"Just to have a look around. Talk to the agents. Go on vacation, you know? And Costa Rica, anyway, it's spoiled. There are too many big mega-resorts there. Too many golf courses. Who wants that?"
Being curious about this statement, I prod them to continue. With the parakeet licking butter off his fingers, the husband says, "They make Costa Rica look like California!"
Granada's unfortunate recent past has saved it from Club Med and the Hilton. Since the city is relatively poor, it is foreigners, many whom are Americans, who have slowly been rebuilding the city, remodeling Granada with new coats of paint. But these Americans paint for Granada, in the historical style of Granada, and in tune with the people of Nicaragua.
In the afternoon, a great silver cloud rolls around and over the volcano, awakening Granada's humidity furiously. Granadans evacuate to the awnings in these downpours; I take the cue to set my tripod in the empty city square, perhaps knowing a thousand eyes watching.
I pull my dark cloth over my head and wait for my eyes to readjust to the darkness. But I feel sun on my back, and then voices, breath and foot-stomping. I uncloak myself and am surrounded. "Buenas!" I say.
They are all around me - actually there 13 of them. "Just like having your picture taken at Disney World!" says a middle-aged man with receding hair and striped collared shirt.
As if at a formal ball, I take each of their introductions, starting with the adults. Fernando, originally from Costa Rica. His wife, Paraiso - they live in Managua now. Her dress is blue, sandals beaded. Grandfather is there too, with a pipe in his pocket. But Nicaragua is a country of children, and so each child in this large family introduces themselves to me; their eyes and demeanor imply a respect for adult strangers that might have existed in the States once.
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