Revolutionary dreams and a barehanded cayman-catcher in Nicaragua

One hand grenade plus two hand grenades equals? And seven AK47s minus four? My younger self, awash on the romanticism of the Nicaraguan revolution, would have loved the way the curator at the coin museum said he'd been taught arithmetic as a child.

Socialists they may have called themselves, but the Sandinistas still let capitalism back in not long after they'd kicked out the toad-like US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. With the help, or rather hindrance, of a very miffed Uncle Sam, the country's economy was floundering and it badly needed the cash. Yet on my visit, 30 years later, I still find many signs of the radical spirit in plucky little Nicaragua. In what other place would you find Marx's fiery volume Capital (in an abridged version for the lighter reader) and revolutionary poetry for sale in the supermarket? Having been voted out, in a salutary tale, not long after they introduced democracy, the Sandinistas are even back in power again, albeit with a new, please-all message promising solidarity, socialism and (ta da!) Christianity.

The promise of enduring revolution was succour to my revolutionary child within - so what, you may ask, was I doing in a luxury Nicaraguan eco-lodge overlooking a private Pacific bay? There is little critical to be said of Morgan's Rock, unless you are going to dismiss it entirely as a manifestation of capitalist moral enfeeblement. The resort might even have been designed precisely for my pre-40s stage in life, with all the adventure of camping but without the twigs in the back and washing in the stream that come with it.

Never mind the beasties

Not that you escape, at Morgan's Rock, another tent-related phenomenon that puts many people off: I refer to beasties. A prominent sign in the beautifully designed bungalows - all native wood, organic white cotton, recycled-looking (but probably not) bathroom fittings and subtle yet all-encompassing mosquito screens - warned: "... you might encounter many animals, friendly and not so friendly. You might be witness to a scorpion, a spider, a wasp or even a snake, but none are venomous... If you get bitten [by a scorpion] the best remedy is a strong cup of coffee... the Nicaraguans swear by it."

And it's true, critters scamper everywhere here: echoing a feature of tropical countries I have come to regard as inevitable, a spider, possibly belonging to some pervert species, was watching me throughout my morning shower. But you feel so privileged to be in such an idyllic place you think the only thing that could possibly harm you is your own recurrent twinges of guilt.

Come the evening, I sauntered to the beach across a 100-metre-long suspension bridge hung over a jungle gorge. I bodysurfed the perfectly modulated swell until sunset, then made my way to the open-air restaurant for a dinner of char-grilled local dolphin fish. There is, apparently, no chef here; the staff members take it in turns to develop their culinary skills and, by osmosis, those of their community. The practice seems like a nod to the country's collectivist spirit, just as the menu refers to the "revolutionary get-up-and-march taste" of the excellent coffee.

To be unaware of the irony of such socialistic sentiments in the country's only five-star resort seems almost sweet. And while we're on the subject of politics, I'm not sure what's so "eco" about Morgan's Rock, and the increasingly many kinds of accommodation like it around the world that pin that prefix to their name, apart from a spot of recycling and that admittedly gorgeous all-natural decor.

Shark snack

Of the boat journey I took next, to Ometepe island, what interested me most is that Lake Nicaragua, in which it sits, is one of the few bodies of freshwater in the world in which you can be eaten by a shark. A kind of bull shark growing up to three-and-a-half metres long and found also along the Amazon and Mississippi inhabits the vast lake and its tributaries, eating dogs and dolphins, as well, no doubt, as the odd inattentive human digit.

As for Ometepe itself, it is, in geological terms, like quite a bit of Nicaragua, merely taking a tea break between volcanic eruptions. Formed of two volcanoes joined, Siamese-twin-like, by a frozen lava flow, it is dotted with yellow "evacuation route" signs, and vulcanologists say it could blow at any moment.

Yet this is a laidback, if slightly tatty, place. Budding Indiana Joneses will find one of the richest archaeological sites in the country here, under-explored for reasons of isolation and poverty. You stumble across mysteriously inscribed, 3,000-year-old petroglyphs everywhere. Next door to that coin museum, with its marshally schooled curator, is a much older collection including grisly instruments of human sacrifice and something that could surely launch a whole library of prehistoric PhDs: a primitive (but alarmingly broken) dildo.

Lake Nicaragua is so vast it spawns its own weather events and other strange phenomena. As the boat returned to the mainland, an almost solid swarm of tiny lake flies enveloped it, seemingly intent upon suffocating everyone on board. Later, flying towards the San Juan river, our leaky two-prop plane was caught in a squall raging beneath just two small cloud masses. We were flying blind and missed the runway so persistently that the women passengers in the cabin swore on landing that they were paying for a taxi back, no matter what the cost.

Juan the cayman-catcher

As for those toothy lake inhabitants, they seemed not to bother Juan the cayman-catcher, even though, he said, you could see them sliding over the rapids when the river was in spate. Juan was actually better known as Juan Ardilla, Juan the Squirrel, courtesy of his tufty hair, the point being to distinguish him from all the other Juans in the village of El Castillo, halfway down the San - ahem - Juan river, to the Caribbean Sea.

El Castillo is one of those sleepy, close-knit places where you rapidly feel like moving to write a tropical novel, only to realise you might go mad and spend the rest of your life there. It felt more prosperous than much of the rest of Nicaragua and lacked a single one of the radical-red-and-piratical-black Sandinista insignia daubed around almost every other town.

Juan the Squirrel earned a crust by catching by hand various denizens of his namesake river for the edification of the more adventurous tourist. Caymans - dwarf cousins to the killer crocodiles also to be found in the water - were his mainstay; I went with him on a night-hunting expedition to find some. He would spot the animals by the glint of their eyes in the inky blackness, then, paddling close, slip from the boat into the river and pounce on them faster than you could see. Suddenly he'd be smiling a filling-filled smile next to a lashing, four-foot-long reptile that, for an expressionless creature, somehow managed to look incredibly affronted.

He offered to let me kiss one but I didn't want to leave my own half-thrilled, half-bemused expression behind in Nicaragua.

Read more articles by Simon Busch

TRAVEL FACTS

Simon visited Nicaragua with the assistance of KLM and regional airlines and regional tourist bodies.

KLM has direct flights from Amsterdam to Panama five times a week. Connections to Nicaragua can be booked with Copa Airlines or TACA.

For further information about Nicaragua, see the Visit Nicaragua and Visit Central America websites.