Sculpture of Christ, Sagrada Familia Passion Façade

Temple Expiatori Sagrada Familia is often used as the quintessential image of Barcelona. The famous soaring towers that look similar to the castles children make by dripping wet sand in gloppy piles can be found on postcards and t-shirts all across town and at duty-free in the airport.  However, pictures do not do justice to the great structure, still under-construction after 125 years with at least 15 more to go, it stands in my humble opinion as the most beautiful man made building I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot. I have been to sixteen countries all over the planet but I have never seen a building that seemed to not have been built but actually grow out of the ground. The whole structure seemed to breath. Equally, the passion architect Antoni Gaudí poured into the plans and construction is evident in the attention to detail and ingenuity. The whole building is testament to his personal religious devotion expressed in stone.

The church began construction in 1866 under the direction of Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano but was soon taken over by Antoni Gaudí. In 1889 Gaudí received an enormous anonymous donation to the project which led him to abandon the orignial plans and totally redesign the church as an artistic expression of the gospels in sculpture and architectural symbolism. Gaudí worked tiresly even living in the workshop next to the church until his tragic death in 1926 when he was hit by a train and died three days later.

The work has been ongoing ever since and the design has evolved in the hands of different architects and sculptors. This was a desire of Gaudí’s that succeeding generations would add there own taste and vision to the construction. He viewed the work as an offering to God from the people of Catalonia. Even though the influence of other artists is evident the overall concept and design has remained faithful to Gaudí’s original plans.

To learn more about the history of Sagrada Familia visit the official website at: www.sagradafamilia.cat.

Street Performance with Giant Puppets

I have been so busy since I got back to Costa Rica I have not had time to write about my trip to Europe. While Paris was a beautiful city and defiantly a fun time the highlight of my trip was Barcelona. I arrived in Barcelona ahead of my friends because I had opted to take the cheapest flight I could find which also happened to leave at about 6:30AM. Despite the exhaustion upon arriving I immediately felt at home. After a week of being unable to communicate with anyone in France it was a relief to actually be able to talk to people again with ease and to know what was going on around me. I had been nervous before arriving that this might not be the case. Barcelona is in Catalonya and the official first language is Catalan, not Castilian Spanish. While there are many similarities and I found I could read a lot of signage in Catalan I could not understand it spoken. However, except for a few older people I encountered, everyone spoke fluent Spanish and I had only a few minor problems with the accent.

We spent a day on the beach and took a dip in the Mediterranean Sea. The beach and ocean were beautiful but the pudgy and hairy nudists on the beach were not quite as soft on the eyes. There are no designated nudist beaches in Barcelona. However, the laws read that one may be nude on the beach as long as one does not create a “public disturbance”. So, I suppose the old man scratching himself was well within stated laws but I could not help but feel “personally disturbed” at the display. I choose to focus on the waves.

Barcelona has some of the best architecture in the world and has managed to maintain a uniquely Medieval feel to much of the city. We spent a day wondering the narrow labyrinth like streets of the Gothic Quarter and took in the Picasso Museum as well as the Pre-Colombian Art Museum. While small, it held some amazing pieces including a few from Costa Rica. We also caught a traditional Sardana dance being preformed in front of the Cathedral.

One day was spent awing at the work of architect Antoni Gaudí. I will devote some other posts to my visits to Park Güell and Sagrada Familia. However, I will say in passing that the Sagrada Familia is the most beautiful architectural work I have ever seen. I have already vowed a pilgrimage for its completion in 2026.

I also took some day trips into the country side around Barcelona. One day was spent visiting the Theater Museum of surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and lounging on the beach of the rather frigid Costa Brava. We also went to the mountain top monastery of Monserat and hiked through the clouds and around strange bulging rock formations. As I post pictures I will write about these experiences more.

By the end of the trip I consumed about 17 pounds of seafood saturated paella and enough sangria to fill an automobile fuel tank. I also sampled some absinthe in the spirit of early 20th century modernism. However, the green fairy and I did not seem to suit each other well.

After spending nine days in Barcelona I felt like I added two or three sites to my list of things I wanted to do for everything that I checked off the list. When the opportunity arrises I will have to go back for another visit.

The packed bus rolled up the Interamericana towards Granada, the oldest European settlement in the Western hemisphere. We arrived about an hour and a half later and tried to get our bearings at the gas station. We walked through street markets down to where we were planning to stay.

One of the volunteers has a friend of a friend who bought a huge Spanish Colonial mansion and is working on converting it into a hotel and spa. Construction is proceeding slowly as everything does in Latin America. (Romance being the only exception.) We were able to stay for free and enjoy what was already completed. The gardens were beautiful, rooms of palacial dimensions, and the pool very relaxing. Of course, keeping our travel experience always a touch surreal we also had to fill the toilets with water on occasion, be mindful of the bats, and walk around in the dark a lot. We are road hardened volunteers who turn our noses at the thought of too-much luxury.

I spent most of my time in Granada eating. Granada has a plethera of excelent resturants and I spent a good chunck of the Bush Economic Stimulus check I recieved on fish, burritos, waffels, and sausages. I did my part to stimulate the economy. Of course it was the Nicaraguan economy.

Kate, a fellow volunteer and photo addict, and I went on a trip to one of the untouristed and slightly seedier sections of Granada. I shot a few okay pictures but it is hard to get anything really telling when you are just passing through and can´t invest yourself in a community. Everyone we encountered was very polite. The kids were very curious about the gringos as I imagine they rarely venture into that part of town. Of course, it is these parts of town in which one actually gets a taste of a country, not in the hotel lined plazas.

After a few days in Granada I went to an organic and completely self-sutaining coffe farm called Selva Negra. The drive out was beautiful and reminded me of a green American Southwest. The actual farm was up a mountain and in a lush cloud forest. The temperature was about thirty degrees cooler which was somewhat refreshing. We were given a tour by the owner, a desedent of the original German settlers who started the farm over 100 years ago. The trip was very relaxing and the coffee was fantastic.

Upon returning to Costa Rica I felt like I had a better understaning of both countries. There is a great deal of antagonism between the two countries and down-right racism in Costa Rica. Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America while Costa Rica is one of the most well off. (Per-capita income) As a result illegal imigrants from Nicaragua are flooding into Costa Rica. The average Costa Rican when asked will go on a long diatribe about how awful Nicagrauans are and how they cause most of the problems in the country. (Mexicans and Colombians causing the rest of the problems in their opinion.) When I told people that I was going to Nicaragua many Ticos advised me to be very careful. One told me that Nicaraguans all run around with machetes and hack at any passerby.

I came back with all my apendages in tact and found most of the Nicaraguans I met to be perfectly nice and the Tico´s horror stories unjustified. And while I certanily tire and disagree with the Tico`s prevailing aditudes towards their northen neighbors I do feel like I gained an insight into where these feelings are based.

Costa Rica is a success story in Latin America. There one and only civil war was eighty years ago and lasted for two weeks. (People started dying so they decided they should stop.) Since then they have had uninterupted democracy and a growing economy. Tico´s take great pride in this and many times it becomes downright arrogance. However, despite their somewhat snobish attitude Tico´s don´t beg. In almost seven months of living here I can count on one hand the number of times someone has begged for money from me. Tico´s have too much pride to stoup to begging. In Nicaragua on the other hand they have had thirty years of everything going wrong and an incompetent governement that bribes votes through handouts. As a result I could rarely walk more than 200 meters without someone hitting me up for money. (Which I never gave.) Given this culture difference I could start to understand where the Tico arrogance I so frequently was encountering came from.

Overall, I did enjoy my vacation in Nicaragua but was happy to come home when I did. Coming home. This was a very odd feeling. When I crossed the border into Costa Rica I had that feeling of anticipation that I always recieve when I come back from a trip abroad. This time, however, I was not returning to the United States but to another country. It is a very odd experience to feel like you are going home when you are in another counrty away from home. I still haven`t really sorted this out in my head.

Our trip started with a ten-hour bus ride from San Jose, Costa Rica to Rivas, Nicaragua. The trip was largely painless except for about a three hour wait crossing the border. Once crossing we were immediately struck buy how different Nicargua is from Costa Rica. While Costa Rica has the highest per-capita income in Latin America Nicaragua has the lowest. We immediately found ourselves surrounded by crumbling Spanish architecture, colorful buses, pushy street vendors, and streets mixed with trucks, trolleys, bicycles, motos, and horses. It was Central America as depicted in the movies. Poor, beautiful, seedy, and alive.

In Rivas we started looking for the bus to the ferry. Of course the cab drivers told us there were no buses but they could give us a ride. We went to stores to inquire about the buses and they also said there were no buses but plenty of cab drivers willing to take us. Realizing no one was going to tell us the truth we let some cabies place some bids and we rolled down to the ferry. (Where there was a waiting bus.) We waited at the dock and gazed at the two gigantic volcanoes that formed the largest lake island in the world, Isla Ometepe. This was our destination. Don’t worry, only one of the volcanoes is still active.

Upon arriving we tried to find another bus that everyone insited did not exist. However, everyone also knew a very friendly taxista. Given the fact that it was very dark and we actually did not have a place to stay yet we went ahead and jumped into a taxi that in about five minutes passed a bus that apparently did not exist.

We found a hotel that was cheap, mostly clean, and had a very friendly but cronically absent-minded staff. We ate there mostly as the price was low and the portions muy grande. Our first day was spent on the beach. It was particualarly nice to hang out on a lake beach because one does not come out of the water with salt stuck to them. However, Lago Nicaragua is the only freshwater lake with a population of sharks. Needless to say we stuck close to the shore line.

The next day we hired a tour guide who took us through an organic farm and halfway up the smaller of the two volcanaoes. The view was spectacular and the farm fields scatered with volcanic rock outcroppings very interesting. We then went to a natural pool for swimming and to be harassed by particularly mangy dogs.

Life in Ometepe is muy tranquilo and makes sleepy Costa Rica seem fast paced. We had no problems adjusting, however, and were enjoying some real quite time away from our schools. There, most people work in agriculture and after the beaches, there is little to do except hang out in the plaza infront of the old colonial cathedral.

The look of Nicaragua is very different from Costa Rica. Historically, Nicaragua was heavily developed buy the Spanish while Costa Rica was largely considered backwater and poor in natural resources. (That means it did not have much gold.) Consequently the streets of Nicaraguan towns are lined with houses dating back hundereds of years while Costa Rican streets are lined with pre-fab houses constructed during the past decades’ economic boom. Despite Nicaragua’s superior architectural beauty and equal scenic beauty to Costa Rica its economy is far poorer. A walk through the streets in Nicaragua is not complete without at least two or three people begging for money, food, or one’s watch. This is something largely abscent in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is poor but not “begging poor.” However, the poverty has also preserved the uniquely Central American culture in Nicaragua while it is being eroded in Costa Rica buy an influx of North American materialism. I suppose you can have your cake but it’s going to make your teeth rot.

Our last night in Ometepe was spent eating a candle lit dinner. It was only candle lit because the power was out for about five hours. I had an entire fish and even sampled the eyes balls which were supposed to be good for you somehow. They just tasted crunchy to me.