by Richard Leonardi
My friend Luvy Pichardo, a Nicaraguan archaeologist, and I stopped for a Coca-Cola at a roadside store in the central Nicaraguan province of Boaco. A young cowboy, 13 or 14, came over to the car and looked inside the vehicle, then at me, innocently, curious. He squished his nose up against the window, so I punched the glass mockingly and he laughed. I rolled down the window and pointed up at an impressive mountain behind the village of San Lorenzo. It was a rocky massif that pierced the sky, like a granite space ship ready for takeoff. “How’s the access to that mountain?” I asked him, wondering if anyone had climbed the stunning peak. He looked at me closely, now with a solemn face, “No one goes in there,” he related. “The duendes are there.”