The Long Road through Purgatory

When doing this sort of organic, fly by the seat of your pants traveling you really need to have a full time team of videographers in order to catch all of the mundane events which in themselves make up the great adventure that I have embarked upon.

By saying that we have been through purgatory is really an understatement. It is difficult to know where to begin (as many would find it so) when the obstacles that have been overcome in the past 72 hours have been both many and formidable. Barnes and I have about 10 days until we have to collect Henderson from the Managua airport and begin our journey within a journey, so upon the recommendations of several people at the hostel in Managua we decided to spend our time in the Corn islands in the Caribbean Sea but still belonging to Nicaragua. Now that we have arrived and are literally in tropical paradise, as far as I can tell, the trip has been worth it. However, there have been many trials or our traveling relationship in this first short time.

Leaving Managua itself was a mission since we decided to walk across the city to the bus stop which turned out to be a hell of a lot farther than we anticipated looking and the small map that fit neatly into a pocket. Well that would have been if Brett had ever handled a map before but it appeared that he hadn’t and so he ripped the shit out of it within the first 10 minutes.

So after walking the length of the city and stopping for a DELICIOUS lunch at one of the cities 4 markets we finally got to the bus station as it was getting dark. If I may digress I should note that while I will eat many things (because I am a major fat kid at heart), I am pretty particular in the way my food is prepared. So generally eating food out of warming trays in poorly lit markets near closing time is not ideal for me, especially when everyone back home says, don’t eat the food , don’t drink the water, don’t smile at anyone they might rob you. Well that is of course a wad of bullshit. You have to eat the food because not only is it the only food available but it is so damn good you would be crazy not to, also the water is necessary to drink because as living organisms we need to drink the water, and smiling just polite. Living with the fear mentality of something going wrong is just not a place that I want to be in whether it is back home or on the road in Nicaragua. So I’ve been eating and drinking whatever is put in front of me and the only time I’ve complained is when Brett bought a completely crushed banana and bade me to enjoy it, and also the time he cut an orange on the lobster traps then gave it to me, but that is another story all together.

After yet another broken Spanish conversation we induced that the bus was leaving at 21:00 sharp and we had better be there or wait until tomorrow. Well as it turns out, despite what you may have been led to believe from the MasterCard commercials on TV around world cup time, for everything else there is CASH! Not MasterCard. In fact there are many places outside of the “first world” where MC and VISA are not accepted. This bus station was one of those joints. Logically we needed to find a bank machine at 6pm that was not only open but accepted our cards, which turned out to be a trying task. As it would happen, lady luck was smiling down upon us from above that dusky and smoggy sky. So we ended up on a bus that would be probably the most uncomfortable seating either of us had ever encountered in the civilized world. The only worse seating I could image would be no seating at all for 11 hours. However, it was not 11 hours that we needed the seats for because as soon as we were sufficiently into the Nicaraguan jungle, which is RIDDLED WITH JAGUARS, and encountered a hill of sorts, the bus died. Le bus el muerte…si. so in the dead of night in the middle of the jungle we pile out of the bus and after a brief march down the highway we lie down and wait for help.

This is not exactly a situation you want to find yourself in if you are in dire need or any sort of help. And I mean any sort. Let’s say you are encountering a case of appendicitis, or perhaps you are giving birth, maybe your arch nemesis Eduardo Degas Cristobel Sanchez has arrived. Any of the previous things happen to you and you are experiencing that alone (except for the other 49 people on the bus) in the jungle. Well we took our time enjoying life and listening to the crazy insects that must have been at least 2 feet long to make that kind of noise for two hours while the backup bus came. But what a perfect storm that turned out to be! The new bus was PIMP. That means the nicest bus you’ve ever seen…in Nicaragua.

By the time we arrives in Bluefield’s it was after a 6am arrival in Rama and a 2 hour panga ride down the river in what appeared to be a life and death struggle between the driver and the multitude of logs, deadheads and other assortments of floating dangers. The driver was clearly a pro because we did that whole ride “hammer down” as fast as the 200 horses would take us.

Bluefields may be described as having a seedy underbelly in lonely planet but the first thing you see when you get there off the panga is the seediest part which kind of makes you want to store your gear ASAP and take a shower. We decided to stay in El Bluff instead which turned out to be a great time. There we stayed in a hotel that was run in the daytime by George. George is almost 80, has many grandchildren due to the plethora of children he sired around the Caribbean and other parts of the world when he spent 17 years working on freighters. He has been all over the world several times. Here we also met up with some other gringos on the road to the Promised Land. Juan-Lu, Anna, Dana and Katie. Together with them we secured a ride with a lobster fisherman from Honduras who was making the trip to Big Corn the following morning.

Brett and I then slept in our tent on the beach for the first time in what was most assuredly my worst camping experience ever. We were a three course meal for the several million sand flies that inhabit the beach and since we had not brought down and insect repellent we were like fish in a barrel. The tent kept them out but since they were so small and vicious, many of them came into the tent on us as we scrambled for safety.

However, the boat ride that was free made up for the previous night’s disaster as we were treated to an excellent fried chicken lunch and a lot of fun with the crew which included one armed push up competitions and reshooting the Nivea commercial with Johnson & Johnson’s liquid dish soap – WORKS FOR ME!

Little Corn island was worth the entire ordeal and then some. We were (not surprisingly) astonished at the natural beauty of the place. To say that a picture is worth a thousand words while being clique is sometimes, but not always, right. If it were in this case I would have just bought 10 postcards and enjoyed the visual essay, but there is no way that a picture can describe this island. I just read a great line in Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance which speaks about ruining the prairies as soon as you put a border around them whether it is a windshield or a photograph. That is similar to trying to describe a tropical paradise if you’ve never felt 30C water that is so clear that you can forget its tangible, perfect palms lining the white sand and a climate that dictates not only the weather but the way that the people here live. Most of the little island is supplied with Pan de coco by a lady that must have baked at least 230,010 loaves of bread in her lifetime. The recipe to this bread is not written down anywhere. The wooden table she made the bread on was so permeated with the delicious ingredients that you could probably throw it in the oven at 375F for 30 minutes then eat it with a little butter.

There is nothing like going out in a 6 foot canoe with a local and catching 13 tropical reef fish then having his wife cook them for you for dinner the next two days for free. Cracking open coconuts when you feel thirsty and drinking $1 beers that are so ice cold the condensation that instantly forms on them could turn the Mojave into an oasis.

In actuality, the fishing trip was the best fishing experience I’ve ever had (but it was also nearly the biggest disaster of the trip to date.) as it happens Brett has zero balance, which may or may not be fact but he was sitting behind me and since I couldn’t see him I assumed that is was him who caused every tremor in the miniscule boat that was on the perpetual verge of capsizing. The truth of the matter is that we were probably 507 lbs over the capacity of that watercraft and I happen to get very into the fishing experience and thus probably caused 85-93% of the tipsiness but I still blamed it on Barnes.

Another interesting thing about Nicaragua is that the ruling class here is not a political party, its crabs. This is the situation. The situation is this: we are in crab planet. The crabs run everything here from the power that they shut off several hours a day to keep the people on their toes and to remind them of the natural balance of power. They control the water, they have the beaches and if you try to do anything about it they will mess you up. I picked one up and he stabbed his needle sharp razor claw right into my hand and carved that shit up like butter. After screaming bloody murder and heinous curses at the sky I did the only thing a blue blooded Canadian would do, I curb stopped that little punta and ended his pathetic garbage eating life. After that it was a state of unmitigated warfare between us and the crabs. They ended up in our bags in the cabana, in the shower, the bathroom, and then on my plate because when pushed too far Brett and I snapped. We went ape shit on the biggest bastards we could find and ended up with 13 behemoths in a burlap sack.

Now I’m not naturally violent but I will eat you (literally) if you push me too far, and Lord knows I love to eat. So we ripped the claws with off those little pricks, crushed their bodies in our powerful hands and after a thorough cleaning cooked up the second best crab feast I’ve ever had with coconut milk that we machete hacked out of some, ya that’s right, coconuts.

 

Diving was an incredible experience. Would have loved to have Mark or Sasha with me (or both) but Esta la vida and my instructor Josh was a really rad guy from Bristol and I’m now an official member of the PADI community. If you ever want to talk dive culture I’m there for you. That’s all I have to say about that.

 

We were in agreement that the ride to get to corn island was (almost) the worst this either of us have ever done. The (actual) worst was when we sanded the bottom of Gerry Heys sailboat and looked like the smurfs for the next 3 weeks and took 3 years off our life expectancy in the course of an afternoon. SO, it was no big deal to pony up for the $106 flight back to Managua to meet up with the biggest, hungriest man I know who has (oddly) small hands and feet. He’s (like) a Carney but he doesn’t smell like cabbages.

The flight was only 1 hour compared to 3 days of backpackers hell and maybe (but not) the best decision I have ever made.

By now it is the 11^th and I’ve coincidentally been gone for 11 days. It was so good to see Mark get off the plane and to have the three musketeers back together again. We went from Managua straight to Grenada that evening and got there around 9pm. After a quick check into the Bearded Monkey we were due for the biggest night we have ever had together in Nicaragua…ever. It was Jeans Night and by all standards things were going to escalate fast. Needless to say, they did. We met up with our Kiwi friends Adam and Shane and proceeded to have what has become a typical Jeans Night. No one died or got arrested and that is all that I’m really legally (or otherwise) obligated to say.

Grenada is actually a really cool colonial town from the days of Spanish domination. The homes and all the buildings really are large with 20 foot ceilings and open to the air quad courtyards in the centre. Very cool.

One of the next day/nights was spent at a hostel on laguna de Apollo called the monkey hut. There were no monkeys. But that was of little to no consequence. Yes I am a nature enthusiast. The location this hostel was in felt like the set from Brendan Fraser’s newest (terrible) movie based on the Vern classic Journey to the centre of the earth. The reason I saw it in the first place was because it is a 3D movie and Claire really wanted to see it, I have better taste than that (to be fair it was ok entertainment, but I’d never admit that publicly). Being in that crater felt like there was nothing else in the world beyond that ridge. This is not a metaphor. It was just wild to look across the lake to where the horizon should be but there is a perfectly uniform ridge then empty sky. If you never left that crater one could honestly believe that, well I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore, back to the story.

From there we ended up here which is (obviously) where I am now. That is San Juan del Sur. San Juan is a wicked surf town on the Southern Pacific coast of Nicaragua. Here I have spent the last three days experiencing rain fall that would have made Noah pull out the blue prints for the Ark II. While God promised that he would never cover the earth in a flood again he said nor implied nothing that prevented the next closest thing. Which is (of course) the Nicaraguan rainy season. Apparently all of Central America – particularly Nicaragua, Honduras, and Belize, but also including Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico and whoever else (El Salvador, thank you Paul) – is experiencing what in the state of Texas would be classified as an Orange alert terrorist attack from Thor and whoever the god of rain is. Vancouver is a particularly rainy spot but if we had rain like this there would be no roads left and all the slope eyes in Richmond would be making Michael Phelps look like he was wearing water wings. And the Chinese can’t even doggy paddle!

We stayed one night at a Playa who’s name sounds like Madras (but was Maderas), but I think that’s in India. We swam there and body surfed because the onshore wind was making surf conditions the aquatic equivalent of the kind of poop you take that leaves you completely unsatisfied. Because even though you are baking a salmon, you feel like it came too fast through the tract and didn’t have time to solidify into something respectful to be proud of and just leaves you with a mess.  The waves are big enough to surf, at least 6 foot faces but they crashed was too fast to make it worthwhile.