Travel Photography > Isthmus > Pacific Coast, Nicaragua

There are other mammals here. Your flashlight will capture their eyes for a brief moment; skunks with leopard-like markings, squirrels in black and white, monkeys.  Juan had seen his first kinkajou on the property a few days ago.  As a naturalist guide, seeing this nocturnal creature seemed to have a profound impact on him.  "I climbed to the top of the tree and looked at him in the face.  He was a very special animal."  Kinkajous, a kind of treetop raccoon, have a monkey-human appearance, and so are beloved by people like Juan, who watches animal shows on cable.

Juan is 22 years old, new to the San Juan del Sur area. He was raised in the Northwestern city of Leon.  Leon, part of Nicaragua's depressed coffee picking region, has stood sentinel over Nicaragua’s liberal history.  Its ancient rivalry with conservative Granada, in the southwest, has helped fuel Nicaragua's strange, sad, short and violent history.

Juan explains how his brother is very smart, training in computers.  He says, “He learns his English from the Black-eyed Peas.”  We say that might be the wrong way to learn English.  Juan says he’ll mention that to his brother.  Jane asks Juan about his parents.

"My mother is a housemaid.  My father was working in the coffee fields, but he has problems with his health because of the pesticides, so he is not working."

"Does the government do anything, do they help out?" I ask.
"No," Juan says.

While we half-heartedly look for spiders and bugs, we discuss coffee politics, and CAFTA.  "It is bad for our country," Juan says, "How can our farmers compete against big countries like that?"

Nicaraguans are understandably suspicious, but that's not the policy's fault: Nicaragua's history is a history of very bad North Americans behaving badly.  This fraternity of idiots begins with a Mr. William Walker, who set up fort only nine miles south of here.  Walker was a racist midget from Tennessee who believed in developing Mexico and Central America into slave states.  He convinced a band of liberal Nicaraguans to allow his military band to take over the capital city – at the time conservative Grenada.  William Walker then decided to take over the country and install himself as President.  The United States recognized his government.

The Bahamas made me want to explore this question: The West Indies is beginning to wake up from its drunken sell-out to the all-inclusive, exclusive foreign mega-developments.  Now in many places, what was once unspoiled and poor is now spoiled and poor.  Economies, ecologies and societies battered by mega-development now see the benefit of a dynamic economy that doesn't hedge its entire future on tourism.

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