Nicaragua: Contra to what you think

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The resort even has its own signature sound system, defined by invisible frogs that have a croak somewhere between a quaking duck and a bleating goat. But after a spell this is the noise to lock out, the noise to listen beneath, and there is then revealed an aural delight of hums and hymns, tintinnabulations and canticles of the rain forest.

The morning brings not only a vertiginous view of the curved-like-a-blade bay, but also green iguanas meditating inches beyond the balcony, looking like watercolors, or Tantric art. A branch away slings a troop of white-bearded howler monkeys, who also look as though they could use a shave here in the new Nicaragua. The country seems betwixt its tousled past and its clean-lined future, and this lodge carved into the heart of a primary rain forest seems an adept bridge.

Michael and his wife Yolanda love to bike, but on a tandem, and they shipped theirs on the Nature Air flight and brought it to Morgan’s Rock. The lodge property includes a reforestation project in which some 1.5 million trees, hardwood and fruit, have been planted in the last five years. They call visiting this part of the private sanctuary “agrotourism,” and it is optimized for biking, with labyrinthine back roads and trails that pitch through fields and forests practically vibrating with more shades of green than the spectrum allows.

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Sally and I hop on mountain bikes provided by the lodge and take off with a whirr of derailleur gears, tooling about alongside Michael and Yolanda, sending up blooms of blue butterflies, feeling tough and kinetic as we pass beneath a mother and baby brown-throated three-toed sloth. Afterwards we grab sea kayaks on the deserted beach and bevel out and around the eponymous rock, to within spitting distance of Costa Rica. Then to complete the adventure triathlon we hop on horses, and go galloping down a jungle path, holding back as an agouti paca, a tropical rodent that looks like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel, ruffles across the road.

Sally Solaro
Nicaragua is called the “land of volcanoes” with over 40 volcanoes across the country.
After the incongruous luxury of Morgan’s Rock we head back to Granada, and walk its cobbled streets in the silky afternoon air. The entire city was gutted by William Walker, the American filibuster who declared himself president of Nicaragua in 1856, and was shot by firing squad four years later. The city has been given a face lift, freshly painted in mustard, peach and salmon, and now looks more like a colonial city than in its heyday. “Transformation is more often that not good,” Michael comments in his koan-like way. He offers himself as proof…he went from hippie to hotelier and harbors no regrets. Nicaragua has transformed from hot zone to hot destination. History, the lesson seems, is simply a rough draft. As we walk west off the southwest corner of the plaza we pass a sign that says “007 Barbershop,” and Michael lights up, and pulls me inside. “Time for you to transform,” he suggests, his merry eyes filled with the Pied-Pipered lanterns of the old mystery tour itself.

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