Bikes, Balgüe and Petroglyphs

We grabbed a couple of Yuri's finest steeds from the bike shed and headed out for the day.  Our target location:  Finca Magdalena in Balgüe to see ancient petroglyphs.  A petroglyph is defined by da Weeki as "a pictogram or logogram image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving and abrading."  In other words, the ancient inhabitants of the island - the Chorotega, the Nahuatl and the Mayans - used small rocks to scratch pictures in other bigger rocks.  The Ometepe petroglyphs are thought to be anywhere from 800 to over 2,300 years old.

These ancient stone carvings are scattered all over the island, with a large concentration located at Finca Magdalena, a coffee plantation co-op.  You can read up on their full operation here.  This plantation is also one of the three starting points for the excursion up to the top of Volcan Maderas.  As you can surmise from this sign, we chose to stay at the lower elevations!  Four hours to cover five kilometers of UP?  No thanks!

It's like an optical illusion.  The longer you hike, the further away it looks.

The bike ride to Balgüe took a little over an hour.  We find we can cruise over the crappy road from Merida to Santa Cruz, having done it a couple of times.  We know the lines to take so covered the distance quickly.  Check out the map of our awesome speediness here.  We knew the road was paved to Balgüe but weren't sure how far it was to town.  Distances down here are sometimes estimates.  4k could be 3k or 6k.  In this case, we were in Balgüe before we knew it.  In fact, we rolled in and Bex! said "Oh, this must be it.  I heard about that restaurant" pointing at Café Campestre, "and I know it's in Balgue."  Well, that was quick!

We biked through town and noticed that we were seeing more gringos in one location than we'd seen in a very long time.  Because the road is paved on this side, there are more ex-pats living here which equals more money.  Or maybe that statement should be reversed.  Maybe it's because of the money the ex-pats bring that the road got paved ahead of other areas on the island.  Either way, we couldn't help but notice the nicer buildings, painted store fronts, cleaner streets.  

On the far side of town we found the sign for Finca Magdalena and made the right turn to head '1 kilometer' up the rocky road. As luck would have it again, the distance was accurate and soon we had parked our bikes and found the reception area.  After chugging a bottle of cold water and sitting for a few minutes, we paid the 50 cordobas each to enter the grounds.  We were told to walk up the path about 100 meters to a roundabout, and from there we would see signs for the path to the petroglyphs.

We got to the roundabout and checked out the signs for the four trails that ran from here, like spokes on a wheel - the access trail from the reception desk; one to the top of Maderas; one to the coffee plantation; and the trail to the petroglyphs. 

'Where Does the Trail Go?'  (to the tune of "What Does the Fox Say")

We started down the well-groomed trail and enjoyed this sense of being in such a surreal place, here on this tropical island in Central America.  The first petroglyph we came across is known as Piedra Magnifica - Magnificent Rock.  It is pretty spectacular.

Paris road map??

"I think Bath & Body Works is right here, next to Nordstrom and the food court"

There are a couple of other small petroglyphs right next to this big hunk o' rock.  We saw several spirals this day.  In fact, Ometepe is known to archeologists as the 'island of spirals and circles'.  These guys aren't sure what significance the spirals hold - perhaps they represent the island itself or the cycle of the sun.  Two spirals together are thought to represent the island.  Volcan Concepción represents the night, the dark; Volcan Maderas signifies the sun and light.

A person, perhaps?

The ever-popular spiral

As we were taking these pictures, trying to get the best angle in the tricky sunlight to best highlight the petroglyphs, I found myself standing on a big flat rock.  It was mostly covered in leaves and sticks.  I noticed what looked like a bit of a pattern so started brushing off the surface.  Sure enough, it was another petroglyph, this one equal in size to Piedra Magnifica.  Because it lies flat, it has suffered much more erosion, but here is a picture of it anyway.

I named this one 'Piedra David Super-Magnifica'

You can read into these whatever you want.  Some are more obvious, like animals, people, spirals, sun and moon.  Others, with intricate patterns and designs, ... who knows.  With no record of a written language from the early inhabitants, we can only speculate.  Archeologists have found calendars, though, showing 18 months with 20 days each, for 360 days.  Close enough.  They obviously had a pretty good sense of the sun, moon phases, seasons.

After shooting pics here, we hit the trail toward the rock fields where we would find a large concentration of petroglyphs.  There were two 'piles' of stones, separated by about 50 meters or so.  Not quite sure what we were looking for, we walked right by the first group and started circling the second, taking pictures whenever the light worked just right.  It was interesting to note that some petroglyphs weren't very pronounced to the naked eye but through the camera viewfinder they popped right out.  And in other cases, it was the opposite - obvious to the eye, we just couldn't find an angle that captured the image.

I see a face.  What do you see?

Blog fodder collecting in action.

After getting all the outer facing shots, we gingerly climbed up into the pile and found a bunch more.  It's hard to tell if these were placed here as a sort of gallery or if they were moved here by workers when the plantation was built.  Maybe rain washed them all down the slope.  We got all the shots we wanted here.  I walked back toward the group we had passed on the way in while Bex! studied a few rocks.  I looked up to see her walking briskly toward me, looking over her shoulder.  Intrigued, I walked back down to meet her.  

"Monkeys!"

Awesome!!

We hurried over to see two howler monkeys in the tree overhead.  They make a deep grunting noise, a kind of warning or acknowledgment that they know you're there.  It was this sound that startled Bex!.  We had heard howlers many times but hadn't seen any yet, so this was incredible!  In addition to the grunting noise, they are known for their spine tingling, blood chilling howl which we've heard a couple of times, once while on a bike ride, from very close in the trees right overhead.

One monkey, two monkey.  Red monkey, blue monkey?

Having grown up in a large family, I figured I could interact a little with these primates.  I gave it my best shot and if you listen closely (earbuds work best) you can hear them respond!

The monkeys got tired of me grunting at them and stopped paying attention, so we went back to looking at rocks.  In the second group, we found these cool petroglyphs.

I think this is the sports page from the Ometepe Times, circa 600 AD

The two round areas (lower right) were deep wells.  Significance?

View from top, straight down; this 'glyph covered the entire rock - top and sides

With the sun being overhead, it caused issues with getting some pics.  For this next one, I had Bex! try to shade the rock for me...

...and while I had her in an awkward pose, I tilted the camera up and took this one.

What Does the Fox Say?

And since we've alluded to it twice, it's time for a brief interlude, for those of you NOT in the know:

Back to petroglyphs!  This one looks like a depiction of the sun:

Sun, sun, sun... here it comes!

And this has to be the earliest known conceptual drawing of none other than Mr. Spongebob Squarepants:

"Barnacles!"

Now, this next petroglyph will probably cause some controversy.  It's quite unusual and we had differing opinions of what it represented.  Bex! said 'eyeball' and I said 'spaceship'.  What do you think?

We couldn't come to a conclusion, so we got our new friends, Aaron and Jackie, involved.  With four of us, it all became clear.  It is obviously an ancient representation of this:

Which is, of course, the logo for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pastafarianism.  This movement was started as a means to counter a push to teach creationism and intelligent design in Kansas schools.  In a nutshell, the Pastafarians say that if schools are going to teach creationism, then they also need to teach Pastafarianism, whose beliefs are that the world was created by a giant omniscient flying spaghetti monster.  Their argument:  if you're going to teach one theory that has absolutely no physical or scientific evidence, then you have to teach another.  Anyway, read about them here.  It's all very tongue in cheek but was also started to make a legitimate point about what is and is not taught in our schools.

Anyhoo, after getting all the pictures we wanted, we walked back to the reception office, remounted our faithful bikes and road down the hill into Balgüe.  It was lunch time and we were heading to the restaurant we passed on the way in - the Café Campestre.  This turned out to be a winner of an idea.  The food was great, largely because it was so different than what we'd been eating for five weeks.  Bex! had a savory curry and I had fresh made chorizo.  Amazing!  After you drool over these pictures, check out their website. 

Something besides pasta and chicken! 

Good use of all the pigs we see wandering around.

We hopped on the bikes to head back to Merida, happy that we would make it back in time for our 3 PM class.  We didn't know how long we'd be gone so we had Mary (another volunteer here) set up to cover it.  Still, it would be great to get back to attend class.  (Hey, look at us!!  We feel some ownership and obligation for our students!)  With one stop on the way back to buy a refreshment, we were looking on schedule - that is, until we hit rush hour traffic.  This held us up for a bit until we could get past the traffic pinch point.  Since we were at a complete standstill, I got a picture of it.

Can you BELIEVE this DAMN traffic?!