A zudro

Crossing ALL borders between countries is a chaotic, long, drawn out process. If you're bringing a car into the country, like we did, it gets even more complicated, as it adds paperwork and means waiting in more lines to get the paperwork approved. There are children of all ages that spend their days hanging out at the borders. Most of them barefoot and in ragged cloths. They rush up to cars and hang onto the door handles as they run along the side. The older ones, jump onto the bumpers or any other protruding part of the vehicle they can cling to. It's dangerous but they don't seem to care. They just hang on and look into the car with pleading eyes and try to yell louder than the others, "I can help you", "Pick me, ... read more

After many hours of waiting for our gas tank to be patched up with fiberglass, we were finally having our last lunch in Acapulco with our friend and Taxi driver Rafael. The mechanics had finished the work the night before and we were now just waiting around for the tank to dry completely before filling it with gasoline to see if it would hold. Rafael had drawn us a map of the quickest route out of the city and back onto the Pacific Coast Highway. Both he and the mechanic had warned us of an area coming up called La Vientosa where they claimed the wind was so fierce that it was known to flip over Volkswagen bugs and send them rolling down the road like tumbleweeds. Rafael was worried about us and volunteered to ride ... read more

I know, it's been a long time. It's taken me a long time to plan my life in a way that may allow me to travel for part of every year. I've been working on this plan since the last time I set off across the United States by myself. I'm about to drive across again, and I'm still working on it. My last cross-country trip was from Connecticut to San Francisco in an old Jeep Cherokee that my daughter and I planned to drive down to Nicaragua. I was picking her up in the San Francisco area and then we would be driving on down through Mexico to Central America. I drove from Connecticut to New Jersey where I picked up Rte. I-80, the Northern route across the United States that would take me all ... read more

When my niece left San Juan del Sur, she left behind some furniture, an SUV, a 13 year old American Maltese puppy dog, (that we would take care of for a year before sending him on to Miami to join her), and a Nicaraguan family that worked for her. Shortly after arriving in San Juan, my niece hired Monica, the mother of four children, to be her nanny and help around the house. Before that, Monica's family had gotten along on the little money her husband Juan could make from the odd construction jobs he might find. Monica would also bring in a little extra money by occasionally cleaning houses or doing other people's laundry by hand. The family lived in a ramshackle house on a hill on the back end of town. The house belonged ... read more

The history of Nicaragua is one of civil wars, political violence and revolutionary unrest. When I told people I was going to Nicaragua, their first question was always, "why?", and the second was, "isn't there a war going on there?" Well, at least I wasn't the only person who knew very little about Nicaragua, even though our own government has been very involved with this small country in the past. During my time in Nicaragua, I decided to learn a little about the country's history. With the help of guide books, biographies, history books, and Wikipedia, this is some of what I learned. Since Christopher Columbus became the first European to reach Nicaragua in 1502, and later explored the Mosquito Coast on Nicaragua's east side, the country has been invaded by those greedy to grab for ... read more

Having access to a vehicle was an essential part of our freedom to roam the countryside of Nicaragua. Most of the "roads" are dirt and in unbelievably bad shape. We literally had to hold on to our seats to keep from falling over while traveling on some of these roads. The huge potholes had to be constantly avoided or you could end up having to be pulled out of dangerous "craters". Driving at night was never a good idea, for many reasons, (some of which I'll touch upon in future blogs). Still, if you had a 4-wheel drive vehicle, like we did, driving could also be lots of fun and exciting! Playa Madera's, our favorite beach, was about 5 miles away along one of these "obstacle course" roads. There are a couple of ways one can ... read more

You would think that San Juan del Sur is a very small town by the look of it. It has a small town "feel". There really aren't that many streets in the town proper and you quickly get to know the layout. Everyone walks everywhere and you see the same people every day. I would have guessed there were about 2500 people in SJDS, but it's bigger than it appears. The town itself goes out into the countryside and includes all of the surrounding farms, "fincas". There are also lots of large private homes and growing developments along the roads that lead out of the little village itself. There are more like 22,000 people who call San Juan del Sur their home. It started out as a small fishing village. There is a big Catholic Church ... read more