Morning in Trinidad. Surrounded by hills, some easily a thousand feet high, the roosters of Nicaragua perform a rousing call and response hymn for The Trinity.
It’s early morning, 5:30, and the people here feel the winter chill, going about in hoodies and shawls. Someone has run water down the street, and yesterday’s litter is being swept into trash bins. There is very little litter here, even in the towns.
Yesterday, leaving CuiDad d’Ario, we climbed a short way into heaven. Stepping down over the first rises, we enter a plateau full of sunlight. The towns we drift through grow in lanes cut through the forest. Pyramids of brown rice dry in the yards of small mills. On our right, east, the hills retreat as the plain widens into rice paddies: green sheets of sunlight on the ground. To our left the land is a little higher, a little dryer. A tractor works across a backdrop of hills.
Soon the valley narrows, and the road begins to climb again. Green banks on both sides, a brick-lined culvert for the rain, a bus stop. We rise along the mountain side through greenery, and the right side lightens as the trees become fewer. Then, across a river valley far below there rise mountains green, and further, blue and higher still.
The climb out of Trinity is ferocious. Stef, one of the support vehicle drivers, is overwhelmed by the loudish noise of the engine, and has to rest in a layoff for three or four minutes. But the effort of balancing the volume of Dancing Queen against the relentless blast of the air conditioner and the idling engine is rather stressful. He almost rolls down the window, but is stopped in time.
North of Trinity
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In the south, you see little horses, ridden bareback by young men, or old men like drunken prophets, holding switches. Here, the style is western, pummel and reins. The horses canter through town, carrying single riders on business, or gallop beside the highway up the hills. None are shod.
We took in a service at one of the local Baptist churchs – {glesias Bautist Fundamentale. Vince gave a talk based on Moses’ leaving a life of luxury to work with his people, comparing it to North Americans choosing to work in the southern part of the continent. The church is new, and fairly impressive. On the way there we got lost, which seems to our strategy for finding places.
In Trinidad, in the north, as we roll through the narrow streets, the people are out in front of their houses, or their neighbours’. The doors all open on every kind of interior you can imagine. Bright green sunrooms, pink living rooms with leather couches, white stucco walls without ornament, and simple wooden chairs.
In the south, on an evening search for ice, we drove through a similar neighbourhood in Namdaime. But because no one has their lights on, all you see are black spaces. A young girl sits on the front stoop holding a young baby. A family chats, seated out front while children hover, tugged by other children into the street. Music pours out of a brightly lit church, whose purple rails come right to the road. Its doors are wide open too. Half an hour later the service is over, and the street is dark.