Mixed metaphors

Behind the ping of raindrops on corrugated ceilings, over the rumble of the Pacific -- the heavy surf breaking over the jagged boulders scarring the beaches at Las Peñitas, the asthmatic wheeze of water sucked back to sea -- the perceptible sizzle made me grimace, my body tensing the way one does anticipating impact, being struck.  Like incandescent gashes suddenly torn into the night, electrical surges lurched across the black, horizontally, branching out and crookedly out, like NCAA tournament brackets from a Parkinson's afflicted hand unfurling in reverse, the spiderwebbing of cracking glass radiating away from the point of origin; then, extinguished, ocean and heavens remarried in darkness, the only remnants the etherial singes on unblinking irises.

Alone on the unlit street, power in Las Peñitas having gone out some time ago, I decided my life was worth more than seven dollars, approximately what I'd budgeted for a going away feast of pescado frito, tostones, y arroz, accompanied by either a cold Toña or Coca-Cola, the latter to this day concocted with real sugar in Central America.  With beach spread to my left and nothing in the way of trees or houses for several hundred meters,  I moved from a walking to jogging lightning rod.  

Back in my beachfront hostel, the same one that advertised "Horse Ridding" as an activity coordinated for visitors -- and someone must have taken them up on it; I saw nary a horse in my two days at the beach -- I reclined under a thatched roof and scarfed down the package of ten Oreos in my pocket, admiring the most violent display of lightning I've ever seen.  

The sky was ablaze.  It was like sitting inside a tent that light could hardly penetrate as an army of Samurai warred on the outside, frequent and errant sword strokes tearing gashes into the walls, unpredictably scattering across the canvas blinding streaks of light that were, inexplicably, cloaked anew in an instant.  In the moments between sharp flashes a dull glow would pulse on all sides, like the night sky of a city under siege, a city in flames, observed from a distance, evidence that beyond, behind clouds and obstacles, the storm raged.

The next day I was back in León, wandering the city one last time, in the evening catching a microbus to Managua, then a cab to the airport.  The cabby and I chatted the whole fifteen minute trip, which cost me under five dollars after tip, and he gave me his phone number -- another friend the next time I'm in Nicaragua.

At the airport, going through security, I inexplicably thought back to the bottle of Smirnoff Ice someone had left in my hostel room in León.  "What a waste," I thought, "How hilarious it would have been to hide the twelve ounce and thus not carry-on legal bottle in my carry-on, and then explode with a 'You got iiiiiiiicceedd, bbiiiiiiiiiiiiiittcchh' when bag-screening security personnel uncovered it in my bag."

I wonder if they play that game in Nicaragua.  I wonder if Nicaraguan airport security personal are allowed to have a sense of humor.  I wonder if sometime I'll get so intoxicated pre-flight that I'll think it's a good idea to ice airport security.  I hope so.

Delta Air Lines plays an instructional safety video before flights, during which passengers are advised that "most seat cushions can be used as flotation devices."  One would presume that Delta knows which particular seat cushions are floatable and which aren't, considering that all distinct cushion types -- headrests, seat backs, seat bottoms, etc -- should be constructed according to identical, type-particular specifications.  Yet, the company chooses ambiguity, promising survivors extra post-crash insanity -- amidst flames and wreckage and scattered limbs and torsos, screams and wails -- a mad and savage scramble to figure out which fucking seat cushions will keep your legless torso afloat until rescuers arrive.  

More likely than anything, Delta knows, should your plane crash into the ocean, nobody is going to survive.  So it really doesn't matter.

Toward the end of my trip, after my Spanish had edged out of rusty unpracticedness, I was asked, by native speakers who had known me for several days, once if I was Spanish, another time whether I was Argentine or Spanish.  And there was no asterisk, nothing about me being latino but retarded.  Which felt nice, complimentary without being an intended compliment, and it almost made me forgot an encounter weeks earlier in Masaya, when I was getting back into the groove of español 24/7; I'd unintentionally indicated to two  chatty and obviously gay teenagers, after having clarified I was a connoisseur of titties, a fiend for the latina, that I would consider joining them in a romp of the homosexual style.  "Pero no sos gay, verdad?"

Indeed not.

So now I'm back in the States, with a trip booked to Guatemala just after Thanksgiving, a little mission work.

That mission: to educate a few café-colored, Católicas Chapinas about the advantages and pleasures of contraception, a pocketful of Trojans and a healthy libido my teaching aids.

A Gringo Again

I kept sweating out visits at sixty cents an hour at a random Cyber (internet without café) in Masaya, Nicaragua, returning daily with aspirations of composing a few paragraphs that'd charm jealousy out of air-conditioned offices back home.  It's took me three days to arrive at this period.  I guess twelve Córdobas for an hour in a computer-equipped sauna isn't bad.

(I struggled to the end of that paragraph sometime last week, and now I can't figure out how to type a semicolon, so I'll just state the obvious, but, first, a moment to lament being also unable to locate the colon.  And I just adjusted the keyboard, now reset to the United States configuration; victory.  Also, I've since relocated from muggy Masaya to Estelí, in the cooler north.  Now, to that belated sentiment hinted at toward the beginning of this loquacious, meandering parenthetical: I've been headbutting, for over a year, I guess, the last time I was regularly updating this blog, against some creativity-stifling, word-suppressing monolith that dwarfs any structure of this world.  Las palabras no me quieren salir.)

I thought it'd be easy to share some stories from my travels; it's been anything but.  Maybe it's because the only English I've spoken in the last ten days, with the exception of a beer-and-beach native-language binge with a couple of USA coeds nearing the end of summer internships in Nicaragua, has been of the take-a-breath-between-each-monosyllabic-word variety.  The sort of thing that catapults into perspective the patience of your Spanish-speaking friends.  I'm sure I'm of the confidence-exceeding-competence variety of gringo, confidence intact thanks to my many friends never stating the obvious, unlike the Colombian who once declared he'd mistaken me for a Colombian, but retarded.

On the other hand, he mistook me for a Colombian, which is some small victory, surely.

To the specifics.  My flight landed in Managua sometime after midnight, the wee hours of Saturday, August 7.  I'd told myself before the seventeen day trip it was okay to splurge.  There was no reason to cling to the professional backpacker's survivalist mentality that, at it's worst, legitimized two entire afternoons of comparison shopping in Panama City, pitting against each other every shoe vendor in a half-mile stretch, all for an ultimate savings of somewhere between two and three dollars.  Splurging 2011 meant a ten dollar reservation in a fan-cooled dorm room in tropical Managua.  Eight human bodies and a non-oscillating fan.  If only my idea of splurging capped out somewhere closer to thirteen dollars, the magic price at which air-conditioning became available, the cleaning lady might not have been able to read my mattress, a sweaty canvas into which was saturated, pending evaporation, the form of gringo sleeping.

I entertained the notion of spending a day in Managua, but the allure of surprising the friends I'd ventured to Nicaragua to see, unannounced, because I have no idea how to contact the vast majority of them, was too great to delay.  I hopped on a microbus to nearby Masaya, where there was no relief from the heat.  I booked a room without ventilation, but with a fan I could dedicate to my body.  At no point during the next seven days, which were approximately five days more than I'd planned to spend in Masaya, was I not sweating, or sticky from having sweated.  My bathroom was an unventilated closet.  Even after a cold shower I'd be sweating before having toweled off.

And so we've arrived where I began: how can I coax a bit of jealousy out of you, back home in the US, when we're experiencing the same sultry heat, but I'm doing it without air conditioning, and very often without fans?

Having booked my Masaya hostel, I began retracing the steps I remembered having carried me to the house of some friends, los Huete.  I navigated the barrio, the rare gringo, until I arrived at the alleyway entrance that leads into the family's living space, a collection of structures, housing various relatives, nestled between and built upon the two concrete structures sandwiching the property.  The house is composed of several rooms, a patchwork of wooden planks and aluminum and cement that retains heat on hot days.  Which means every day.  Outside the door is a small patio space where people, weather permitting, can congregate around a small table, throw a few chairs and stools onto the dirt and pray for a breeze.  Between the patio and the outhouse and the separate shower closet, the latter two of which are set a few meters back, at the end of the property (and between which, the first night and a six-pack deep, I was unable to distinguish, aiming my watery stream inside a bucket-rim, faintly visible in the ambient lighting, that, embarrassingly, turned out not to be a toilet), sits, shaded by corrugated aluminum, the multifunctional, multisectional concrete sink common to Latin America -- a deep central basin that collects water from the faucet atop the metal piping rising from the dirt; floating in the water is a wide and shallow plastic bucket, like a doggie-bowl, for ladling water into either of the side compartments; to one side, a shallow ridged section for washing clothes and hands, brushing teeth; the other side deeper, segregated for washing dishes.  The family has aspirations for structural improvements, though barring a sudden change of fortune, employment, that's a longterm goal; for now they crack jokes about the three little pigs, if only you could have seen what they had before the wolf tore through.

As with many of the friends I've made in Latin America, there seems to be no correlation between financial means and generosity, the former frequently limited, the latter typically boundless.  The reverberations of laughter and chatter keep the corrugated ceiling busy even on the driest of days, echoes a welcoming breeze singing down the alley, out to the street.  They have family and friends; fresh food and a culinary creativity to accompany ingredients of tropical amplitude; and a home to keep themselves dry and warm, simple but perfectly functional.  At no point were there discussions of flatscreen TVs.

And so I stood beside a line of clothes strung to dry and smiled, projecting a quick buenas tardes down the alleyway; an improvised door groaned and a head popped out.  Immediately, it was like I'd never left, there was no two-year disappearance.  Inviting me to delicious homemade meals, preparing diverse Nicaraguan dishes -- indio viejo; sopa borracha -- solely because we'd identified a litany I'd never tried.  Filling my palms with ripe, exotic fruits -- zapote; nispero; nancite (encurtido); others with names that escape me.  Bringing me icy glasses of tiste, other traditional beverages.

Erick and Marbel escorted me above Masaya to the fortress Coyotepe one scorching afternoon -- the only day Eric might see off work in the foreseeable future -- where we scaled stone walls to enjoy three hundred sixty degree views and a sweat-stalling breeze.  At night, Eric would whip me around town on the back of his motorcycle, dodging traffic and pedestrians to pick up a case of Toña, a bottle of Flor de Caña, some Ranchitos to snack on; our last night, my despida, swerving to pick up a case of Toña after we'd polished off a liter of Flor de Caña, etiqueta negra.  (Zooming through town, down barely lit, potholed streets, hurtling through intersections with little more than a few shrill shrieks of the horn, a perfunctory tapping of the brakes, protected by nothing more than a buzz and the invincibility of youth, I was reminded that, if one has to die young, being chucked from a motorcycle isn't a bad way to go.  Assuming it's a quick, clean death, of course.)

I don't know if saying I love that family is too strong a sentiment.

Equally responsible for my many days extended stay in Masaya were los Castro, a family who I'd befriended in Masaya's Mercado Municipal a few years back, having frequented their comedor for the finest and fullest plates of desayuno nicaragüense.  When I walked back into the baking diner, I was greeted at once by a chorus of Pa-trick! Ya vino! and a strangling wall of stagnant heat, insulated by concrete and aluminum, stoked by various burning stovetops and fires and human bodies.  It's so hot, the only reason you worry about how long the fried chicken has been sitting out is that all the juice might have cooked out since it was snatched from the pan.  That first day I was presented a plate of Baho, my favorite Nicaraguan specialty, and refused to let me pay.

I visited Everth -- who has now expanded business from the comedor, selling used shoes, used clothes, and, in two separate stalls, used toys, "a diez la pieza" -- and his family daily, his beautiful daughters Evelinda and Macy, voseando with Everth and the girls, reverting to the somewhat less comfortable Usted with the rest.  He'd lead me around the market in his free moments, inquiring if I'd tried every of myriad variety of fruit, picking up pounds for pennies, bags bulging with jocote, mamón, zapote, and others unnameable.

One evening we went out for the Latin American version of pizza, which almost always, almost impossibly, leaves me craving even the fifty-cent pizzas untouched at Food Lions back home.  We went out for pupusas salvadoreñas (elaboradas con ingredientes nicaragüenses) another evening, and the waitress seemed impressed that I, flaunting those few weeks in El Salvador, asked for loroco.  I invited the family to the shores of la Laguna de Apoyo, where I stripped to my Dickies and jumped in, while the family, unsure swimmers, watched from the shore; we ordered platters of fried fish, a few liters of Toña, and otherwise laughed away an evening.

Best of all was the goodbye asado at Everth's mom's house, where also reside various relatives, all who I consider friends; especially the precious Anita, who'd blather to me about any topic, flashing the semi-toothy smile of adolescence at every frequent fit of laughter.  Everth and the family got a kick out of watching me, initially, struggle to cut the slabs of beef into long chains; then came the grating of various vegetables, onions, chilis, celery, garlic; finally all was bathed in olive oil, a hailstorm of salt, and mixed by hand, a mouthwatering aroma expelling from the mixing cauldron.  There was corn to be grilled.  We chopped, finely, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, squeezed fresh lime, and covered in perfect avocado, chimol.  Rice on the side.  A fresh salsa made from chilis, onion, and tomato, bien picante.  Everth stoked the charcoal fire and arranged long strips of beef across the grill, cobs of corn in a circle, ringing the sizzling meat.  When I saw my plate, the chimol served inside a leaf of iceberg lettuce, browned strips of beef atop a pile a rice, two hot tortillas on a dish aside, plenty of picante, two charred cobs of corn, I went into a photo shooting frenzy.  In the juryrigged lighting, the dim light, cast from the single overhanging bulb, further shadowed by objects hanging from the ceiling, made it somewhat more difficult to shoot without flash, as much as I was trembling in anticipation.

The food exceeded my lofty expectations.  Como decimos: Barriga llena, corazón contento.

When peering down into the recesses of a smoking volcanic crater barely warrants a mention, you know you've had a good vacation (though, to be fair, pretty much anything short of a violently erupting volcano is going to pale in comparison to Guatemala's Volcán Pacaya, having melted the soles of my shoes toeing lava).  Visiting friends on a daily basis, conversing always in a second language, struggling to stay hydrated, paying for, maybe, half your meals, the rest enjoyed en casa, homemade, disregarding sage advice and eating unpeeled fruit, bathed in tapwater and massaged by unwashed hands, hands having just handled raw meat, drunkenly chugging tapwater and breakfasting on liquados made with powdered milk and tapwater, enjoying streetfood; amistades and immersion, this is life.

Coke Floats for Redemption

I've been spending my last few weeks bouncing between Masaya and Estelí, Nicaragua -- in the former invading the humble but cozy dirt-floored homes and kitchens -- spaces your hanging clothes would find suffocating -- of my adopted families; in the latter, trying to work my charm so I can flirt with creating my own (i.e. striving to arrive at that delightful point where it'll be necessary to pray that prolonged exposure to heat doesn't proliferate undetectable lesions in sheer rubber prophylactics).

Masaya, besides being a treeless incinerator, is the home of some of my best Central American friends. I breakfast in Everth + fam's market comedor, then spend my afternoons lounging with Marbel + company, gobbling up homemade comida tipica -- i.e. torta de pescado: dried, deep fried fish -- gulping down tistes and chichas. I drank ant-and-dirt-specked sap scooped directly from a machete-hacked tree trunk, the so-sweet chicha. The Powerade bottle refilled with milky white Chicha that I'm lugging around will have to wait the fifteen or so days it takes for heavy fermentation to soften the sweetness. ¡Sabrosisima!

Everth, wife and child escorted me to Catarina, a chilly pueblo 8km outside of Masaya, set on the crater rim overlooking la Laguna de Apoyo, deservedly known for its mirador. They then proceeded to treat me to a tipica platter costing half the month's rent for their concrete enclosed patch of dirt.

How do I repay the kindness heaped upon me, the undeserving karmic abyss disguised by a nice smile? By introducing the world to Coke Floats.

Barbecue's Revenge

With the end of humanity now in sight, courtesy rebellious barbeque, I hope women will start throwing themselves at me. And less in the 28 Days Later we-wanna-share-the-plague-and-pain type of throwing oneself as the let's-get-it-on-in-these-last-moments type of forwardness.

Yesterday in Managua, on one of the many inner-city bus rides I took between Mercado Huembes, Plaza Inter, and Mercado Oriental, a girl near me vomited violently several times. Later a guy, without first assessing the floor, plopped down in the seat, his black boots swimming in the white sea of clam chowder -- of a chunkiness to which Campbell's aspires. I was gonna warn him but I felt like I needed a laugh. Mostly because riding city buses in Central American capitals, supposedly, is the russian roulette for muggings, so everybody is constantly mad-dogging everyone else, brandishing bags of mangos as if they were bricks, making sure the thorns of those dozen roses are prominently displayed.

Anyway, I figure I witnessed the introduction of barbecue's revenge to Nicaragua, and being on a packed, vomit-sloshing US school bus has probably ensured my quick demise. I'll be dead next week. So be it. So far, though rather quickly, said virus has only manifested itself as brutal purgings of the bowels -- which are making me suddenly thrilled horrible karaoke is blaring from the bar next door. Every time I fall upon the toilet seat is sounds like the Gremlin who squeezed into my anus is being skewered.

At least, before I die, I've rediscovered the joy of tipping. Which is to say rewarding good service when it isn't an obligation. I typically eat street food or in grungy market comedores, or I'm buying fruit by the bagful. Minimal service eating where tipping is unheard of. But yesterday morning, at a random comedor stuck in a dirt-floored, covered space between the long onion and watermelon galleries in Masaya's public market, I was spurred to generosity.

Of course the breakfast I wanted didn't correspond to any of the dozen covered pots of various meats and vegetables and concoctions atop the woodfire stove. I rattled off a short list of what would satisfy my cravings: gallo pinto, queso, y maduro. I was assured my demands would be met and was pointed to the plastic table with the rice and bean residue-soiled tablecloth. The ladies went to work.

After ten minutes appeared a heavenly platter of greasy gallo pinto, maduros y queso frito, mas la mitad de un aguacate, dos huevos fritos y un cafécito. The family chatted me up, Everth, the father of two-year-old cutie Belinda, had his daughter walk over and kiss me on the cheek, and proceeded to bill me C$30. Which is to say there was absolutely zero concern I was being given a gringo-weighted bill. Which is to say, in several emergency situations, I have literally considered wiping my ass with larger quantities of money. So I dropped a Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. BAM. Fifty Córdobas.

It's an incredible feeling to stuff yourself on a made-to-order feast, all in gracious company, then, in a place where tipping doesn't happen, dtop 66% of the bill, all this and walk out only US$2.50 lighter. Though, now that I think about it, my intestinal perturbance might have something to do with the family's use of avocados as the tool with which to soften and flatten raw steaks.

To top off a nice dining day I visited my first Nicaraguan taco stand. Nico tacos are like taquitos, rolled tortillas filled with spiced, shredded meat, served with cabbage salad. I had two chicken tacos, pulled fresh from the simmering oil-vat. They were intensely flavorful, all that crispy fattiness balanced by a pineapple sweetness, hot peppery bite, and juicy meat.

Today I breakfasted again in the market, treated to the same fresh feast at whatever hour I arrived (frickin' McDonalds, and all you have to do is reheat some frozen shit!). Afterward I chatted for hours with Everth, and carried his daughter around the market while he purchased a variety of fruits I'd never tried, so I could eat again. The guayabana with its incredibly sweet white flesh; nisporo, with its sapote but smaller, juicier imitation; hocote, simple and sweet. Tomorrow I've been promised anona, a red-skinned, sweeter take on the guayabana.

When I returned to my hotel, the owner delivered a note my good friend Marbel had left in my absence. I hadn't seen her since she suddenly stopped appearing for work at the quesillo stand, at which point I stopped eating quesillos. I called her up, her husband scooted over on the mini-moto and scooped me, and I spent the afternoon eating homemade baho and chocobananos in the humble family home. I got to hang out with Marbel's awesome kids, mom and sister, share laughs and compliments over old photo albums, and then share the majority of my 1800+ photos on the viewing screen of my digital camera -- many from parts of Nicaragua they'd theretofore, well, only seen in pictures.

And I was reminded again of one of the trillion reasons I'll regret dying soon, without having the pleasure of returning to NC for an eastern style BBQ-sandwich: People making you feel at home far, far from home. Good ol' southern hospitality.

If they catch fire, toss 'em in the lake.

Today I went to La Laguna de Apoyo, a crater lake near Masaya, Nicaragua. It was picturesque, just like Lonely Planet had promised. Yay! I hiked down to the water, touched the water, decided it would be nice to swim in, decided then that I'd prefer not to be wet, took a few pictures, then hiked back up to the crater rim, at which point I was dripping sweat, my khaki pants soaked through, and I decided a swim would be nice. Apoyo is at the wrong end of the journey.

This advisory, taped to my hotel room's wall, might be more interesting:

DO NOT USE the fan as clothes dryer. could overheat and cause fire. Think about their safety.

I guess clothes and/or fans, I'm still a bit confused, are something of sacred commodities around here...

Precious Metals

It would have already been obvious to the casual observer that I think Marbel is way fuckin' cool. How many married women of the non-cheating, non-friend's-moms varieties do you see me hanging around?

But it's obvious, you say, Marbel of Masaya sells superlative quesillos, thus commanding dominion over your stomach, to which your heart and brain are but accessory organs. Moreover, there's plenty of other pretty providers of sustenance for whom your adoration is not contingent upon personality or marital status.

Yes, granted, I reply. But you know I'm only patient enough to muster one half hour of active listening, all that nodding to feign listening allows you to survey all those luscious curves. Thus, I posit, Marbel had long ago -- hours upon hours of conversation the first time I passed through Masaya -- passed this crusty misanthropes tests of cool.

And then at dinner last night, if I wasn't already regretting that her husband was proving a genuinely excellent dude (thus constructing something of a moral speedbump on my usually flat path to justifying "accidents" like a lawnmower walking its way into bed), Marbel asked if I liked Metallica, pointing out a poster on the wall behind me. After I finished mashing with a fork prong the bug that had just crawled out of my no-so-fresh by-the-slice pizza, I responded in the affirmative. I expected the squashed face response, mocking devil horns and head banging. (I've been hanging out with too many superchristians, I think.) I added hasty comments about la musica being "muy pesada, muy fuerte," to excuse her forthcoming dismissal of my preferred tuneage.

"!Me fascina Metallica¡" she blurted with eyes wide. "¿Conoces la canción 'One'? Es bien bonita." She proceeded to further decimate my expectations (and urge me toward the nearest John Deere dealer) rattling off favorite bands and songs: Pantera, "Walk"; Iron Maiden, "Fear of the Dark"; Megadeath; Slayer; Sepultura; etc.

All of which are bands that would appreciate any diabolical plans I conjure.

¿Que nota, maje?

Too relaxed to take advantage of plentiful free time fit for a seventy-two hour, visa-resetting border hop to Costa Rica, my flirtations have expanded to visa violations. From my directory of (potential girl)friends collected in Estelí, to Marvil and Juan of quesillo-serving fame on the fringe of Masaya's parque central, to the neighborhood kids and couchsurfing.com saints hosting my cousin Jamie and I in Ocotal; from the streetside fritangas feeding my current protein-binge with bicep-building platters of gallo pinto, plantains, cabbage salad, tortillas, and, of course, meat meat meat that cost, at the stomach-and-wallet-elasticity-testing-extreme of $2.50 to cups of arroz con leche for a quarter, a bottle of Flor de Caña and a Pepsi at a discoteca for $6, cantaloupes for US$0.50 to $1, I've managed to lose myself in Nicaragua as fully as I have in this sentence.

With León-based trekking outfit-cum-social aid organization Quetzaltrekkers, Jamie and I passed the last few nights camped on a secluded beach on Nicaragua's most northwestern point, hiking Volcán Cosiguina yesterday in the heavy coastal heat and eating a delicious, bloodbath of ceviche that consisted of diced tomato, onion, and a fresh clam smashed and pried open and then hacked into chunks, all tossed and "cooked" in lime juice, still swimming in beet-colored blood. It was fun. Despite the easy hike I'm exhausted. And stoked for running water and showers and fritangas and beds; and ground littered with shattered liters of Toña and concrete-napping bolos instead of sandal-piercing, nail-length thorns.

And girls.

True, the boasts of northern Nicaragua's male population that it's women are the country's finest are Steph Curry precise -- Estelí, Ocotal, and Matagalpa are places where the karmic-consequence for the minds (uncontrollable) perversions at every passing Nica is heat that leaves you with embarrasing pitstains. But hating on the rest of the wide world of Nica's would be like saying I only date SI Swimsuit models.

Lastly: Usman: Rickey Hendson inducted into 2009 hall of fame

¡Viva Sir Rickey! (If you're confused about the inclusion of this ever important update, don't fret.)