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Published: August 31st 2008
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Main street of San Juan del Sur
Before the Real Estate agencies moved into town Nicaragua. My niece moved there out of the blue! I had to stop and think for a moment. Did I know where Nicaragua was? All right, I did know. A Central American country. That much I was sure of. It’s exact location I’d have to look up on a map. No problem there. I love maps. I collect them, so they’re all over the house. Sure, I could have gone to my laptop and looked it up in a second. But I like the look of maps. I like seeing the world laid out in front of me, in vibrant colors, just waiting for me to pick a new place to explore. I quickly found this little country located between Honduras, to the north, and Costa Rica, to the south. Seemed really exotic. Did I know anything about Nicaragua? I thought for a moment and found that all I seemed to remember was connected to war, struggle, and political violence. The words Sandinistas and Contras popped up but I was ashamed to admit, even to myself, I didn’t know much.
My daughter was about to graduate from high school and had planned a year-long trip to Spanish speaking countries so she could practice the language. South America first. Venezuela and Columbia, where there were relatives she’d never met. Maybe Costa Rica after that and then on to Barcelona where she would spend most of the year.
I’ve always found real life so much more interesting than fiction. I love reading non-fiction books, they have all of the ingredients needed to keep me going. Drama, mystery, tragedy, adventure, and the added bonus of knowing that you’re not just looking into a person’s imagination but their real life. These "real" people have actually done these things. I find this very powerful and full of possibilities. If the people in these books can do these things, maybe I can do them too. Maybe I can even do more! At least that’s how I always saw it. Well, if I was looking for the surprise and excitement of real life I was about to get a large dose of it. After working for almost 20 years as a police Crisis Specialist, I was about to be laid off with a two week notice. What do you do when you’ve been working all your life and all of a sudden your not? What else? I went to the Virgin Islands! I visited friends who live there, swam in the ocean, laid in the sun and drank a lot of wine and fruity drinks. Then I came home and summed up the situation. I would have to sell my house. My daughter said, “ Since you’ve got nothing else to do, why not come with me?” I had thought, “no job equals no money”. She had thought, “no job equals travel and adventure”. She’d always been good with math, and I liked her equation better than mine. At that moment, our adventure began. It was an idea and then a plan and then an adventure. We were off even before we’d started. It took a while, but we sold the house, put everything else we wanted to keep in storage and made up the beginnings of a very loose plan. Instead of South America being our first stop, we’d go and see how our niece, and her 6 month old baby, were doing in Nicaragua. From there we’d visit Costa Rica and make our way to Spain where we’d hang out until my daughter had to present herself at Boston College the following year. As it turned out for me, Nicaragua would be my only stop.
We arrived in Managua, the capitol of Nicaragua, at 12:00 P.M. on an April afternoon. Getting through customs at the Managua Airport was easy enough. We each had to pay a five dollar entry fee. Once we cleared customs we were approached by several men in red short-sleeved uniform shirts with “Official Airport Taxi Service” printed on the front. They asked our destination and we told them we were looking for a taxi to take us to San Juan del Sur, where my niece was living. We had originally planned to take a bus but now looking at our huge pile of luggage we realized that wouldn’t be an easy option. We told them that our family could send a car to get us for fifty dollars but that we didn’t want to wait the two or three hours it would take for the car to come. One of the guys said the typical cost for a taxi ride from Managua to San Juan del Sur was seventy or eighty dollars. Another guy said he could take us for less. We went back and forth for a while and finally settled on $60.00.
I went over to the airport bank exchange office to change dollars into the Nicaraguan currency, Cordobas. The exchange rate fluctuates daily, but at the time, it was staying between 15 and 16 “cords” per American dollar.
The ride from Managua to San Juan del Sur would take about two hours. Leaving the city of Managua was a complicated affair with a lot of weaving in and out of traffic through small crowded streets, in sections of the city that were very poor, depressed, dusty, and sad. We eventually made our way onto a narrow two-way dirt road and from there it was a bumpy ride for most of the trip. I hardly seemed to notice as I was completely taken in by the scenes quickly passing my open car window. The scenery was mostly of farmlands. The farms, which the people of Nicaragua call “fincas”, are homesteads made up of small tin-roofed shacks. Young children played in the front “yards” and cooled off by standing under crude looking “shower” pipes sticking out of the ground near their homes. The children looked poor, either naked or in ragged cloths and bare feet, but I noticed that most were smiling or laughing, chasing chickens and goats with sticks and calling out to their friends nearby.
I saw farmers carrying their harvested crops on horse or oxen-pulled wagons that lumbered along the road. In the distance, on the horizon, sat two active volcano’s, their smoking peaks reaching for the sky. I was awed by the beauty and wildness of the country. I don’t know what I had expected but I was completely taken in by this world. It was like being thrown back into another century. A world where time had stopped. It felt like Jurassic Park and the Wild West had come together. I couldn't have been any more excited!
Entering San Juan del Sur, we drove under a large arched “Welcome” sign, letting us know that, “Flor de Cana” rum, was what we should be drinking while visiting the country. As we drove under this arch we still didn’t know that this was the beginning of our new life. San Juan del Sur would become my home for the next two years and Nicaragua would change my life forever.
The Journey / Travel With Me
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Afool
Diane Bracken
better late than never
I know, this blog is old and is about even earlier events, but I just read it now. I want to tell you how impressed I am by anyone who can just take such a leap of faith and take off fo the unknown with no real home behind them. It is significant since you were no spring chicken at the time and had established yourself with friends and routines. I'll be reading more to see how things went.