Travel Photography > Isthmus > Pacific Coast, Nicaragua

"Oh yes," Mrs. Traveling Thornberry says.  "Would you like us to draw you a map?"

Yes, we say, please.

"Okay," she says, while Mr. Thornberry sketches an intricate map of the roads on the property.  From the butterfly farm, we take a left, and then on up this road here for some time, and then scramble up this road, which is not really a road.  The map is frightfully confusing, but I accept it. 

When they are out of site, I take the map to the receptionist, and ask quietly, do you think somebody could get us a lift up there?  The diminutive receptionist, who was earlier polite enough to ask us, "I hope, do you like to see the moan-kays?" was now poking around out back looking for a driver.

It takes the driver some time to drive us to the peak, but the drive reveals the way Morgan’s Rock works.

When French-born agronomist Clemente Poncon went to The World Bank for a loan to develop the Morgan's Rock property, The World Bank conducted a report, the contents of which recommended that the best solution for the property would be a golf course hotel mega-development.

Poncon didn't like the idea of spoiling the precious Nicaragua property, and said in a magazine interview, "Golfers can go somewhere else."

The actual eco-lodge is a small restaurant, bar area, administrative office: from this high point, only the small restaurant is visible from view.  Fifteen minutes uphill by foot are fifteen tree houses, mostly hidden from view under the trees.  There are few other buildings on the property except those used for the reforestation projects and farming.  So successful has this project been, that ever since this land opened up as an eco-resort in 2004, animals have poured in.  700 monkeys live on the property now, several sloths, and at least three types of large neotropical cat. 1,900 acres are preserved; the other 2,400 constitute a tree farm.

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