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fear danger geology tourism dreams

a place of gods, alligators, sacrifices and latent destruction geology | danger by novka cosovic

The taxi driver takes you down a long narrow dirt road. The vertical view is framed with mango trees and billboards, some written in Mandarin, some in Spanish: Hotel! Coming Soon! At the end of the dirt road, there is a sand pathway. The Punta Jesús Maria is an extension of the land; a narrow one kilometre strip of black sand that stretches into the dark water. The pathway is so narrow that you are nearly walking on water as you get to the middle of the lake. Half way along you hear the taxi driver and some local construction workers screaming. You quickly turn around; they are screaming at you and at a moving object near the beginning of the trail. It is an alligator. This is how the alligators trap their prey. You are its lunch. Luckily, the taxi driver, once a FSLN soldier, pulls out his gun and points it at the predator. Aware, the alligator slowly crawls back into the lake. But you still see its one-metre-long head lurking in the water as you continue to walk down the path.

Y ou can feel and hear the buzzing if you concentrate, like the humming of an old fluorescent light in a blank room. Restless for 11,000 years, the Conception volcano outputs a busy waveform all over Ometepe Island. Volcanic power courses through the land like a wave of voltage. Energy is all around you in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. 4000 years ago, the Nahua people travelled from north to south to find their holy land. Their prophets had told them that somewhere there would be an island formed by two (ome) volcanoes (tepelt) – their new place for sanctuary and peace. Yet, the island was circled by piranhas, large-tooth sawfish, alligators, crocodiles and bull sharks, making the Nahuas vulnerable in the food chain.

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Novka Cosovic

Andres U Bautista

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