Granada, Nicaragua: Its Fall And Rise

I'll start with this disclaimer: I love Nicaragua. I love the poetry of its pace, ox carts
slowing traffic, shoeless boys playing baseball in vacant lots, men riding their lovers
double on bicycles and the silhouettes of women reposed in doorways. I love its rum and
cigars, rice and beans and green volcanoes towering over red-tile roofs and blue lakes. I
even like the smell of horse manure and diesel exhaust, an occasional waft from an open
sewer and broken sidewalks that force me to watch my step.
But mostly I love Nicaragua because of people like Rger Xavier Arellano Arrliga,
whom I met in a cafetn, a block off the Parque Coln in Granada. While a fumigation
truck drove slowly past, filling the narrow street with a toxic cloud and sending diners
and even sidewalk passers-by diving for cover into the tiny kitchen behind us, Rger
remained seated and patiently drew directions to his home on a napkin.
A moment ago I was a stranger at the next table. Now Rger was inviting me to his house
and offering to spend the evening helping me find what I was looking for: an old bodega
where, 16 years earlier, during the bleak depths of the contra war, while playing a soldier
in the Alex Cox film ''Walker,'' I'd been shot and killed in slow motion.
William Walker was an american filibuster who, with an American and native rebel
force, invaded and captured Granada in 1855. He was briefly president of Nicaragua, but
soon lost international support and was driven from the country, burning Granada to the
ground before he left. The movie, a surreal evocation of Walker's invasion of Nicaragua,
and his eventual defeat, was supported by the Sandinista government because it echoed
the current fight against the contras, backed by the United States.
I walked to meet Rger in the early evening. On one side of the road, people jogged or
strolled through the park, or stood at the sea wall and gazed at the waves breaking on the
gray beach. A horse-drawn carriage with a family of tourists clip-clopped by, and, at the
end of a long wharf, men stood in a line passing crates from a truck down onto a
freighter.
I filled my pockets with mints I bought from a little girl in a red dress sitting behind a tray
of candy and cigarettes. I waved at the wisecracking women leaning over the disco
balcony, turned the corner and passed a man sitting on a wooden stool under a tree. He
offered me a fresh coconut, the top chopped open and a pink straw inserted for the milk. I
stepped around various spent green husks littering the street, and walked up the shady
Calle la Calzada.
I veered toward the side of the street that smelled less of pigs, paused briefly to watch
boys practicing baseball. Farther up, I lighted a cigar and waited for a parade of marching
girls and drumming boys to make their way past the Iglesia de Guadalupe, where the real
William Walker's retreating troops held out before fleeing the burning city in 1856.
Rger is a handsome, dark-eyed, dark-haired young man, with a degree in industrial
engineering, but inclinations to go into business for himself. He was a boy when the film
''Walker'' was shot here in 1987, and, like many kids, he enthusiastically followed the
filming of the various battle scenes around town.

I was bumming through the country at the time, and recruited out of a Managua bar to
spend two weeks as an extra in Walker's army. I barely appeared in the finished movie.
We set out in Rger's car; he hadn't driven a block when he stopped to talk to an old man
on a concrete stoop, who gave us the name of another man who actually worked on the
film. We drove on, passing the towering blue facade of the Iglesia de San Francisco,
connected to the Antiguo Convento de San Fransciso.
The convent's history mirrors the phoenixlike story of the city. Built in 1529, it was
destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt over the centuries by the likes of the pirate Henry
Morgan, William Walker, the United States Marines in the 1920's and the United States
Army engineers studying canal possibilities in the 1930's. It has recently been restored
again with the help of the Swiss government.
Inside was a museum with exhibits on the lives of the indigenous Indians, displays of
stone carvings and a courtyard with stately palms and stunning views of nearby Volcn
Mombacho. But as long as nobody came along and sacked it again, I knew I'd see it all
later. Rger and I were on a mission.
He stopped around the corner at the Plazuela de los Leones, where on Friday nights the
city often puts on free concerts. The sky was quickly darkening to night, and the trees in
the Parque Coln were alive with thousands of birds.
We went into the Casa de los Tres Mundos, a foundation and cultural center that houses
an art, theater and music school, historical archive and concert hall, where Rger talked
to a man named Dieter, who would direct us to somebody else.
We drove a dark street, then another and finally stopped where a woman sat on her
sidewalk rocker in a pool of fluorescent light. A sleeping child lay on her lap. Rger got
out and talked to her, then we drove on, around the corner. Suddenly there it was, an old
white adobe building with a tile roof that sheltered a porch. The sign read ''Antiguedades
El Palenque.''
We got out and knocked on the big wooden doors that I remembered spending a day
kicking open for the cameras. A woman answered and let us in. I recognized the thick,
whitewashed walls, the earth-colored ceramic tile floor, the dark wooden rafters. I
recognized the darkened side room where Ed Harris, playing the deranged Walker, had
paused in the heat of battle to sit down at a piano to play a hymn by candlelight.
During the contra war, I saw a phrase stenciled in red on every Granadian sidewalk and
corner building: Aqu no se rinde nadie (''Here nobody surrenders''). I think it sums up the
character of the city.
Since that dark time, unarmed, crisp-shirted policemen have replaced battle-weary
soldiers patrolling the streets with AK-47's. Schoolboys march with drums instead of
guns, and rather than army fatigues, teenage girls wear crisp white blouses and navy
skirts and cluster at the playground to watch sweaty boys play basketball.
The war wounded, middle-aged now, still gather their wheelchairs in the park, but some
also pass out colorful brochures offering kayak rentals or jungle canopy tours. Shiny taxis
and new S.U.V.'s have replaced tanks and troop trucks.

The city still has its ragged edges, its broken neighborhoods and hungry street kids who
gather in front of restaurants to point at their mouths. But for the traveler it also has hotels
and hostels at every price, some good bars with good music and lots of places to buy ice
cream. The streetlights work; the water runs; and instead of shutting their doors against a
night charged with madness and dread, Granadians now pull their rockers out on the
sidewalk and chat with neighbors.
Granada was founded in 1524 by the Spanish explorer Francisco Hernndez de Crdoba
on the shores of what the Indians called Cocibolca (Lago Nicaragua), a freshwater lake
some 87 miles long, connected by the San Juan River to the Caribbean Sea. On our trip in
July 2003, my wife, Rosalie, our three young daughters, Anna, Margi and Mary, and I
had rooms at the Hotel El Maltese, on the lake, where you can hear the waves breaking
on the beach and keep your eyes fixed on the blue horizon for approaching pirate ships.
We also stayed at the dark and stately Hotel Alhambra, where guests sit in rockers on the
front porch and observe the activity in the Parque Coln across the street. On our last
night we were at the lovely Hospedaje Italiano. As afternoon ends and the shadow of
Volcn Mombacho creeps over the city, you can relax on the front stoop, with a bowl of
the best ice cream in Nicaragua and watch the streets flood with uniformed schoolkids.
We took excursions to the smoking crater of Volcn Masaya; we glided on cables
between the crowns of giant ceiba trees over coffee shrubs on the skirt of Volcn
Mombacho. We swam in the clear Laguna de Apoyo, ate good pizza at Tele Pizza, and,
on the balcony of La Gran Francia Hotel, Rosalie and I discovered the joy of Flor de
Cana Gran Reserva rum. We ate a potato-and-beef burrito in the Hotel Central and a
beautiful filete de guapote en salsa de maracuy in El Zagun, behind the Granada
cathedral.
But the best part of Granada was the unexpected people we met and the places they took
us. One morning, my daughters and I walked in the park along the lakefront. A man
named Santos rode up on his bicycle and asked if we wanted a boat ride to explore Las
Isletas, an archipelago of some 360 islands in Lake Nicaragua, just south of the city. We
did, so he told us to follow his son, El Guapo (the handsome one), age 14, who led us
along the empty beach past chickens and goats to a lone tree, where he instructed us to sit
in the sand and wait while his father's boat made its way across the choppy bay to pick us
up.
On board, we spent about an hour motoring slowly among the tiny islands. We circled
one with monkeys that leaned out from the treetops to watch us. We passed white herons
on rocks, and men in water to their knees throwing spread nets. We wound past yachts
moored by fortress vacation homes, dugout canoes tied in front of stick shacks and
tourists paddling yellow kayaks.
At lunchtime we docked at a little outdoor restaurant on an island called Corre Viento.
While Santos and El Guapo napped in the boat, my daughters and I sat at one of the
brightly painted tables listening to Spanish love songs on a boom box until a running boy
tripped on the wire and disconnected the speaker. The sky was overcast, and the lake
spread gray to the eastern horizon. We ate rice and beans and chicken, and drank cold

soft drinks and beer.

We were the only diners, so the man who served us briefly joined us. He was in his 40's, I
guessed, and all Nicaraguans in their 40's have a story that takes a turn because of the
long civil war. I asked him his, and he told me that he was originally from Managua, but
after his time in the army, he came to the islands for peace and serenity and never left. He
married the daughter of the people who owned this restaurant, the Doa Justa, and he and
his wife now had two sons. He pointed with his chin to the boy in the shorts who had met
our boat.
I make jewelry, he said, and from his shirt pocket he pulled a tiny bamboo bracelet that fit
around my youngest daughter's wrist.
She smiled and I offered to pay, but the man waved his hand. I don't make them for
money, he said. It's something I do for love.

Nicaraguas Ciudad of Dreams

By JOSEPH HOOPER

The last time I was in Granada, Nicaragua, was in 1984. My solidarity gringo friends
and I, in the country to support the embattled Sandinista revolution, were taking a break
from the capital city of Managua, where it seemed like every other person had an
automatic weapon slung over their shoulder. But in Granada, it was as if wed been
airlifted out of the materially deprived, militarily consumed country and dropped into a
charming Mexican colonial town. The houses had red-tiled roofs and brightly painted
facades; the outdoor markets actually had fresh fruit and vegetables in them.
We took a boat trip to a nearby island in Lake Nicaragua, on whose northwestern shore
Granada sits. At the time I regarded the experience as little more than a brief timeout
from the countrys real business, which was defending and preserving the gains of the
revolution.
Returning to Granada recently, I found that the city looked much the same, despite the
increase of cafes, a expat restaurant or two and some hip backpacker hangouts. The
Catedral de Granada and the Convento de San Francisco were still painted in hot, jazzy
yellow ocher and baby blue, and the place exuded the same humid tropical beauty. From
the top of the weathered bell tower of the Iglesia la Merced, I could see the hulking
Mombacho volcano looming over those tiled roofs. The setting was book-cover perfect,
down to the tree-lined Parque Central at the center of town, festooned with gazebos and
peddler stalls and surrounded on all sides by colonial-style buildings from which
modernity has mostly been expunged or simply failed to take root. The horse-drawn
carriages that waited by the Parque were almost overkill. Granada is like a time warp,
one well-to-do Managuan lady sniffed to me at a party I went to later. Nothing
happens ... except tourists.
Indeed, the tables have turned since my last visit. After a war-exhausted citizenry voted
out the Sandinistas in 1990, the conservative governments that followed promoted a
consumer economy and courted foreign investment aggressively enough that in the last

three years or so, a tipping point has been reached. Tourism, once the dessert option in
Nicaragua, is now the main course, and one of the countrys chief sources of hard cash.
Understandably so. Packed into an area the size of Louisiana are some of the best aspects
of the entire Central American isthmus: huge tracts of forests teeming with endangered
species, like in Costa Rica; the kind of sultry colonial cities youd find in Guatemala; and
unsullied surfing beaches as good as those in El Salvador. Nowhere are these pleasures
more centralized than in Nicaraguas Pacific southwest, in and around Granada. Theres a
local expression: Granada is Nicaragua; the rest is just mountains.
Founded by the conquistador Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba in 1524, Granada is the
oldest city in Nicaragua although Leon, to the northwest, vies for the title (it was
founded the same year). Truth be told, austere Leon is better preserved, but its touristic
comforts are still in an early stage of development. Granada, by contrast, is the showoff.
Its felicitous location by immense Lake Nicaragua (the 10th-largest freshwater lake in the
world) made it a wealthy trading center and a magnet for pirates and other firebrands,
who once sacked and burned the city.
If the towns most historic buildings have been rebuilt many times over, somehow the
idea of colonial elegance is the one thing that has been flawlessly maintained. In fact,
escaping many of the turmoils of Nicaraguas recent past has been Granadas particular
genius; the city was mostly hors de combat during the revolution. The city fathers were
and still are more preoccupied with family bloodlines and old historical battles, in a
way that would be recognizable to anyone familiar with the American Old South.
Granada is even famous for older folks passing the late afternoon on their front-porch
rocking chairs, catching the breeze off the lake. This is a city of porch philosophers, not
revolutionary martyrs.
One morning I paid a call on Granadas leading citizen, Gabriel Pasos Wolff, 86, one of
the owners of the venerable Hotel Alhambra and an owlish doyen of the rocking-chair
set. Pasos and his wife live just cater-corner to the hotel (with its atypical Moorish-Vegas
facade) in a mansion filled with dour oil portraits that could pass for a colonial museum.
He served me an iced tea and graciously offered up a pocket history of Granada, with an
emphasis on the defining catastrophe of another era, the sacking of the city in 1856 by the
American William Walker. He led his own private army in a bizarre effort to conquer
Nicaragua and install himself as president. (The United States government briefly
recognized Walkers claim before the warring Granada and Len factions united to
drive him out.) Granada is like the Ave Fnix, Pasos declaimed, the phoenix rising
from the ashes.
A vivid sense of history and tradition is one of the places most enduring charms, even
when it erupts at 6:30 a.m. Early one morning I was blown out of bed at the Alhambra by
booming, cannonlike sounds. I rushed out into the street and caught up to the procession
of San Antonio, a ragtag army of local schoolkids led by teenage girls in short brown
skirts and high leather boots doing the pompom-and-baton shake and shimmy. Behind
them followed younger girls dressed up in white nuns habits and little boys in monks
cassocks, holding miniature prayer books. The whole procession, powered by a

cacophonous brass band in the rear, redounded to the greater glory of San Antonio. Later
that morning over breakfast, I asked an Alhambra waiter what San Antonio had ever done
to deserve this. Hes a saint, so we adore him, he told me, but I dont remember. Ask a
padre.

The rhythm of a Granada stay often goes something like this: the early mornings and the
evenings are for city pleasures. When the heat begins to build toward noon, its time to
head into the surrounding naturaleza. Although a bunch of outdoor-excursion companies
have lately sprung up here, I headed out with two friends of friends of friends: Pomares
Salmern, a young naturalist who runs his familys private nature preserve near
Managua, and Alain Creusot, a French volcanologist in his early 60s whose final
ambition is to climb and study every volcano in the New World, from the Aleutian
Islands to Tierra del Fuego.
In Salmerons S.U.V., we chugged up the paved switchbacks that took us to the upper
reaches of the Mombacho volcano cloud forest, a curtain of green occasionally broken by
the red flower of the malinche tree. We stashed the vehicle at the ranger hut and hiked a
trail to a lookout above the volcanos largest crater. Mombacho hasnt had a proper
eruption in centuries, which has allowed the crater to evolve into a huge sunken bowl of
vegetation. Its a nature preserve within a nature preserve, inhabited by howler monkeys
and so people say some small jungle cats. Salmeron said the crater has become a
kind of sacred site for the pagan shamans who operate out of the surrounding towns
known as pueblos brujos (warlock towns).
As we cut back to the road and the steep climb toward the summit, Creusot expounded on
the countrys state of affairs. One of the few foreigners who chose to stay in 79, when
the insurrection against the United States-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza erupted,
Creusot directed journalists and Sandinista fighters to the abandoned cars and gas
supplies at the French Embassy and joined them for rides through the urban battlefield.
Having faced danger to witness a new country being born, he feels personally let down at
how things have turned out. Nicaragua is enduring a severe energy shortage. Ortega, back
in power, is now regarded as merely a man of the back-room deal. And the U.S. State
Department pegs the country as the poorest in Latin America (which, for anyone who has
spent time in Honduras, is truly remarkable). Nicaragua, which is the richest country in
Latin America from all points of view, is last, Creusot said. This I cannot accept.
At last the cloud cover broke and we were granted a view down the lake. Zapatera Island
emerged, known for its pre-Columbian archeological sites and, more grandly still,
Ometepe, one of the largest freshwater islands in the world, with its smoldering
Concepcin volcano. Another spot gave us a view of Las Isletas, which stretch out just
beyond the Granada shore. Formed by a Mombacho avalanche eons ago, they looked
from this distance like pearls from a broken necklace scattered over the waters surface.
They are indeed tiny, as I saw later while exploring them by kayak. Most islands are big
enough to accommodate only a single thing: a school, say, or a cemetery for the peasant

fishermen who get around in old wooden rowboats. Some have been snapped up by
wealthy Nicaraguans and foreigners for vacation homes. And others look like science
experiments gone awry. One island has a resident population of scrawny kittens, another
a fast-breeding colony of spider monkeys (reportedly descendants of an original few
dropped off by a local biologist).
Another day we drove to Masaya, just outside Granada. Of modest size and lumpy shape,
Masaya nonetheless impresses with its sheer volcanism. Plumes of sulfurous smoke rise
from its crater with industrial constancy. As we peered down, a flock of parakeets zipped
over the surrounding green field, hovered overhead and then dove in formation into the
crater in what looked to be a highly organized suicide mission. The birds, Creusot
explained, spent the night down there, breathing currents of fresh air sucked into the pit
by the high temperatures. They can have it. At one point in our visit, the wind shifted and
we found ourselves in a sulfuric whiteout.
We made it to the top of the craters lip and took the measure of the 33-foot cross planted
there, first erected by the Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s to counter the bad vibes
from the volcano, which they regarded, not insensibly, as the gates of hell. Local lore has
it that the pre-Columbian Chorotega priests sacrificed virgins down there. In Nicaragua,
Christian theology always seems to be at war with a landscape that feels more pagan.
Even on Mombacho, as quiet a volcano as youll find, I had crossed the old battle lines.
On a canopy tour, harnessed to a zip line cable and flying from giant tree to tree, I was
joined by about 40 high school evangelicals on a mission from Omaha. One girl asked me
if I was a Christian, and as there are no atheists 40 feet off the ground, I answered
truthfully, No, but Im a fan of Jesus.
Back in Granada, I paid a call on the Costa Rican expat Glenda Castro Navarro at El
Tercer Ojo (the Third Eye), a cafe and restaurant decorated with Buddhist and Hindu
icons that she opened four years ago with her husband, the French painter Jean Marc
Calvet. The Third Eye means Open your eyes and see, Castro said. I try to follow
many of the teachings of Buddhism, and here it is very Catholic, so people say this is a
very diabolic thing. Castro can grow impatient with the towns sedulous pace (things
pass so slowly here, its unreal), lacking perhaps the native affection of her friend who
joined us, the filmmaker Mariano Maran. Mi Musica, Marans film about Nicaraguan
music, had been playing around town. To die a Granadino is tremendously powerful,
he said. My mother is 93, she still lives here, she still sings, she still drinks.
For someone like Marn, Granadas pull is internal, the force of family and shared
history. (Im like an elephant; I always come back home.) But as the very existence of
El Tercer Ojo makes plain, all sorts of people are drawn into the citys colonial vortex for
all sorts of reasons. The paradox of Granada is that its aura of antique timelessness is the
very thing that attracts the restless New Agers and the bohemians. And for this reason,
there is a whiff of improbability: Granada of the somnolent heat and the aristocratic airs
bring reconceived by foreign visitors as a model of town-and-country multisport
efficiency and as an exotic stage for private obsessions. But the beauty of the place is that
the different Granadas dont collide. They rub off on one another in lively, unpredictable

ways.
On my next to last night in town, I settled in for dinner at Alabama Rib Shack Bar and
Grill, which everyone knows as Jimmy Three-Fingers, a few blocks from the Parque.
(The baby-back ribs are first-rate.) After dinner, the proprietor, a singer-contractor-chef
from Floridas Gulf Coast by the name of Jimmy Three-Fingers he had an accident
with a table saw belts out Jimmy Buffet and John Denver songs in a phlegmy,
nicotine-stained voice to a barroom half full of nonplussed Nicaraguans and curious stray
gringos. I suggested Margaritaville. (When in Rome. ...) Back on the Gulf Coast, the
tip jar used to have a sign on it, he shot back. Requests: 5 cents. Margaritaville:
$25. Repertory notwithstanding, his young Granadina girlfriend was enchanted. Hands
beatifically pressed to her chest, she cooed, I surrender every time he sings.
The moment reminded me of something the poet and former Sandinista operative
Gioconda Belli had told me before my trip. If there is a city that has been changed by
tourism, its Granada, she said. But unlike some other picturesque spots I can think of,
Granada hasnt become an imitation of itself. There is room for both the ridiculous and
the sublime a festival in February, for instance, when some 200 poets declaim their
verses from church atriums within earshot of Jimmy Three-Fingers microphone. It feels
much more cosmopolitan, Belli said approvingly. But still, somehow, like Granada.
ESSENTIALS GRANADA, NICARAGUA
Getting There
There is a small airport outside of Granada, but its easiest to fly into Managua. From
there, its about an hour by car to the city center.
Guides and Logistics
Tours Nicaragua (www.toursnicaragua.com) and Nicaragua Adventures (www.nicaadventures.com) can arrange private trips to the country, covering culture, nature and
adventure. Both can plan either an entire trip or just basics like hotels and transportation.
(Unless youre comfortable with chaotic driving conditions, do not rent your own car.)
Mombotour (www.mombotour.com) conducts day trips around Granada, including the
canopy tour on Mombacho and kayaking tours of Lake Nicaragua (from about $25 to $51
per person).
.

Attracted by a Blend of Centuries and Cultures

By JEFF KOYEN

ON a recent Saturday night, an invitation-only dance party was in full swing at Asia
Latina, a Thai-style restaurant in the Nicaraguan city of Granada. The lights were dim,
the music electronic and the kitchen that usually serves up pad Thai closed. And though
the blistering sun had long set, a lingering heat hung in the room, which was decorated
with Thai tapestries and Indian batiks.
The crowd, a lively mix of the citys young and well dressed, was almost exclusively
male. Out front, a rainbow flag sagged in the heavy air. People talked about that for

months, said Rafael Faria, the restaurants youthful 40-year-old owner. I figure if they
want to come in, welcome. If not, eat somewhere else.
Such unabashed liberalism was unheard of just a few years ago in this conservative
colonial town. Racked by years of war most recently by the pro-Marxist Sandinistas
from the Iran-contra days Granada clung to its Catholic roots.
But with the Sandinistas voted out in 1990 and a growing free-market economy (though
Nicaragua is still one of the hemispheres poorest countries), the country is fashioning
itself as a cheaper alternative to Costa Rica. And, in doing so, Granada is not only
opening up to Western dollars, but Western cultural influences as well.
At the forefront of the tourism push are former exiles like Mr. Faria who, like thousands
of other Nicaraguans, fled the country in the 1980s. He was barely a teenager. Sensing a
sea change, Mr. Faria moved back three years ago, trading his tiny Manhattan apartment
in Clinton for a town house a few blocks from Granadas center.
I had really fallen in love with the country, Mr. Faria said.
And with tourism on pace to outstrip coffee as the countrys largest industry, even
Sandinista leaders like Daniel Ortega, who was elected president in 2006, are banking on
tourism to lift the country out of poverty.
Nicaraguas tourism industry is bullish for good reason. The countrys beaches are
among the finest in the Americas, and among the least developed. Dozens of volcanic
peaks offer treks through rain forests teeming with a rich biodiversity. And large tracts of
nature reserves offer an eco-tourist wonderland.
But when it comes to Nicaraguan culture, new and old, nothing compares to Granada.
Founded in 1524 by the conquistador Francisco Hernndez de Crdoba, Granada is one
of the oldest colonial cities in the Americas. It was also one of the most frequently
sacked, thanks to its location on Lake Nicaragua, which reaches the Caribbean by way of
the San Juan River. But despite frequent sieges by pirates and would-be imperialists, a
good portion of the citys colonial architecture remains miraculously intact. Add the
narrow, cobblestone streets and courtyard cafes, and its one of Central Americas
loveliest spots.
Like many colonial towns, Granada comes together in a tree-lined Parque Central, or
central park. This one is lorded over by a massive, mustard-yellow cathedral that shines
bright in the afternoon sun. When I visited this past summer, the squares western edge
was lined with horse-drawn taxis. Across the park, hot dog vendors sought refuge under
the palm trees slowly shifting shadows, their carts painted with slap-dash cartoon
characters like a Mickeyesque mouse and a clumsily drawn Pokmon.
Along the parks northern edge, vendors had set up small folding tables, selling bracelets,
rings and other jewelry from local artisans, with prices ranging from $1 to $100.
As the sun set and the heat let loose its grip, I came across an open-air market a few
blocks south, where everything from household goods to live chickens and fresh
vegetables were on sale. Then, I got lost among the winding streets lined with tiny
clothing shops, scruffy coffee shops and cantinas filled with laborers fresh from their
shifts. The area was anchored by two other colonial-era churches: the stunning Iglesia de

Guadalupe near the lake and, to the west, the Iglesia de la Merced with its Baroque
facade.
After dark, it was time to join the crowds of tourists and locals who fill the half dozen
restaurants along Calle la Calzada, a bustling street filled with live guitar music and
outdoor cafes that runs east from the central park.
At El Tranvia, an elegant, colonial-style restaurant downstairs at the Hotel Dario, a
button-down crowd feasted on a Latin-Caribbean menu that included grilled fish straight
from the lake and Creole-spiced steaks from local farmers. The crowd was split among
young Nicaraguan couples enjoying the romantic atmosphere and American baby
boomers poring over a list of Central and South American wines.
Granadas tourism upswing is also spilling over to the countrys western coastline. While
backpacking surfers have long passed through Granada, the new wave of well-heeled
tourists is spurring new restaurants, hotels and tour companies outside of the city.
Among the fastest growing areas is Lake Apoyo, a nearby freshwater lake inside a
volcanic crater. Several guesthouses have opened on the lake, including Norome Villas, a
thatched-roof resort set in a mango grove with a spa and conference center.
Still, the lake remains relatively undeveloped, free of unsightly hotels and resorts. The
craters rim is lightly forested: green in some spots, Utah-brown in others. And thanks to
restrictions on motorized watercraft, the water is clean, clear and dark blue.
But make no mistake, development is afoot. Back at Calle la Calzada, just a few blocks
away from Asia Latina, theres a popular new sports pub, Zoom Bar. Instead of tapestries
and batik, this transplanted honky-tonk is decorated with college football jerseys and
lewd bumper sticks. The house specialty is a bacon cheeseburger with curly fries.
On a breezy Thursday afternoon, Wayne Grath, a California native who opened the
establishment with his wife, Cheryl, was standing behind the bar, loudly pontificating on
the citys real estate market. A pair of heavily tattooed tourists listened closely, eager to
get in on the action.
It may already be too late, Mr. Grath said.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Several airlines fly from Kennedy Airport to Managua, none nonstop. Fares start at about
$300 (and a $10 tourist card must be purchased upon arrival). Granada is an easy onehour drive from Managua. Several major car rental companies, including Hertz
(505-233-1237) and Avis (505-233-3011), have offices at the A. C. Sandino Airport in
Managua.

A Faded City Brightens In Nicaragua

By STEPHEN KINZER

WHEN I lived in Nicaragua during the war years of the 1980's, I often lamented
Granada's fate. Once the country's stately capital, it had fallen on hard times. Many of its
aristocratic families had fled, and their grand colonial-style mansions were crumbling.
Walking through the shabby streets and along the shore of nearby Lake Nicaragua, I

thought that with a little money and ambition, this city could be returned to its glory.
In the last few years, that has begun to happen. Granada, founded in 1524 and said to be
one of the oldest cities in the Americas, has become a wonderfully rewarding place to
visit. Mansions and churches have been restored and painted in soft pastel colors,
monuments have been polished, and new restaurants and hotels have opened, I
discovered on a three-day visit last March. The cloud forest on Mombacho, the great
volcano that towers over Granada, beckons hikers, bird watchers and orchid lovers.
Motor launches are ready to take people on tours of the lake, which is more than three
times the size of Rhode Island, and its more than 350 small islands, each a miniature
jungle wonderland.
Visitors to Nicaragua usually land at the Managua airport, but Managua, devastated by an
earthquake in 1972 and still among the ugliest capital cities in the hemisphere, has little
to offer. Granada, however, is an hour's drive south. The road passes through two towns
known for their handicrafts, and when I made the trip, I stopped at both. In Masaya, just
20 minutes south of Managua, I was tempted by a set of wood-and-wicker rocking chairs
but finally decided that, although they could be taken apart, they would be too unwieldy
to take home; I settled for a colorful hammock instead. It cost less than $20, a reflection
of how inexpensive Nicaraguan crafts can be. A few miles farther along is San Juan de
Oriente, one of the country's best-known ceramics centers. At a cooperative just a few
steps off the main road, I bought a ceramic dish painted with an intricate pattern copied
from a pre-Columbian design.
A short while later I was in Granada's impressive central plaza, which is surrounded by
magnificent old buildings, some from the 16th century. Among them are a cavernous
Colonial-era cathedral with three soaring steeples and several imposing two-story 19thcentury mansions; I could easily imagine flirtatious seoritas looking down from their
balconies and waving their handkerchiefs to passing gallants. A plaque on a mansion is
inscribed with a famous verse that sums up the city's appeal; it asks people to be generous
to blind beggars ''because there is nothing sadder in the world than to be blind in
Granada.''
In the plaza itself, people were taking the sun on benches near the bandstand, munching
on snacks or sipping drinks bought from pushcart vendors. Horse-drawn carriages waited
to take the few tourists in town on tours, or local people on their daily errands. For more
ambitious trips, there are taxis, most of them modern but a few big-finned relics from the
1950's.
Half a block from the plaza is the Colonial Hotel, which opened two years ago. A new
building centered around a courtyard with a small swimming pool, it is built in the
traditional style. With 27 rooms the Colonial is a quiet place, but I chose to stay at an
even smaller hostelry on the other side of the plaza, La Casona de los Estrada. Set in a
historic 18th-century building, it has been carefully renovated and offers all modern
conveniences in its six rooms. The owner, Nelson Estrada, had intended to make it his
private home, but as the renovation proceeded he changed his mind.
Granada, a city of 58,000, is laid out in a grid, and most of its attractions are within easy

walking distance of the plaza. One of the most popular is the San Francisco church and
cloister, founded in 1529 and reconstructed in the 19th century. It was a residence for
monks, and Bartolom de Las Casas, the first Spanish defender of Indian rights, once
preached here. I made my way straight to a small museum that has been created inside,
with its awe-inspiring collections of ancient statues. These brooding stone figures,
ranging from 5 to 10 feet in height, were chiseled by Indians about 1,000 years ago on an
island in Lake Nicaragua. They depict strange man-animal combinations, such as a man
who either has the features of a crocodile or is carrying one on his head. No one is sure
what they mean or how they were used.
''They are plain, simple and severe, and although not elaborately finished, are cut with
considerable freedom and skill,'' wrote E. G. Squier, an American explorer and diplomat
who uncovered them in the 19th century on the island where they were carved. He
speculated that they were objects of worship, perhaps part of a fertility cult. Some of
them, he said, ''conveyed so forcibly the idea of power and strength that they might have
been used as a study for Samson under the gates of Gaza, or an Atlas supporting the
world.''
These eerie statues hint at the drama of Granada's history. For most of the 19th century,
two political factions jockeyed for power in Nicaragua: the Liberals, based in the western
city of Len, and the Conservatives, based in Granada. The capital moved according to
which faction had won the latest war or election, and so the country was often governed
from Granada. A manse facing the plaza, now open to the public, was once the Granada
Social Club, and it is easy to picture Conservative patriarchs sitting in its high-ceilinged
parlors over rum and cigars, planning the nation's future.
It used to be possible to reach Granada by boat from the Caribbean; vessels would sail up
the San Juan River, which is now barely navigable, cross Lake Nicaragua and dock at the
Granada pier. This geography was the city's blessing and curse. It brought prosperity and
a cosmopolitan air, but also attracted invaders. Several times pirates sacked Granada,
most notably Henry Morgan in 1665. In the 1850's the city suffered its most bizarre
attack, led by a mad American adventurer named William Walker who not only seized it
but also proclaimed himself president of Nicaragua.
Walker planned to use Granada as a base from which to build a Central American empire,
and troops from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala joined to
attack him before he could carry out his plan. He held out for while, but was finally
forced to flee in 1856. Before doing so his men set fire to the city, and one of them left
behind a sign reading ''Here Was Granada.'' The city has long since been fully rebuilt, but
there are still a few reminders of Walker's occupation. One is a statue of a priest named
Rafael Villavincencio who is said to have rushed into the burning cathedral to rescue a
sacred chalice.
The area around Granada was one of the few parts of Nicaragua that was not directly
affected by the civil war that tore the country apart during the 1980's. Like the rest of the
country, it suffered from decay and neglect, but there was no fighting in the region.
Although Granada has not escaped the poverty that has overwhelmed Nicaragua, it is in

better shape than almost any other city in the country. Tourists are welcome and -- as in
the rest of the country -- there have been few reports of the robberies and assaults that
have kept tourists away from some other parts of Central America.
Lake Nicaragua is famous for having some of the world's only freshwater sharks,
although only a few are believed to survive. But the lake's tastiest fish, the guapote
(pronounced wa-PO-tay) is still thankfully abundant. I enjoyed it at several meals,
including one at a restaurant directly overlooking the lake. Shrimp, steak and other local
dishes are also available at very low prices. There are a few fine restaurants, including
one at La Casona de los Estrada, but most range from simple to dirt-floor primitive. But
many of the most unpretentious places serve wonderful food.
One morning I resolved to find a nacatamal, the most typical of Nicaraguan foods. By
tradition nacatamales are available only on weekends and only early in the morning, and
in Granada women sell them at stands in the marketplace near the central plaza. A porkand-rice casserole flavored with onions and spices, nacatamal is always served wrapped
in a banana leaf. Mine was as tasty as those I remembered, and after one bite I felt I was
truly back in Nicaragua.
SHORTLY after, I set out for the lake. Launches are available along the shore, either by
the hour or the day. Skippers will give you a leisurely ride or take you to an island and
pick you up later; this allows time for either a picnic or, if you choose one of the
inhabited islands, a meal in a rustic restaurant. These islands are riots of color, each a
small, lush rain forest reminiscent of Gauguin's South Seas paintings. Many are
populated by parrots, monkeys and giant turtles, with fishermen sitting lazily on rafts
offshore. I stopped on one island where visitors can climb onto the walls of a ruined 18thcentury fort built to repel pirates, and then swam around another island in water that was
warm and brackish.
On the way back to Granada, my skipper told me that several of these islands are for sale,
and confided that he could arrange a bargain price.
May 14, 1985

NICARAGUA, LAND OF VERSE, REVERSES

'DIVINE' POET
By STEPHEN KINZER, Special to the New York Times
Correction Appended

LEON, Nicaragua Poetry seems to be on the lips and in the soul of every Nicaraguan,
and, especially here in Leon, everyone knows why.
This sweltering university city, founded by Spanish conquerors in 1524, is the hometown
and final resting place of Ruben Dario, the only Nicaraguan to have won worldwide
recognition as a giant in the creative arts. Dario is often considered the greatest poet ever
to have emerged from Latin America, and in the years since his death in 1916 his
example has drawn hundreds of Nicaraguans to verse.
Nowhere else in the Western Hemisphere, it seems, do so many ordinary people read and

write poetry. Several have become recognized as outstanding figures in Hispanic letters,
making poetry the only art form in which Nicaraguans have traditionally excelled.
''I can't say exactly why this happened,'' said Michelle Najlis, a prominent young
Nicaraguan poet, ''but I know it has something to do with Ruben.''
Laying Claim to His Legacy
Almost from the day of Dario's death, ideologues have sought to lay claim to his legacy,
and every Nicaraguan government since then has sought to lionize him. Anastasio
Somoza Debayle quoted him regularly, and named his wife to oversee construction of the
Ruben Dario National Theater, still the country's only modern cultural center. A statue of
the poet clad in a Roman toga and wearing a garland of olive branches stands before the
theater.
Today both the Sandinistas and their rivals consider Dario a hero. Many nights have been
passed in futile argument over what political positions he would take if he were alive
today.
Leaders of the Sandinista Front, which seized power after Somoza was ousted in 1979,
have fervently embraced Dario as they have sought to stimulate patriotism through
veneration of national heroes.
Many of his works, both prose and poems, have been reprinted by the Governmentowned publishing house, and a series of seminars on his work was held earlier this year.
No one was surprised when President Daniel Ortega Saavedra included a reference to
''the divine Ruben'' in his inaugural address.
Legendary Lust for Life
Journalist, essayist, diplomat, poet, novelist and short story writer, a man who dazzled
Europe before World War I, Dario was a bohemian with a legendary lust for life. His
defenders are often quick to assert that stories of his escapades from Paris to Buenos
Aires are much exaggerated, but the persistence of such stories no doubt accounts for
some of his continuing popularity.
Nowhere is Dario's memory so jealously guarded as in Leon. Though he was born in the
town of Metapa, 50 miles east of here, which was renamed Dario after his death, Leon is
the city he always considered his own.
Dario's childhood home is now a museum, full of manuscripts, personal possessions and
other curios. Edgardo Buitrago, the curator, has devoted his life to the poet's memory.
''Leon is a traditional center of culture and learning,'' Mr. Buitrago said at the beginning
of an extended monologue that left several recent visitors with the impression that they
had spent an afternoon conversing with an intimate friend of the great man.
''Dario's family took in university students as boarders,'' Mr. Buitrago continued. ''The
discussion groups that met here were famous in all Nicaragua. Literature and philosophy
were the subjects that mattered.''
Some Compare Him to Pound
Dario was a precocious youth, but was nonetheless expelled from school here because of
what Mr. Buitrago described as ''total indiscipline.'' He published early poems while
barely into his teens, and soon was granted a post at the National Library in Managua,

where he devoured classical French and Spanish literature.

After traveling in Europe, Dario moved to Argentina, where he reached literary maturity.
In both his essays and his verse, he reflected the influence of the French symbolist poets.
Ezra Pound is the American poet to whom he is most often compared.
Celebrated in Europe for his astonishing facility with language, Dario moved to Paris and
spent his most productive years there and in Madrid. He came to New York after the
outbreak of World War I, fell ill and decided that he wanted to die in his homeland. His
death in Leon led to an outpouring of tributes that has not yet subsided.
Dario lived to see himself recognized as a brilliant literary innovator, and by the time of
his death, the Modernist movement, which he founded, had attracted many of the finest
poets in the Spanish language. But he could not have known that his example would turn
Nicaragua into a nation of poets.
Each year, on the anniversary of his birth, scores of poets gather before large crowds in
the town of Dario for a daylong ''poetry marathon'' to honor his memory.
Symbol of the Nation
Ruben Dario is often viewed as a spokesman for the Hispanic cultural identity, but in
Nicaragua he is more than that. He has become the pre-eminent symbol of the nation, one
of the few poets to achieve such stature anywhere.
''Since the revolution, we have discovered Dario's political dimension,'' said the Rev.
Ernesto Cardenal, the Sandinista poet and Nicaraguan Minister of Culture. ''He is not
only the greatest poet in our language, but also one of the most anti-imperialist.''
Pablo Antonio Cuadra, like Father Cardenal one of the great living Nicaraguan poets,
scoffs at efforts to associate Dario with the current Government. ''He was a man of
advanced social ideas, but to reduce this giant to the status of a pamphleteer is to demean
his greatness,'' Mr. Cuadra said in an interview at the opposition newspaper La Prensa,
where he edits the weekly literary supplement.
There can be no doubt, however, that Dario was a revolutionary in more than poetry. His
passionate denunciations of injustice and searing social commentaries are regarded as at
least as relevant to contemporary Latin America as his poems.
'The World Goes Badly'
''Oh Lord! The world goes badly,'' laments a character in one of his stories. ''Is this not the
democracy to which orators and poets sing? In that case, democracy be damned!
''This is not democracy, but infamy and ruin. The unhappy ones suffer a rain of plagues,
while the rich only enjoy. The press, ever venal and corrupt, sings the invariable psalm to
gold. Writers are violins played by great potentates.''
Dario was not content to limit himself to condemnations. ''All tyrannies will crash to the
ground, political tyranny, economic tyranny, religious tyranny,'' he thundered. Spain and
Latin America could not help but cheer, and they cheer Dario still.
Near the altar of Leon's imposing Baroque cathedral, Dario's remains lie in a special crypt
guarded by a life-size marble lion. Hardly a day passes without at least a few reverent
visitors. On a recent morning, a group of schoolteachers from Spain left a wreath with the
simple inscription, ''To the greatest of all Nicaraguans, Ruben Dario.''

January 11, 1981

Notes; A NEW ART VILLAGE RISES IN THE

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
By ROBERT J. DUNPHY

A new international arts center that is almost a work of art in itself has been carved out of
the wilderness high above the Caribbean in the southeastern corner of the Dominican
Republic. It will be opened to the public on Thursday.
Known as Altos de Chavon for its lofty location over the Chavon River, the arts center
looks more like an Italian Renaissance hill town in Tuscany than the Caribbean
community that it is. Indeed, the whole idea behind the project is to stimulate a cultural
renaissance in the Dominican Republic.
Under construction for four years, Altos de Chavon has been designed to serve as a
colony where local and international artists will be invited to reside on a rotating basis
and teach music, poetry, painting, dance, sculpture and weaving, pottery, fabric printing
and silk screening.
The center is six miles from the sugar-mill town of La Romana and three miles east of
Casa de Campo, the Caribbean resort owned by Gulf & Western Industries, which has
extensive sugar holdings on the island. It was originally the brainchild of Charles
Bluhdorn, chairman of the conglomerate, but most of the planning has been taken over by
his daughter Dominique.
Culture is not new to the Altos site, since the Taino Indians established a creative
community on the cliffs above the Chavon thousands of years before Columbus touched
the shores of Hispaniola, the island that the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti. One
of the chief attractions of Altos, in fact, will be the Taino Museum, which will house one
of the world's richest collections of Taino Indian artifacts.
In addition to the museum, the center includes the red-tiled church of St. Stanislaus and a
dozen other structures, among them two restaurants on the main plaza, an inn with 10
rooms and clusters of small apartments for visiting artists and shops designed to
encourage commerce in Dominican art.
These are all part of Phase I of the Altos building program. Not yet started is Phase II,
which will include an open-air amphitheater, a central marketplace and a 20-room
dormitory for artisans in residence. All this is a far cry from the original concept, which
called for a handful of simple white-washed buildings to house a small colony of artists.
This has since evolved into a self-contained village set against the lush green mountains
to the north and the Caribbean to the south.
Cultural activity even now has begun to hum in Altos, with a few artists already involved
with young Dominicans and busloads of tourists jumping the gun on the official opening
by arriving by bus from nearby Caso de Campo.
Art aside, most come out of curiosity, simply to see this Mediterranean village that was
hacked out of the Caribbean wilderness in four years by workers using indigenous

materials and handcrafting the stonework, the stout wooden doors and iron grillwork
piece by piece under the guidance of Roberto Copa, the center's designer.

WINTER IN THE SUN; A Bit of U.S. In Dominican

Republic
By GEORGE STOLZ; GEORGE STOLZ is on the metropolitan staff of The New York Times.

IN the northeastern corner of the Dominican Republic lies Samana, a lush, rugged
peninsula that bears testament to a forgotten moment in the history of the New World. In
the 1820's, thousands of escaping American slaves relocated in Samana, maintaining their
North American customs in the isolation of their new Caribbean home. These
Americanos (as their descendants still call themselves) lived beyond the reach of most
modernizing and homogenizing influences until a highway was built 25 years ago, so that
Samana remained a cultural anomaly: an English-speaking, Protestant outpost of a
Spanish-speaking, Catholic country.
Modern Samana is more than an anthropological relic: it is coming of age as a 20thcentury resort, popular especially among European visitors. The town, peninsula and bay,
which all share the same name, possess the ingredients of a Caribbean resort. The town is
small and peaceful, nestled between the steeply rising mountains and the gentle waters of
the bay, with a variety of accommdations ranging from sparse pensions to a luxury resort
complex. The 30-mile-long peninsula's 90 miles of coast abound with beaches. The
mountains that form the peninsula's spine rise to heights of 2,000 feet.
That Samana has remained underdeveloped while tourism has become the Dominican
Republic's fastest growing industry is in large part due to Samana's isolation. While most
of the country's highways are excellent, the highway connecting the town and peninsula
to the mainland is badly deteriorated, and the 170-mile drive from Samana to Santo
Domingo, the capital, takes at least five very bumpy hours.
Samana, however, is not a backward village. It is a modern town of about 4,000 where
breezy and brightly painted homes line wide and winding tree-lined streets and small
shops and restaurants overlook the bayfront boulevard (known as the Malecon). Although
most of the peninsula is beyond the range of telephone and power lines, the town has a
few small hotels, bars and discos and some small restaurants serving French cuisine and
regional specialties like fish with coconut and stewed conch. There is a small airport,
which offers two half-hour flights daily to the capital in five-passenger planes.
This combination of development and isolation is rooted in Dominican politics. The
Government recognized Samana's potential in the early 70's and initiated a plan to
develop the region as a tourist center. The old wooden town was razed (with the
exception of the Americanos' Methodist church, which had been moved plank by plank
from England) and a new concrete town was constructed. Two Government-owned hotels
were built, one on a bluff overlooking the town and the bay, the other on an island in the
bay. The plan for the new town included parks, an airport, a new pier and a series of
traffic circles.

But just as the fuse for the tourist boom was about to be lighted, President Joaquin
Balaguer fell from power, and the project, associated with the outgoing party (and not
untainted by controversy) was ignored by the incoming party. Without continued
governmental promotion, Samana was left a city marred by desuetude, the hotels virtually
abandoned and the empty traffic circles serving as symbols for political satirists.
Circles, of course, are versatile symbols, as Mr. Balaguer, who was re-elected in 1986
and 1990, understands. The 84-year-old bachelor, who refers to Samana in speeches as
his girlfriend, has said that he plans to resume Samana's Government-sponsored
development. According to Origine Varva Orton, the governor of Samana Province, these
plans include expanding the airport to international standards and selling the hotels to
private owners. However, as even Mr. Varva admits, these plans are still only plans. In
the meantime, there has been a flurry of privately financed projects, ranging from
retirement communities to the 120-room Hotel Gran Bahia outside town.
Until changes occur, the best time to witness the hybrid products of Samana's past is
during two annual religious festivals: the week before Easter (Holy Week) and the
celebration of the region's patron saint, Santa Barbara (the Patronales), which concluded
late last month.
During these periods thousands of countryfolk stream into town, transforming the
Malecon into a miniature Rio de Janeiro at Carnival. What little business the town
usually conducts is replaced by processions, dances, games and contests, some conducted
in English, others in Spanish and some in the patois of Haiti.
Loudspeakers blast merengue (the Dominican national music) well into the night. The
loudspeakers are provided by Dominican rum companies, who do a good business at this
time. Many revelers sleep on the benches and grassy areas lining the Malecon.
During the rest of the year Samana remains sedate, a poor but not poverty-stricken town,
home to a small group of American and European sailors and expatriates.
Other than the beauty and tranquillity, what draws most visitors is outdoor recreation.
Around the docks of the Malecon one can arrange a day-trip, rent a motorcycle or fishing
gear, have lunch or dinner or hire motorcycle-drawn carriages (called motoconchos) and
small motorboats (called yolas).
Most beaches can be reached by motoconcho, which carry as many as eight passengers
and are usually driven by teen-age guides. These loud and backfiring buggies also
function as taxis. Yolas can be hired to reach beaches and caves accessible only by water
or to travel among the small islands, called cayos, in the bay. Cayo Levantado, the largest
(about a mile long and a half-mile across), is about 30 minutes by yola from the docks
and makes for an interesting day trip.
Cayo Levantado's five beaches range from hidden to expansive, some lashed by currents
twisting around the island and others gently lapped by the tide. Rocky trails cross the
island.
EARLY each morning a group of cooks and vendors arrives. Some catch and grill fish,
serving them with toasted plantains, while others mix the milk of coconuts with rum,
serving a powerful drink called a coco loco to be sipped under the palm trees. In the

evening the yolas return, taking workers and visitors back to the mainland.
Amid Cayo Levantado's natural treasures sits the closed, Government-owned hotel. Built
atop the island's highest point, it must have been stunning. Today it sits in limbo as the
Government negotiates for its renovation, leaving visitors to wander through doorless
rooms.
Another popular activity is game fishing; expeditions set out each morning from
Samana's docks. Across the bay and within range of a day's trip sprawls Los Haitises, a
national park, rain forest and bird sanctuary, where pre-Columbian paintings can be seen
on the walls of waterfront caves. The mountains, looming in the background, are crisscrossed by footpaths and riding trails.
The north side of the peninsula faces the rougher waters and uninterrupted vista of the
Atlantic. Paradoxically, although the north coast is further removed from civilization than
the town of Samana, it is the site of the area's most modern accommodations at Las
Terrenas. About a half hour by car or bus from the town of Samana, Las Terrenas has
been transformed in the past 10 years from a tiny fishing village into a small strip of
hotels and resort compounds, ranging from quiet bed and breadfasts with rocking chairs
and screened porches to large, all-inclusive compounds with tennis courts, windsurfing
and scuba diving equipment, outdoor discos and transportation to and from the country's
major airports.
Each winter humpback whales return to Samana in order to breed and give birth, taking
advantage of the warm sheltered waters of the bay between December and March.
Although the chief whale-watchers are teams of marine biologists, nautical expeditions
are also popular among tourists who travel alongside the whales, watching them and
listening to them sing.
Samana's history of cultural conjunctions preceded the relocation of the American slaves.
It began with the first hostile encounter between the hemispheres on Jan. 12, 1493, when
an army of Indians showered Columbus's ship with bone-tipped arrows. This Gulf of
Arrows (as Columbus named it), situated about three miles east of town, bears no plaque
but is well known among residents.
Pirates thrived in the coves and shallow waters of the bay until the city of Santa Barbara
de Samana was founded in 1756 by transplanted Canary Islanders whom the Spanish
relocated in order to discourage British encroachment. Samana's population was later
augmented and diversified by fleeing French planters and their slaves when Haiti, which
shares the island of Hispaniola with the Domincan Republic, declared its independence
from France in 1804.
Napoleon envisioned a capital for his New World empire in Samana and had plans drawn
for a new city on the site to be called Napoleon City. But British intervention and
Continental concerns distracted the emperor and the plan was shelved. Then in 1822 Haiti
invaded the Dominican Republic and began a 22-year occupation.
It was at this time that the formative event in Samana's development occurred. Haiti's
leader, Jean Pierre Boyer, made contact with abolitionist groups in Philadelphia and
financed the passage and resettlement of as many slaves as the abolitionists could muster.

Boyer's motives are disputed. Boyer said he was concerned with liberating the slaves,
while Dominican observers said Boyer wanted to repopulate the country he had
subjugated with residents partial to himself. Nevertheless, nearly 6,000 former slaves
made the voyage to the Dominican Republic. The results were mixed: many died or
returned, unable to adjust to changes in climate and culture. However, the 2,000 or so
who relocated prospered.
THESE immigrants preserved their North American traditions. They ran their own
schools, paying for the importation of English teachers, and maintained Protestant
churches (primarily Methodist), despite occasional encounters with governmental
intolerance. Today even the young people, bearing surnames like King, Green and
Barrett, say that their ancestors came from Philadelphia.
Only the dictator Rafael Trujillo, threatened by the area's cultural independence, was able
to introduce the Spanish language into Samana, and his means were drastic; armed men
publicly beat anyone heard speaking English. Most residents today are bilingual. The
English of Samana is unlike the singsong tonalities of neighboring former British
colonies and sounds more like the English in the United States.
Samana also retains a rich folklore, full of superstitious sightings of the Caribbean
equivalents of vampires and werewolves. The superstitions, however, seem to be fading;
when asked, residents say that they believe in the creatures but that the creatures appear
less frequently and in fewer homes than they once did.
The remaining Americanos live off the land in small mountain villages dotting the
peninsula. They grow coconuts, coffee, mangos and citrus fruits for sale. Their churches
are easily identified along the narrow dirt roads: small, often windowless, wood-frame
buildings perched on stilts or cinderblocks, immaculately clean, with pitched roofs,
wooden pews and doors at both ends. On Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday
mornings the churches are generally filled to capacity with worshipers of all ages singing
hymns -- in English. WHAT TO CONSIDER FOR A VISIT TO SAMANA Getting
There
You should fly to Samana from the airport in Puerto Plata, avoiding Santo Domingo if
possible. Continental, American and Pan American offer one to five flights daily, for
about $350 round trip. (Dominicana Airlines, which also flies to the Dominican Republic,
has erratic service.) The flight to Samana is by small plane, arranged through a travel
agent, for about $115 round trip. Rental cars are available at the airports, but Dominican
drivers are often terrifying, and the last leg of the road to Samana is in poor condition.
Where to Stay
There are many small, inexpensive though rather plain hotels in Samana. Representative
is the Hotel Nilka (4 Calle Santa Barbara; 809-538-2245) in the center of town. Rooms
are small and spare, with nothing more than a chest of drawers, bed and small window.
Some rooms are air-conditioned; hot water is erratic. About $15 a night for two.
The best in-town rooms are at the Hotel Tropical Lodge (8 Avenida de la Marina;
809-538-2480). Run by a French couple, this hotel overlooking the bay has clean, airy
rooms, a grassy courtyard, a small lounge with bar and a hospitable atmosphere; $32 for

two, including breakfast.

A half-hour drive from Samana, in the village of Las Terrenas, is El Portillo Beach Club,
a large resort, which probably offers the best accommodations in the region. About $200
a night for two with breakfast, lunch and dinner, unlimited drinks and access to such
activities as bicycling, tennis and scuba-diving equipment. Motorcycling, horseback
riding and diving lessons available at extra cost. Since there are no telephones, El Portillo
must be contacted through its offices in Santo Domingo (Post Office Box 646, Santo
Domingo, Dominican Republic; 809-688-5715). Where to Eat
American visitors will feel most at home at Morgans Restaurant (36 Avenida Franciso
del Rosario Sanchez; 809-538-2576). Under the auspices of the owner, Wally Bryan, an
American who has lived in Samana for six years, the entrees range from Texas chili to
curried chicken. Dinner for two about $30.
La Mata Rosada (5 Malecon; 809-538-2400) serves seafood dishes and regional
specialties. Most of the tables are outdoors under a large awning lined with hanging
plants. Dinner for two with wine is about $25.
L'Hacienda (6 Avenida de la Marina; 809-538-2383) serves French and regional cuisine.
Although it does not overlook the bay, it boasts the most elegant setting in town. The
French owners and native waiters and chefs provide warm, friendly service. Dinner for
two about $30.
High on the hill overlooking the bay and the town is the Restaurant Chino (21 Avenida
Chasereaux; 809-538-2215), serving both regional Caribbean specialties and Chinese
food. Walls, tables and high arching ceiling are made of the same heavily laquered
mahogany, grown in the wilds of the peninsula. Dinner for two with beer about $20.
What to Do
Almost all recreational activity originates at the docks, where guides, taxi drivers and
ship captains congregate. Fees are negotiable.
A good way to take advantage of the recreational possibilites is to stop at the Samana
Tourist Service (5 Avenida Malecon; 809-538-2740), the only Government-licensed
travel agent in the province. Typical prices are about $30 a person for a day-trip to Cayo
Levantado, $30 a person for horseback riding, $125 a person for deep-sea fishing and $40
a person for whale watching. The rates include the cost of food, drink and an Englishspeaking guide. Usually a minimum number of passengers is required, so be prepared to
travel with strangers.
Moto Marina Rental (3 Avenida Malecon; 809-538-2302) rents motorcycles. Rates range
from about $3 an hour to $20 a day. Credit cards accepted. G. S.