Nicaragua: Can you keep a secret?

words + photos by Ellen Barone

Here's the truth: I want to tell you about Nicaragua and its wild, deserted Pacific beaches, active volcanoes, colonial cities, coffee plantations, and verdant mountains— but then again, I don't. 

Writing about delicate cultures like Nicaragua, where complex political, geographical and economic realities have resulted in hardships on one hand - and a simpler, more grounded way of life on the other - always brings up mixed feelings in me.

I want tell you what is great about Nicaragua – a country where gracious women with colorful bundles perched atop their heads amble past colonial buildings painted in faded pastel colors; where green, cloud-fringed volcanoes tower over terra-cotta rooftops; where roadside stands overflow with a colorful bounty of tropical fruits and vegetables; where a quilt of fertile plots blankets the valleys and gentle sloping mountains – but I’m afraid you’ll go en masse and turn it into the Familiar.

While the United States has a shady legacy in Nicaragua, I, an obvious American, was welcomed there.  More than a million Nicaraguans live in the United States, and just about everyone seems to know someone living in Florida, Texas or California.  "The conflicts are in the past now," a taxi driver in Managua said gently. "We are, at heart, poets, not fighters.”

I experienced this gentle forgiveness and genial warmth often during my three trips to the country. Trusting, honest, and helpful, the Nicaraguan people are the real spirit and charm of the country. Ask for directions and Nicas, as they call themselves, are likely to set aside what they’re doing and lead you where you want to go. Poke your head in an open doorway and they invite you in. Ask to take their photograph and they reward you with a dazzling smile — spontaneous and heartfelt. Express interest in something they are doing, whether it’s weaving a basket or painting a pot and they’ll show you how it’s done. A simple “Como está?” (“How are you?”) and the floodgates open, releasing a charming torrent of Spanish. Their convivial and heart-felt responses are sprinkled with mimed expressions and gestures, as if they anticipate a foreigner’s language difficulties. 

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The Alignments in Carnac, Brittany, France

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

We drove around a corner and encountered an astounding sight: row after row of standing stones, stretching to the horizon. “Pull over!” I demanded. Barely waiting for Gary, my husband, to stop the car, I opened the door, jumped out, and ran over to the green metal fence that separated the stones from me. I shook my head in disbelief, in awe. So many stones, lined up and going—where? Why? They fit no category I knew: they were an enormous puzzle of countless granite megaliths pointing to the sky, rooted in the earth. Hundreds, thousands of stones lined up in slightly wavering rows that went on for kilometers, as if the stones were frozen in the act of marching—somewhere. What was the point? What did they mean? What were they for? The stones made no response.

Nowhere in the world has as many megalithic sites as Brittany, and Carnac is in the center of them. The amazing profusion of ancient remains includes isolated standing stones, rows of alignments, earth-covered tumuli, quadrilateral and oval enclosures, and table-like dolmens, each with its own energy and story.

The dolmens with their elaborately engraved interior walls are intriguing, but the 6000-year-old alignments fascinate me. Many of the original stones have been hauled off for re-use in nearby farmhouses and fences, but nearly 3000 menhirs (Breton for standing stones) remain. They are lined up in three sets of slightly undulating rows facing approximately northeast/southwest and extending for kilometers. Starting in the northeast are the Kerlescan alignments, followed by the Kermario alignments, and ending in the southwest with the Le Ménec alignments. The different sets contain from eleven to thirteen rows, and include from approximately 600 to nearly 1200 standing stones. Each set ends in the southwest with an ovoid or quadrilateral stone enclosure (or what remains of one). The cumulative effect of so many stones, so many alignments, extending for such a distance, is awesome.

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Kenya: Rules of the Wild

words + photos by Ellen Barone

It was a few days into my first African safari when I learned the Fourth Rule of Safari Travel: When you think you’ve spotted a lion, casually ask the guide “What’s that?” rather than blurt out “There's a lion!” because 9 times out of 10 the ‘lion’ will be a termite mound.

Later on, I’d learn other rules: No. 7, If you’re squeamish about eating flesh avoid restaurants with the word Carnivore in their title; No. 13, Never run out of the safari tent, half naked, screaming “there’s a creature in my bed” before you’ve determined it isn’t a hot water bottle put there by the room steward to take the chill off a high-altitude night; and No. 17, Avoid standing up suddenly in an open-top Land Rover with a metal roll-bar above your head.

Photo Slide Show by Ellen Barone

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It was from the deck of a luxurious tent (complete with a carved mahogany four-poster bed) amid the amusing snorts and bellows of cavorting hippos in the river below that I first realized I was becoming immensely qualified to draft a new book proposal: The Idiot’s Guide to Safari (or should it be Safari for Dummies?)

Safari rule No. 8, A power outage is more than an annoying inconvenience when all that separates you and a river full of 5,000-pound hippos is an electric fence. (*Note, the Hippopotamus kills more people in Africa then all the other animals combined.)

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Cambodia Off the Beaten Track

words + photos by Don Mankin

Our narrow wooden boat churns upstream powered by what looks like a motor from a small lawn mower. The wide, almost empty river is straight out of “Apocalypse Now.” I feel vaguely like Martin Sheen looking for Colonel Kurtz as I scan the sparsely populated river banks.  The small boat has barely enough room for the four of us -- my wife Katherine, our guide, the operator and me.

We are heading to a small, isolated village buried in the jungle about 45 minutes up a tributary of the Mekong River, deep in the heart of Ratanakiri province, a mountainous region in the far northeastern corner of Cambodia.  This is as far away from our home in Los Angeles as you can get in this world -- geographically, culturally, and in pretty much any other way you can imagine.

The village we are visiting is home to the ethnic minority people known as the Tompuon, one of the most isolated groups of people I have ever seen – no TV, internet, electricity, or modern sanitation. They survive by cutting timber, growing rice, raising pigs and chickens, and selling trinkets to the few tourists who come their way.

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The Gran Sabana of Venezuela

words + photos by Katherine Braun Mankin

IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

I stared out into the empty plain of the Gran Sabana and thought about my husband, Don. I was glad that I wasn’t with him. He was at that moment climbing a tepui, a rocky, table top mountain.  I didn’t want to climb the tepui.  I don’t like walking uphill.  I don’t like cold or wet places, and I especially don’t like cold and wet together.  Sleeping on the ground hurts my back, and I prefer indoor plumbing to more rustic alternatives.  And I’m a wilderness wimp.  So, instead of hiking a tepui, I went to the middle of nowhere. 

Photo Slide Show by Katherine Braun Mankin

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The Gran Sabana in the southeastern corner of Venezuela, bordering Brazil, is a high plateau of wide savannah interrupted only by clumps of jungle, shadowy outlines of distant tepuis and many waterfalls. My husband and I were in Venezuela at the invitation of Venezuela Elite, a tour operator offering trekking, biking and cultural trips in the region and elsewhere (www.venezuelaelite.com). While my husband climbed the tepui, I spent a week in the Gran Sabana with a guide and a driver, staying at eco-camps or small hotels (indoor plumbing !), going on relatively easy hikes and visiting the indigenous people of this area. For a week I had the pleasure of looking out at landscapes that stretched endlessly into an uncluttered vista of land, sky and water. 

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Dem Big Cats

by Judith Fein

Achoo. Scratch scratch. That is my response to dogs, cats and anything that has more than two feet and is covered with hair. My eyes blow up. I wheeze. I get a je-ne-sais-quoi hairball thing in my throat. And how can I help offending friends who are in love with their Poopsies and KitKats? All I can think about is: get me home so I can throw my clothes and myself in a washing machine.

© Paul Ross.But it’s different when the hirsute ones are out of doors. I went on a safari in South Africa and got so close to the lions, zebra, tigers, elephants and giraffes that I could see the whites of their eyes. No wheezing, no sneezing. I actually bid on a baby camel at a livestock auction in Tunisia, but I couldn’t figure out how to build a camel pen in my bedroom that would filter out airborne (hair) allergens.

After a long hiatus from the animal kingdom, which corresponded to my running out of Benadryl, I happened to be in Northwest Arkansas, and heard there was the largest big cat reserve in the country at Turpentine Creek in Eureka Springs. Beloved by the NW Arkansas citizens, it inspired local giants Walmart and Tyson to donate about 300,000 pounds of chicken, turkey, beef, fish and pork every year to feed the beasts. And visitors can sponsor an animal and even choose its name. Hey, I’m a sucker for feel good things, so off I went.

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