Last Days

Here are my last posts written over a week ago until today....

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So, I’m in Nicaragua. I got to San Juan del Sur around 5 pm and found myself a sketchy little room with a window you can see the beach from. The room has wooden slat walls where you can see through the cracks to the outside. The wind blows through the room like it would a tree….I love it. It is absolutely charming. Before the PC I would have died if you put me in this room and now I think it’s perfect with exactly the right price- $10.

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Getting to Nicaragua via chicken buses was painfully slow but I did get to observe life here and in Costa Rica more than I had been able to previously. Costa Rica, like Panama, is a tourist haven and with their robust tourism industry they have become quite organized and adept at serving any and every need of any kind of traveler. This can be a bit much…takes away some of the foreign charm. BUT, bus-wise CR and Panama are interesting. The buses are all part of companies and the companies have ticket booths. (This is unheard of in El Salvador.) While this seemed really organized at first you soon realize that, like El Sal, you can pick it up at any point on a route just by hailing it and they do the dumb ticket stub thing with the girl who comes around and checks your stub. The dumbest example of this was in Nicaragua (which does ticketing Salvadoran style as far as I can tell) when the cobrador came by collecting money and giving out stubs and then 10 minutes later went through to collect those very same stubs…I can find no logic to this.

The thing about CR and Panama is you can get sucked into places that aren’t all that cool. For instance, Monteverde was really built up on travel websites but we got there and found out it’s not even a national park. It used to be coffee plantations until the community decided to re-grow the cloud forest and make a buck off it. I love the effort but aside from the very cool canopy tour (which can be found like every 5 miles) we went on I would not recommend it. (The canopy tour was wild…I’m so proud of me and my mom for surviving.) On the other hand, Rincon de la Vieja is a national park and had some amazing natural wonders on a 2K walk. We saw a mini-volcano,big boiling natural water pots, boiling clay pots, and gorgeous birds. We also did the 8K hike out to some hot springs that turned out to be not so hot but it was fine. For $5 you could do a private one nearby and skip the 8K walk. We had fun though and don’t regret it. The giant blue butterflies and coati’s were more than enough to keep us happy as we waded through rivers with no bridges. (Mom only almost got swept away twice.) The rest of our days were spent eating as much seafood as possible, going to the beach, and walking to town. Our last day included massages at sunset on the beach, followed by lobster, and a wonderful Mexican folk band. It was a great ending to a wonderful trip that would not have been possible without the extreme generosity of a friend who loaned me their house for the week. The Villa Paloma was amazing. My mom and I are already plotting when we can return. (If you want to rent a house in CR…def let me know and I’ll point you in the right direction.)

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Upon entering Nicaragua, I noticed a few things. First, it looks a lot more like El Salvador than CR or Panama did in terms of the people and the poverty. I got a public housing flashback when I saw clapboard houses with giant SKY satellite dishes. Second, I saw a makeshift field where men were playing a pick-up baseball game! It was my first sighting ever in Central America. All I usually see are soccer games but I finally saw a baseball game. (Speaking of soccer, the towns in Costa Rica have their canchas in the town square which struck me as very different and probably very cool on Sundays.) Third, Nicaragua has wind turbines! Looked just like West Texas except these were beside a beautiful black volcanic lake…

San Juan del Sur, where I am now and tomorrow night, is on a big cove. The beach is big all around the cove and I bet it gets bigger when the tide goes out. Looking forward to waking up refreshed tomorrow, exploring, and enjoying the day….Saturday I meet up with Brian in Granada!

PS. No pictures until I meet up with Brian…Mom accidently took my memory card with her back to the States : /

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Ok, so that little hotel had two extra surprises that I had not bargained for: rats and bed bugs. Yep, around the middle of the night I had to put bug spray to combat the mini-bites I kept feeling all over my body. And, the wind picked up so much I thought it would knock my roof off the second floor. Then, the sound of rats made me think I’d have visitors in my bed at any minute. Needless to say, I woke up early to look for a new hotel which I found at 7:30 am…apparently too early to reserve or check in to a room. So I walked around until the guy was there. Finally, the American and his pit bull named Gandalf checked me into the super-surfer hostel. It had my basic requirements- free water and internet. I then went off to find some food and entertainment. A Hawaiian restaurant owner suggested a shuttle to one of the surfer beaches. I made it back to my hostel in time to find out that they were about to leave. So I head out and laid around for 4 hours…much too long but nice. At the end, on the way back, all of us guests started talking and later I made friends with a girl who during dinner I learned was working at a surf camp in Costa Rica. She was from Canada, my age, and working in software promotion until she won a video essay contest that sent her to this surf camp in Costa Rica! She had such a good time that three months later she quit her job, packed her bags, and took a job doing promotion work for the camp. She has surfed every day for the past 3 months! It was wild. She was super entertaining to talk to…it’s just another example of how fun it is to meet people while travelling.

The next day I head out to Granada to meet Brian. I got there around 12. I wasn’t expecting him until at least 1 or 1:30. I kinda wanted to wander a bit and not just sit around and wait but I was so scared to miss him so I stayed at the hotel in a hammock. Around 3 I started freaking out that he had decided not to come or got lost or worse but finally in my lowest moment of panic he arrived. We set out to see the city and find food…we were both starving.

On our first full day in Granada we decided to do the hotel shuttle to the nearby volcanic crater lake, Laguna de Apoyo. It turns out that it looks just like Lago Coatepeque minus all the huge mansions around it. We had a great day lay out on super comfortable chairs, chatting, swimming, and kayaking ( I learned Brian is quite the kayaker.) We had an amazing time and Brian has vowed to go back and spend a week there while he is travelling after his service.

After the lake, we went to eat because, of course, we were starving. It was only around 4:30 when we ate our first meal. Then we started drinking…..and I discovered the national cocktail of Nicaragua- the Macua. It is a fruit cocktail with guava juice and extra light Flor de Cana rum which is made in Nicaragua. Brian had more than his fair share of Cuba libres….he kept insisting that we could drink nothing buy rum since we were in one of the best countries that makes rum. Needless to say that by 7 pm we could not believe that it was that early and were that drunk. We were laughing and joking with the waiters about everything including the green cherries that were obscenely green. Finally, we got another pizza to go and went home. It was hands down the best day of our trip and maybe the year.

The day after we were not really hung-over at all but we had the huge problem of trying to organize a day that was as good as the previous. We pretty much failed on all accounts except that we did get massages. We were lazy the whole day but that was okay.

Our last days in Nicaragua were suppose to be spent in Leon BUT when we got to Managua to reserve our tickets we found out that the bus could only be taken from Managua…a capital city more ugly than San Salvador. So we were stuck. With little options we wandered around the American style mall for hours, ate Papa Johns, and drank some cocktails. The next morning we caught the bus at 4 am back to El Salvador. It was an extremely long bus ride with too many stop and of course erroneous triple checking by the Salvadoran government.

When we got back to El Salvador, I head back to Yamabal after being gone for a month. I was anxious to see my cat and get packing since I would be flying out just 2 days later. The house was a mess but Cleo was in great shape thanks to my wonderful friends who fed her and checked in on her. I packed up and spent the next day cleaning and saying sad goodbyes. ( I only cried with Nina Mari though…no one not related to me has ever taken care of me like she has….)

El Salvador did little as a whole to make me sad I was leaving….I had trouble with the phone company, visa problems, and then ultimately problems getting Cleo her paperwork. On Friday when I got to San Sal, the first vet told me it would be 15 days to get the proper vaccinations and documents from the ministry. The second vet told me that for $129 he could go pull some strings at the ministry himself. Well, turns out that the ministry had a holiday lunch that day and stopped work at 12 so…I had to change my flight…for $189. The price for this cat was suddenly getting awful expensive. But, there was no other choice. All day I cried when people told me I couldn’t make it work or when I had to even think about leaving her behind. So, I swallowed the costs, checked her into the nasty vet’s office for the next 3 days and said a prayer that Monday (with the vet now asking for $150) we’d be able to get the papers. It wasn’t really all that bad. Brian and I got to go out with friends a couple of nights and spend a couple of days at the beach eating some of our favorite meals (pizza, baked potatoes with shrimp, and bruschetta by a Belgian).

By Tuesday, the day had finally come. I picked up Cleo and her papers and Brian rode in the taxi with me to the airport. First thing we had to do was rearrange the bags to make them weigh no more than 50 lbs each. Thankfully Brian had made me review EVERYTHING in my bags in front of him and get rid of at least 30 more lbs. (Shoes , clothes, and hammock all got donated to a poor community of one of my friends who lives just about my site in Yamabal.) We BARELY made the weight limit and certainly would not have made it if it were not for that last minute cutback. In fairness to me and my packing abilities though, I was hauling stuff back for Brian as well…Finally, I checked the bags, paid the $150 to board my cat, and the lady GLANCED at her paperwork. That was the extent to which my nearly $400 last minute cat paperwork was taken seriously. I could have had food recipes in there and she would not have even had noticed!!! I was not happy but whatever. More important after that was saying bye to Brian…teary to say the least.

Going through security I forgot to remove my stupid Swiss Army knife my mom gave me so I lost that. Then, I was so distraught on the plane that two attendants came over to check on me….slightly embarrassing. I finally chilled out. In Dallas, had to escort Cleo through more procedures in which at least 3 more people GLANCED at her f’ing paperwork! But, everything went smooth and Cleo was a little star in the terminal. Everyone was coo’ing over her and it occurred to me that I was finally back in the States in a place where people actually like cats and dogs. I nearly missed my connecting flight but made it. The whole flight I kept thinking about how scary it was to be home permanently. It made me nearly cry 3 times until I started down the escalator in San Antonio and burst into full-fledged fear-tears. My sister was there to hold me and cry with me too…albeit for a different reason. We settled down after a good cry and waited for the giant bags. As we were waiting we suddenly heard Cleo scream. This was not all that shocking since she had been doing it for the last four days…poor thing. That is until I realized she screamed because the asshole baggage handlers had dropped her down a steep luggage ramp which caused her to crash into the bottom. I ran to collect her and went straight to the office to report the complaint. The lady there was sooo helpful and immediately called the supervisor who came out and assured me that he talked to the guys and that that was not standard procedure. I thanked him for his help and left.

Since being home I have had to take care of insurance claims, rental car paperwork, buying a new phone, moving my stuff, etc . that I have not had any real time to process more scary thoughts about being stuck in the US but it’s there looming in the back of my head…something that no one but an RPCV could probably understand.