Notes from the road

So, uh, I'm no longer in Nicaragua, but here are some belated notes from the road...

• Religious holidays are annoying when travelling. I mean, I knew this already (Eid ad-Fitr in Indonesia last year was a prime example), but I'm definitely being reminded. Its difficult enough to navigate travelling normally, never mind when busses don't run when they normally do, and things that do run are booked. Stupid Semana Santa (Easter). Can't you just come in May?
• How impressed both Amanda and I both were with our first hotel after Little Corn Island. Clean sheets? More than one electrical plug in the room for charging our devices? Internet? Electricity that is turned on 24/7? Towels to use FOR FREE? What is this madness?
• How much I always feel like dancing to the pumping reggaeton, salsa, and reggae music that the chicken busses play, despite how packed these busses become. This morning our chicken bus from the airport could cheer up anyone, anyone who likes latin music, disco lights that blink in time with music, and sparkly tape wrapped around various parts of the bus, that is.

 

• I'm currently not sure if the people in Nicaragua are very helpful, or if being a smiling young female has smoothed our way more often than not. This morning, a security guard let us take our preferred shortcut ACROSS the runway on the way to our flight on Big Corn Island. We had snuck across when we had first arrived, saving ourselves 25min of walking. Now that we were leaving, we were a bit sad to see a security guard toting a rather large gun guarding the hole in the fence. We asked him, smiling, if we could please run across very quickly, and after briefly debating, he opened the gate and let us cross. Success! We also later had a cab driver go out of his way multiple times to help us find the coffee shop with wifi that we wanted to kill time at (before our bus leaves later today). This included bringing us to several spots (without charging us extra!), waiting upon dropping us off at one spot (it was closed, so he picked us up again) and consulting with several people on his cell phone. He also will be coming back at an agreed upon time to pick us up. I know that he wants the business too, but he definitely went out of his way as well. ...Of course, these benefits are unfortunately balanced out with the creepy unabashed stares that occur more often than we would like as well.
• How important it is to know some spanish. If you're heading this way, practice even a little bit! I used Rosetta Stone before I came here which has helped a little bit and we're surviving, but in Latin America people just expect that you'll know a bit of Spanish. In South East Asia, the languages are tonal and much more difficult, and people either learn a bit of english or they just expect that you won't speak any of their language. I think I'd like to come back here and do a several week long Spanish school and home-stay program. Spanish really isn't that hard to learn, and it sure comes in helpful.

 

 

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