys" in Malawi in a most unflattering light.

Eve is Francophone, (French, Quebecois, Belgian, Swiss, who knows?) but she has ze British stiff upper lip and despite numerous falls, all on camera, she plugs away earning the grudging respect of Boorman who becomes odd man out for ten days while the wife intrudes on the boys' adventure:

I rode across West Africa when I was a callow 19-year old and took three months to bumble from Tunis to Yaounde in Cameroon before hepatitis A, laid me low and forced the repatriation of myself and my Yamaha SR500. I spent three weeks in hospital in Terni recovering. It is clear to me, looking back, that the assessment of an experienced German traveler I met along the way, that I wasn't ready for such an adventure, was entirely true, but from the vantage of middle age I know that having made the journey I am better equipped to accept the loss of my youth. A dream deferred is a dream denied and there are too many middle aged, middle class dreamers who teeter between fear and regret because they didn't try. I recall traveling completely alone with a wad of traveler's checks, no GPS, no sat phone, no proper riding gear, no camel back water bottle to combat hydration...These two had all that and more and a ridiculous schedule- if the trip wasn't completed in 85 days the sky would collapse for some, never stated, reason. They had a base team in London following along to update their website and riders along the way, including this Triumph rider in Zambia, fell in to do their bit for celebrity travel:And yet, Boorman and McGregor show us the best of travel: the friendship strained, the expectation of violence that never ever came even close, the great physical beauty of a world that still today remains largely unexplored by most people and feared by even more of us, and they also show us how truly tough it is to ride a motorcycle a long way in trying conditions. This isn't celebrity survivor, this is two 35 year olds getting away from every day crap and pushing themselves, yes self indulgently, but also as a mirror to us in our daily lives.

What dream have you deferred, what fear have you not faced, they ask us, and the answer they themselves provide is that the risk taken will be endlessly rewarding. I can't wait for their next ride, South America it is rumored, and with all their thoughtless sentimentality ("Why?" they keep chirping when faced with evidence of Man's Inhumanity to Man in Rwanda and elsewhere; an easy expression of false empathy when you are enjoying the exceptionally good life of the upper class First World) and self effacing humor (endless mockery of Hollywood, harbinger of their wealth, which is rather fun I confess) they will, I know, put on an excellent entertainment. Now available from Nextflix, and if you have not yet seen Long Way Round, start there. Enjoy the show!

Gecko Lane

I borrowed my wife's Vespa ET4 while she was vacationing recently in Nicaragua. I always enjoy getting back in the saddle of her 150cc scooter, the perfect urban ride: Looking into the alley from Eaton Street it's obvious the lane isn't that big:This sort of jumble of machines usually indicates a guest house with bikes to rent, but it could just be one of the usual multiple dwelling arrangements so common in Key West...
Gecko Lane has the usual mixture of homes, nicely maintained in this case:

With splendid solar water heating panels on the roof in this case:And tall enough to see out over the rooftops:

There is of course plenty of greenery to be found, rampant vines: This purple thing. Is it any surprise I have no clue what it might be called?

And a canopy of wide bright green leaves that captivated me.

I did manage to spot some artwork in this narrow lane, including these Polynesian looking columns supported by some rather crude turquoise ropes:A red door with an attractive peep hole popped into the middle:And a cast iron dragon, Sui Generis I hope, supporting a carriage lantern:

This closing shot, looking back down the lane toward Eaton Street highlights my favorite colors, white green and blue in this case with a few splashes of orange from the fading flame tree.Another aspect of summer in the Keys, still air and vibrant colors.