Do I really have to leave Eden?

I wasn't sure I wanted to leave Leon... I'm definitely sure I don't want to leave Laguna de Apoyo.

Monkey Hut, my hostel home for the last couple days.

But I'll be on the 11:30 bus out of here to Masaya, where I hope to have time to wander around the gigantic artisan market (even though I can't buy anything), although that will depend on how long it takes me to get there and how my backpack feels on these sunburned shoulders I acquired... From Masaya I'll catch another one to Granada, where I'll meet up with an old friend.

I know approximately one person in Latin America, who lives in Costa Rica, and I wasn't sure I'd have to chance to visit her. Life being a beautiful and bizarre thing, she was already coming to Granada today to renew her Costa Rican visa. Timing like that always makes me think I'm on schedule, in a grand cosmic sense.

Having something particular to head towards helps (don't underestimate the appeal of meeting a friend on the solo traveler) but I am already starting to miss this place. So I'll enjoy my breakfast, sitting in the chair on the left, although I think I'll pull it back into the shade.

Stupid sunburn.

Jerry

Jerry is my only roommate in the dorm looking out over Laguna de Apoyo. He's a quirky fellow, mid sixties, sun-browned from dozens of trips in Latin America, and mentioned within a few minutes of meeting that he has no interest in reading blogs or interacting with the internet beyond a single monthly email to his sister, who in turn updates the family that he's still alive.

He's sitting on his lower bunk when he tells me this, his leg stretched out in front of him and a massive ice pack slumping all over what is clearly a very swollen left knee.

"I tell them I'm okay. I don't tell them my knee is hurt, what can they do about it? Why should I tell them that? I tell them I'm okay, that's it."

His statements are usually very emphatic, in English or in Spanish. Far be it from me to criticize anyone's accent in any language, but his Spanish is the sort of enthusiastic pronunciation of letters that I can't help but smile.

"I don't like traveling with people my age, or I end up doing only things that people my age do. They pull up to a beautiful place in a bus, take a picture out the window, and stay on the bus. Do they jump off the cliff in Somoto Canyon? (Which is how he hurt his knee.) No! I want to repel off cliffs!"

He mentions his male Nicaragua "friend" several times, and I can't help but wonder, although lately my gaydar has been going off like crazy so I'm doubting its accuracy here, but then he tells me about how he asked his friend out and the difficulties with the friend's girlfriend when he told them he was gay. His arms cross for a moment as he prepares himself in case I react poorly. Seeing that I have no problem with it he relaxes and our conversation continues.

Where I was sitting when I noticed my burn.

This morning we both woke up before 6:00 when our East-facing room was blasted with sunlight, and shockingly quickly I noticed a pink flush on my shoulders. I was only swimming for...a few minutes? So this evening I sit here with shoulders flaming like a damn flamingo. In Spanish they call us sunburned whitey tourists "cangrejos." Crabs. I am a frickin lobster.

I'm sitting next to Jerry and start to apply a second layer of aloe vera gel. "I'd offer to do that for you, but I just told you I was gay so I guess I shouldn't."

I reassure him that I don't get bent out of shape about that stuff and how proud I was of my brother when he came out at a young age. Before I know it he's jumped up, splurted a generous handful of gel into his hand and is rubbing me down. The staff at the table next to us suddenly finds whatever they're reading very involving.

"Don't worry, you're not Latin so I won't get aroused."

Not sure what to say to that but don't want awkward silence so I respond: "Uh. I'll try not to tan too much tonight then." How'd I do? What would you have said?

He rubs it in a little longer than strictly necessary and I thank him. "That's okay, I enjoyed it too." I can't think of anything to say to that. We go back to talking about traveling and I mention K offhand. Several times.

He looks slightly disappointed but our conversation never slows as we talk about Uruguay, Zambia, Corsica, Newfoundland, the Camino de Santiago, and only getting old when you decide you're old.

It was a pleasure to meet you, Jerry.

Leon to Laguna de Apoyo

Time to move on. I packed my bag (tidied really, I wasn’t there long enough to really unpack), said goodbye to the people I was just getting to know, and walked out.

Nicaragua has a clever little scheme going on. The bus routes leave from different stations, and they put them far enough apart to need a taxi to get between them. Clever clever, the taxi lobby must be powerful. Or they are just terrifically unorganized. That could be too.

Taxis always give me an icky feeling, from the juice of overcharging they always seep, to the guilt of riding along like a colonial elitist while the people on the street watch your white face float by. (This is countered by someone who worked in Peru for awhile who said “the locals take taxi’s the tourists always want to walk” but I haven’t quite come to terms with that.)

When I asked how to get to the bus station that handles traffic back to Managua (different from the one I walked to when I went to the beach) the hostel staff told me to take a taxi. Luckily my buddy Rudy had clued me in to the camionettas that run through the streets on their way out there.

(Crud, I just realized I didn't mention Rudy yet. He's a fellow I met in the Parque Central, laid off from his job as a truck driver at 52, no one will hire him now because they don't want to pay his retirement. So he goes and sits in the park "If I stay home, I do nothing. So I come here. Sometimes someone will pay me 10 cordobas (about 40 cents) to go pick something up in the market." He recommended a place to get a batido, like a fruit lassi/smoothie, and I bought him one. I enjoyed our halting conversation over our pineapple smoothies.)

Two camionettas passed as I was walking down the last block, so I posted up and waited for the next one. Once I put my bag down and sat, I actually started to feel like I was fitting in a little more. (I really cannot overstate the importance of packing lightly. A foreign face is already a lot to overcome, a giant mountain of a backpack just pushes you farther into the realm of an “other.”) I wouldn’t go nearly so far as to say I blended in entirely, but I felt like less of a sore thumb.

The pickup truck arrived and I climbed up into the back to sit next to an old lady with heavy-looking bags and across from a rather plump young woman with a sleeping baby slewing half out of her arm. The old lady stared at me with minimal interest, like I’m a puzzle she has long given up on solving but can’t help peering at anyway.

We drove through Leon, away from the downtown where the white faces congregate, out through small dirt roads where the bumps threw us against the metal frame holding the big blue tarp over our heads. There is poverty in America, but I really can’t imagine there’s a town like this in the “First World”, while they are the norm in so much of the rest of the world, varying in some details but familiar in so many. Naked children standing in dirt yards watching you pass. Pregnant women holding toddlers, watching you go by. A few crops in dry soil, heaps of smoldering garbage, stray dogs with short yellow hair and droopy teats. A sense of stasis in a world where the every day is something of a triumph.

We eventually pulled up to the bus station, wood fires making food for bellies and smoke for lungs and eyes. Stray dogs and their droopy teats. Vendors walking around shouting their wares over and over. Little bags of water. Bananas. Sweetcakes. The guy selling packs of toilet paper started to try and sell me one out of habit then we shared a chuckle. I ask if I can sit in one of the chairs for a moment, and the agelessly old woman cook behind the rickety counter jokes about how long of a moment it can be. She waves goodbye when I go.

Then I’m en route to Managua in a sweltering minivan, realizing as we leave town that we drove close to the station in the truck before heading out to the dirt streets, but I’m glad I had the reminder. Remind me next time I bitch about anything in a hostel.

After two hours of dozing we are all getting out into the chaos of UCA “station”, which is basically just a wide place in the road where the “interlocal” buses pull over. My next leg is in a sort of minibus, each ride is getting a bigger auto. The only seat left is the front, so I ride shotgun, a little old(ish) lady clambering up to sit next to me with her legs up on the dashboard since it’s not a proper seat with foot room. She reassures me she's comfortable.

After an immeasurable period of drowsing, during which I’m just glad none of my head bobs smashed into the lady ("ay! Lo siento por el headbutt!") I am dropped off on the side of the highway at the base of a road leading up. My guide book is a couple years old, so I don’t really expect the 15 minute ride to still cost 10 Cordoba (~40 cents) but when the shady looking driver kid spits and says 100 I balk. We end up settling on 40 and he’ll take me as far as he feels I’ve bought.

The road is steep and long, and doing it with my bag would have been an ordeal; not sure I would have made it by dark. He gets to the gates to what is now some sort of ecological sanctuary and says they charge him 25 cordoba to drive down, so to go farther I have to pay 50 more. He warns me that it’s an hour walk still to the hospedajes. If he hadn't been so shady at the start I probably would have paid.

I pass him 40 cordoba and get out, climb over the chain the guard lowers for me and ask him how far it is to the water. He tells me it’s about 3 kilometers, and seeing my relief cautions me “suave, suave.” Go slow, go slow, patting motions with his hands.

I start down the hill, and quickly glimpse blue between the branches. I am heading to Laguna de Apoyo, a freshwater lake in an expired volcano. It’s even more beautiful than it sounds. A few hours, a swim, and a good meal later, I am sitting here listening to the small lake waves on the rocky shore, nighttime crickets, and one of the cute older gay gentlemen playing his mandolin in a hammock. The bats come and go from their nests in the eaves over my head and there is a good stiff breeze, so I won’t have to slather my delicious ankles with mosquito repellent tonight.

I am one happy backpacker.

Good night.

Jenny's choices

To be honest, for the first couple days I knew Jenny, I might have used the word “mousey” to describe her.

She seemed to be in a shadow more often than everyone else, and our early conversations were halting and erratic things since the noise of the fan often overwhelmed her soft British accent.

That all changed on my last night in Leon. It was Wednesday, which is live music night for the fairly substantial population of foreign students studying Spanish in the city, and our hostel was invited by default.

It was adorable in a sweet sort of way; tables of youngsters, ecstatic to be overseas and surrounded by peers, crowding the benches of an uncommonly brightly lit bar (gotta keep tabs on those libidinous little monsters), their exuberant conversation bubbling over between overly loud covers of The Doors, Eagles, Jimmie Hendrix, and a set of ubiquitous songs whose names and bands I’ve never known but can sing along with anyway.

It being youngsters, with awkward limbs and broad Scandinavian smiles, the crowd preferred conversation to dancing. That is always fine by me (I’ll keep my own awkward limbs to myself, thank you very much) and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves until about 11:50 PM, when Jenny whispered to me that this was the worst bar she’d ever been in, all these people were losers for not dancing, and fuck them all, she was going looking for someplace to dance.

I should mention that Nicaragua is not really a party destination. Nearly everything is closed by midnight. In fact a night watchman comes around at 11:00 PM and shuts almost everything down, blowing his whistle indignantly in our window if the lights are still on. There were some muscley tattoed party boys there the first night who got kicked out for disturbing the neighbors with their late night conversation.

Our bar had clearance to stay open until midnight. Jenny had 10 minutes left when she decided to leave.

I am enjoying my time in Nicaragua, the prices are right and I haven’t worn a shirt in days, but it is not the sort of place a woman should walk around by herself at night. Or a man for that matter; when we left there were about a dozen of us and we piled into the cars of press-ganged helpers instead of walking the 5 blocks back to the hostel.

One look at Jenny showed she was not about to be dissuaded, and off she went into the night. We got home an hour later and she wasn’t there. I went to bed and lay in the stifling heat, expecting her to come in (her bunk bed was opposite mine) but nothing. Throughout the night I woke up a handful of times, each time peeking down to see if she was there. She never was.

Up the next morning, putter around, go out to breakfast, run a few last minute errands, go to the bank and pay my bill at the hostel. No Jenny. Not much you can do in that situation, although everyone looks at everyone else as if hoping someone’ll come up with something.

About 4 minutes before I left, my bag packed and on my back, I swung by the pool to take a picture and there sat Jenny at the clunky hostel computer, recently arrived. Sedate. She didn’t seem to want to talk, or make eye contact, and to my regret I wasn’t in a position to wait it out and see if she would.

It’s one of the dangers of traveling. Well, of human behavior in general, but perhaps it’s magnified while overseas in foreign places and cultures. Impetuous decisions, a necessary skill for the traveler, can be affected and super-powered by forces you didn’t know were there. I don’t know where Jenny’s night took her…all you can do is hope for the best future you can, for everyone.

International Haircuts, Part 8.

Hair cut country number…eight, I think. Nicaragua.

I had Nepal’s barberji on the mind as I walked into PIAF Internacional Peluqueria half an hour ago. In the door, reading a newspaper in a florescent green plastic stacking chair was a large fellow whose sleepy eyes didn’t resemble barberji’s burning orbs in any way. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or pleased by my appearance, a confusion that lasted the duration of my visit.

My usual vague description of “shorter on the sides and back, the buzzer is fine, and longer on top” was met with the customary familiar grunt. I should just say “the generic male, please” but I’m not sure how to say “generic” in Spanish.

To start, he combed my hair into something like a cross between a mohawk and an old school DA, then set about fine tuning the edges I assumed he was about to buzz away. He seemed to enjoy combing my hair, and continued doing so periodically throughout the procedure, which grew odder as the hair got shorter and the comb made less and less difference.

His fingernails were perfectly manicured, and they flew around above my head with little sweeps and flourishes like a somewhat sedated flamenco dancer.

Credence Clearwater Revival sang Born on the Bayou from the little radio on the desk, followed by a Spanish group heavily inspired by Pink Floyd.

I’ve never seen a barber so concerned with tidiness, frequently wiping his scissors and clippers off on my shoulders and jiggling the plastic cape thing, which was covered in Japanese script and odd line-sketches of severe women with bad haircuts.

We chatted about Leon, Nicaragua in general, and how it’s better to travel alone than with a guide. He informed me that the climate here has gotten hotter due to all the cotton they’ve grown in this part of the country.

And that was about it. I never know what to say in response when someone says “muy amable” (basically “you are very friendly”). You too? Iqualmente? Nice manicure? I settled for “thank you” and left, enjoying the breeze.

Am I on my Trip yet?

48 hours before I left America I posted a facebook status asking what I was forgetting, then spent the next two days with my incredible family and friends. The ice cream was delicious.

About 46 hours later the packing was done, perfect or not. All the questions and preparations fell away as I said goodbye to my folks and pointed Ronda the Rental Car towards San Francisco International Airport.

Alone in the car on a dark highway, take your hands off the wheel for a moment as an offering to the gods of Chance, then take the wheel and start the trip.

Or not. When does a Trip actually start? When you leave home? When you leave the familiar? The ground? When you hear a foreign language? The furnace blast as the doors open at Augusto Sandino International Airport in Managua?

If it’s the lattermost, then the feeling of being behind the wheel didn’t last long.

My main bag is small enough to be a carry-on, so I didn't have to check any baggage and so was the first one out of the terminal. Prepping myself for the inevitable attack of the taxi drivers I stepped outside into…nothing. Heat. Dry, exhaust. Finally they found me (did I surprise them?) and I excused and debated my way out of the clutches of the “official” taxi drivers inside the airport lot to try the unofficial ones across the street. One of the official ones followed me out and bartered himself down to a fair price, then came across the street to the unofficial ones anyway, jumped in a car and pulled out at top speed. ("Did he just steal this car?")

A packed mini-bus to Leon that was actually pretty comfortable, sitting next to two old men who debated buying a quesilla long after the vendor was lost in the dust behind us, then another taxi into Leon (the bus didn’t drop me off in the walkable location the guidebook predicted of course) and I set out for the hostel I’d chosen.

I wish I could claim I was Mr. Traveler and it all goes easily, but no, I immediately got lost.

Leon is supposed to be one of the easier Nicaraguan cities to navigate (which doesn’t bode well for me) because it actually has street names, but they are 1st Northeast St, 2nd 3rd etc, which are different from 1st Northeast Road, 2nd 3rd etc, and they change from Northeast to Southeast etc with no warning. It’s enough of a grid to make you feel safe in doubling back, but turns out it’s not quite that easy. Where'd the park go?

I finally found the place, sweat soaked and thirsty, paid for my dorm bed, and went looking for food. I don’t feel like I’m really in a place until I’ve eaten and slept there. So maybe today is Nicaragua, real day 1. Let’s see how it goes…

When were the last two weeks?

No matter how many times it happens, it always amazes me how an entire week can pass so quickly. We left Mendocino on Thursday the 22nd of March and arrived a few hours later in San Francisco on Saturday the 30th, which lasted half an hour before it was April 1 and I was driving away from K’s yoga retreat, where she’ll spend the next two months while I go wander around trying not to get malaria.

Beautiful day in Berkeley

I’m not sure when it happened but I remember walking around Berkeley with an old friend, flavors of breakfast polenta and navratan korma for dinner. I remember eating sushi with my sister and brother-in-law, room for one more roll and asking the chef to make us whatever he felt like, seeing his answering smile, and thoroughly enjoying some sort of mango and raw fish dessert. I remember seeing my brother answer the door of his apartment in Bernal Heights and drinks in the bar waiting for our table.

There were the tears of welcome from my mom and the wagging tails of beagles who don’t need to understand the passage of time, and toasting my “padres” at dinner with the wine we bought in the Anderson Valley.

A brief series of impressions from a coastal town I used to live in, dinner with friends before choosing whiskey custard over black pepper cheesecake at a new organic ice creamery. Meeting another friend’s puppy before having my first proper burrito in years.

That half an hour in San Francisco managed to include a dog park with beautiful views of my original The City, seeing an old friend hit a double in his softball game, and delectable cupcakes in the home of world renowned hospitality.

Somewhere in there we stayed in our second ridiculously cozy lighthouse hostel, waking up to morning rollers off the Pacific.

But somehow that all, and the iceberg beneath it, went straight into my memory, and I spent a year driving away from a cozy house in Santa Rosa, where K will spend the next two month learning yoga, meditation, and whatever else the unique ensemble has to offer.

Luckily hospitality was not exhausted, and I spent these last few days in friendship, conversation, and a Giants game. Baseball baby! Now I’m really back in America… Leaving in three days.

I expect those three days to last 4 minutes, but in it I’ll cram a brief city reunion with K, an Easter supper with the fam, and the nauseas floating of waiting for an airplane…

See you in Nicaragua.