17. Beer in Nicaragua

I apologise for my silence over the past few days; rapidly switching between three time zones, climates and seasons finally caught up with me and I’ve been quite unwell. Although I’m gradually climbing out of it again now, I was quite content to lie in bed this morning – ignoring the charms of Huatulco, Mexico – ‘Mexico’s newest resort area, selected by computer as the ideal resort location’ (doesn’t that sound charming) – and watch the inauguration of Barack Obama. Which was truly extraordinary. Lovely things: Simple Gifts played beautifully by Perlman, Yo Yo Ma and the clarinettist and pianist whose names I forget, and how they moved their fingers in the well-below-freezing temperatures I don’t know, but it was meditative and calming and lovely, happening directly before the swearing in and giving a moment of peace between the cheering. And the benediction from the wonderful old pastor who began with poetry, passed through a very gracious and moving prayer for peace and tolerance and ended with rhyme that had everyone laughing. Just how prayer should be (as opposed to the evangelical exhortations that began the thing). And Obama stumbling over the oath – only time he’s ever lost his cool I think. And his daughter taking a photo of him during his speech. And the speech itself, which was truly extraordinary, powerful and passionate and beautifully delivered, and clearly indicating such a new way of thinking about the world and their country. We felt lucky, and very moved, to be watching this, and live too – the first time in my life I’ve actually been on eastern US time, as it happens! Unfortunately for us, the inaugural address was occasionally interrupted by patches of static, local tv signals interfering with the ship’s satellite system. Mostly this was just noise and the occasional word, but the one clear sentence we got, right as Obama was reaching an impassioned height (and we never lost our picture) was ‘Oh, Lassie, come home!’ After all that we did go ashore and discovered that Huatulco, although rather soulless, was not quite as bad as it sounded. It was small, not too developed and not too tasteless, though it was endowed with pushier guys touting taxis, tours and restaurants than anywhere else we’d been. At every port there’s a bunch of these guys hanging around the port entrance, but most of them you can say a quick, firm no to and they leave you alone. This lot – particularly the ones in front of the restaurants – wouldn’t let up; they’d accompany us for a hundred metres along the roadway talking at us (in English; they have better English than in the other places so I guess it takes them longer to run out of words). This is very frustrating. But it does make finding a place to have lunch easy: our method is to go to the one place that doesn’t do that. Today this was not, perhaps the best idea. I had the most hard-core fish soup I ever hope to be served: incredibly strong, fishy broth with a fish in it. Well, most of a fish; a large fleshy head and a large fleshy tail. I’m not normally squeamish about food but I really struggled trying to spoon up soup from a bowl with a dead fishy eye an inch away. So I couldn’t eat that much of it… and we ended up going to another cafe – which not only didn’t tout their wares, when we sat down they ignored us completely for quarter of an hour – and had fresh guacamole – which was superb – and tortilla chips. By the side of that cafe – which was right on the beach – was strung one of those enormous, extravagant Mexican hammocks, and in it was a little girl who was being rocked to sleep (actually, swung, quite energetically) by her father. That was nice. Then Roy went for a swim, which made him happy; I didn’t have quite that much energy but enjoyed watching the beach and looking out for rays (little ones, forearm length, lurking around the bottom). Oh, and we saw dolphins at sea yesterday and some people saw big turtles swimming beside the boat too. A number of the crew had been given the day off today and a bunch of the guys went swimming in the little bay – all these lovely Indian guys, relieved to have a day where they didn’t have to be ceaselessly polite to demanding passengers, and being exuberant boys in the water (they’re not much more). I enjoyed watching them clowning around too. We had another of those Great British Sailaways this evening (cf Gibraltar) – so tasteful to farewell a foreign place with God Save the Queen played at noise-pollution levels. And around the photographer’s gallery of the ship, they are now hawking certificates that – for a certain sum – will be made out in your name to certify that one has indeed transited the Panama Canal. They must sell them, I suppose, or they wouldn’t do them at all. Certainly some passengers have been heard to say that since we’ve ‘done Panama’ now we may as well go home. It was indeed quite an extraordinary thing to see, particularly the last part, through two big locks and a lake. But what fascinated me most were two guys who spent the entire time we were passing through one lock – about 45 minutes – attempting to throw ropes over a crossbeam held between two posts somewhat taller than AFL goalposts. They hadn’t succeeded by the time we got out of the lock so I never did figure out what they were going to do once they got the ropes up there, but watching them certainly kept me entertained.

I can’t tell you anything about Puntarenas, in Costa Rica, because I slept most of that day. I did manage to get off the boat briefly in San Juan del Sur, in Nicaragua, just because it was Nicaragua and I had to see it. A beautiful bay, filled with beautiful children playing on the sand and in the water (the ones who weren’t trying to sell us flowers made from plaited palm fronds, but they were beautiful too), and a lovely lunch – local cockles with a garlicky, oniony sauce, plus Nicaraguan beer… I don’t normally touch the stuff but in this climate it’s appropriate – it’s what everyone drinks – and this was really not bad. I couldn’t move much but enjoyed sitting and watching the beach and just the feeling of being there. And I bought a truly beautiful little leather handbag, in different colour patches stitched together. The ship is rolling around quite a lot tonight (after a couple of beautifully calm days) and there will be some movement tomorrow (a sea day). We’re doing another concert tomorrow (I’ve missed the last two) and are hoping it’s not too bad for that. Roy took this last photo, just as we were coming out of the Canal into the Gulf of Panama (I think that’s right) – islands just off the coast.

On the Canal