I awoke at 3:49 AM to ready to get to the airport for 5. My flight from Panama City FL would leave to Atlanta GA at 6:05, but first I had to get my e-ticket and head to security where once again it meant taking off shoes, belt, watch, bracelet, necklace, empty pockets of coins, keys, metal pens et cetera, a general ordeal. Once through, I found the gate where I would wait while reading DARK COSMOS by Dan Hooper.

After the call for boarding the aircraft, we headed off in the morning dawn, flying northeast to Atlanta. Once above the ever increasing mounds of clouds, due to a major storm system that was sweeping across from the mid west and up through to the northeastern seaboard, gradually the stars faded from sight in the twilight sky, giving way to the sun majestically rising in the east. Throughout much of the central and northeast snow and ice was wrecking havoc on the populace below on this Valentine's Day morning.

Our flight arrived to Atlanta around 8:25AM local time. I still had another hour and a half of waiting time, so tried to exchange some of my US currency into Cordoba, Nicaraguan money. Unfortunately they didn't have any, so off I went to find my concourse and my gate E15 to catch my flight. With some 70 minutes still to wait, I decided I'd enjoy a cappuccino and continue my light reading. After hearing an announcement for Nicaragua, fifteen minutes before boarding, I approached my gate, only to see no one there. I walked across the aisle to another gate where I was told the gate was changed to E34. Oh my gawd, with my luggage I had to run what seemed to be eternity through the hordes of people catching later flights and/or killing time for their boarding. I was the last person to arrive to a line of five entering the gateway loading onto a 737 jet to Managua. The sweat was dripping on my brow, washed hair and under my clean clothes--so much for showering this morning. I left my knapsack in the overhead above seat 2D and headed to the back to find my window seat, 27F. Along the way I met, shook hands and talked a bit with Bill Hartmann and his wife Gayle. I didn't see Bettina Forget, nor did I see Mitch Bentley and his wife Cathie. I assumed my seat and waited for take off.

At 9:55 our jet rumbled onto the loading lanes joining eight other Delta aircrafts ahead in taxi formation towards the run way on this overcast cloudy Atlanta morning. Eventually we were off, thrusters roaring, pushing us deep into our seats as the aircraft ascended. Once through the clouds, barely fifty or so feet above, I saw the shadow of our airplane with a rainbow ring—glory, around it. The sun with the clear blue sky held a promise of excitement as we circled around Atlanta and headed south. We would be flying at 36,000 feet, along the western edge of Florida, past Tampa, St Petersburg, and Fort Myers before leaving the coast and into the Gulf of Mexico. We would eventually be flying between Cuba and Belize into the Caribbean Sea before reaching the northeastern airspace of Nicaragua and the autonomous Miskito indigenous nation near the Honduran border.

Neither the earlier conquering Spaniards of the 16th century nor the previous early 20th century dictators had ever conquered this Columbian Indian tribe that settled this region 700 years before Columbus who visited the coast while lost in the trade winds off Gracias a Dios point (Honduran ­ Nicaraguan border) sweeping through the Caribbean Sea. The first Spanish expedition arrived and made landfall about 1500 in search of a route to the great ocean on the west coast. However, this region fell in favor to English and Dutch speaking pirates as they were not interested in conquering the Miskitos as were the Spaniards but rather the pirates preferred to relie instead on trade for food and water. Neither did the current Sandanista Luminatos FSLN (The Shining Path Party) manage to convert the locals into speaking Spanish and submit to Communist rule. Instead the Miskito Nation once again turned to English help by training in southern Honduran mountains with the US military. Fortunately, the fighting has ended, as I learned from the literature I read, with the public preferring to normalize their society with constructive humanitarianism for all.

From the sights above, through my 737 jet window, jungle and a network of rivers appear to be and are the only means of getting trade with the western Spanish speaking. Dugout boats and other river crafts meander up the snaking like rivers to towns 50 miles inland. Otherwise airports connected the east and west coasts. The greenery of the eastern coast jungle changed into rolling hills and semi desert landscape within a100 miles from the Caribbean and remained this way westward.

Delta Flight 317 arrived to Managua International Airport at 12:30 CST into a city that was filled with corrugated roof tops. Several missionary groups from the US were on this flight who would head northwest and central east to some very poor regions of Nicaragua to help construct churches, schools and other infrastructures. At customs everyone had to pay a $5 visa to enter the country. As I entered the airport, I was greeted by Bettina and one of the hotel employees. She had arrived on an earlier flight so as to avoid being stuck by bad winter weather in Montreal via Atlanta. We talked briefly about when others would be coming. Mitch and Cathie were said to be arriving at 1:30, whereas Betsy Smith had caught an earlier UPS flight the previous day from Louisville KY instead of returning home to Manchester NH during the snow storm in the east. As a pilot, Betsy carried her workshop gear with her during her working shift; sensible, no?

A few minutes later I ran into her as I marched off to the washroom to take off some of my clothes. Even with a Floridian wordrobe, I was OVER dressed with my black sports coat, black jeans, tee-shirt, shirt and black vest, clothing that was my staples back in Quebec in Canada, minus a winter coat, gloves and boots. After returning to Bettina and Betsy, Bill and Gayle had arrived with their Peruvian friends, Maria and Samuel. They spoke a level of English I wish I could in Spanish; but, alas I would have to fudge with the slang French Quebecoise I still knew. However, I would have to remember to an “o” to almost every ending or so my naïve mind insisted. While waiting for Mitch and Cathie's flight, I discussed ‘Cosmic Expressionism - The Land of the Swirlys' Chapter for our 25th Anniversary Art Book with Bettina and Betsy.

Then we learned that Mitch and Cathie's flight was delayed until 9PM, so the rest of us gathered our gear and headed out into the humid hot 96F afternoon air to the parking lot to load the hotel bus to Granada, 60 kilometers to the south. The 45 minute bus ride took us part of the way down the Pan-American Highway, past single story buildings with corrugated tin roofs that often resembled sheds, storage area, meager business garage, cantina or run down poorly maintained family dwellings et cetera. Court yards were often surrounded with barb wire fencing, cast iron gates and pilings, and/or stone walls with broken glass bottles at the top as deterrents for trespassers and separate properties fro neighborhoods. The streets, ditches as well as the landscape outside of cities and towns we drove through we littered with plastic bags, black, pink, blue and tan, debris of all sorts, including bottles, used tires, broken furniture, etc. Talk filled the bus in route to Granada with what each of us had done since the DV3 workshop to current projects. Tonight after our arrival and settling into our rooms at the Hotel Patio de Malinche, we would gather for our first meeting at 5 PM to help usher in our itinerary for the next ten days.

Erik Viktor and Dave Hardy greeted our arrival at our Hotel in Granada. Dave, while wearing his Icelandic Soviet-American/UK/Canada IAAA tee shirt, arrived a day earlier from his flight from Birmingham UK, via New York and Houston. Erik took a bus up from Costa Rica where he lives to pursue several business opportunities in Central America. While we were told not to convert our currency at the airport for better rates in Granada, we could now get to do this once we walked up to the center city plaza area three blocks north of our hotel. Along the way we would go to visit our host gallery, the Casa de los Tres Mundos, where our exhibition and art workshops would be hosted. Close by, outside banks, money exchangers would covert our monies at a rate of 1$ for 18C$ (Cordoba).

Next: Day 2

	Central America Workshop February 2007 Chronicled by Kara Szathmáry
Mitch Bentley Bettina Forget David Hardy Dr. William K. Hartmann Elizabeth Smith Kara Szathmary Erik Viktor