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.

The top Latin American travel accessory: white girls.

If we've talked business, money gettin' schemes, anytime in the last year, I've probably mentioned my interest in robbery: bank and tourist.  Minutes after arriving in León, sipping an average and overpriced, at thirty Córdobas, mojito at Bigfoot's hostel front bar, chatting to a German girl who'd just recounted the story of how she'd found herself in the hostel's dorm for the last month, a story that began with her being robbed, I found myself prefacing my monologue: "You know, I probably shouldn't be saying this in a hostel, especially a hostel swimming with irresponsible travelers who've yet to experience any significant setback."

I outlined why I hate working.  Because I'm lazy.  And that I like working with kids, especially chavalitos in Latin America.  And that volunteer work gives me a boner.  Because this variety of altruistic endeavour, at least in Latin America, seems to attract, almost exclusively, women; and these typically European or Australian or Canadian, sometimes Brazilian or Argentinean or Chilean women, let me assure you, are inarguably ones, one representing an affirmative vote on the binary scale, you would or you wouldn't.  And they're the best kind of ones -- ones even before you've taken them out to the Peruvian disco, even before you begin the usual debaucherous descent toward flirting with the toothless Chicklet vendor on your lonely stumble home; they're ones before you begin slamming the free drinks purchased by ticket currency distributed indisciminately outside, on disco row, where a gaggle of hype men hoping to entice white people, but especially gringas, into any of many indistinguishable bars push multicolored confetti into your chest, your pocket, your hand; some of the slips will fall into the recesses of your pocket to be fished out, wrinkled and faded, some weeks later, by the local woman doing your laundry.  If that slip of paper could talk, it would chuckle, reminding you why you love volunteering in Perú, surrounded by tons of ones: because every time you go out there's the chance someone else might do what you can't -- because even your expansive moral spectrum has boundaries -- and slip a roofie in a white girl's drink, and you might be around to benefit.  There's your boner.  Or potential boner.

But I digress.  To my enraptured German audience of one, I spilled the beans.  "What I think would be a great idea, something that would allow me to travel and volunteer and not exert too much effort, would be robbing tourists.  Digital cameras, wallets, laptops, all those valuables that travelers have a bad habit of leaving around, in the open, while they shower or sleep or take day trips."  She didn't seem particularly amused, but that's probably because she's German, who aren't allowed to laugh as punishment for their history.  I turned and talked to a Swiss kid who was checking in.  The German girl left at some point.



The next morning I awoke to the Swiss kid, who happened to bunk in the bed over mine, tearing the sheets off his bed, dumping his bags out, belly to the floor searching under the bed.  "Somebody stole my wallet," he said.  "It was in these shorts last night," shorts that fell off the bed sometime in the night, maybe scattering their contents on the floor.  I did the usual frowning, overturning of things, then went back to sleep, hoping the German girl, who was two beds over, wasn't witnessing this.


That night, or maybe it was the next, I ate some good pizza.  The first good pizza I've had in Latin America.  I went out to the underpopulated beaches at las Peñitas, forty five minutes on the hottest, most cramped chicken bus I've ever had the misfortune of riding; after the seats and aisles were completely, one hundred percent overflowing with sweaty flesh smushed against sweaty flesh, the fare-collecter holding a rail, hanging halfway out the front door, seven gringos, replete with backpacks, showed up.  People must've sucked in their guts, or maybe they shoved children under seats, because the gringos made it on.  Sitting on the right side of the bus, there was a wall of people, standing, the length of the aisle, making it perfectly impossible for me to observe anything except bellies to my left.  All the way to the front of the bus, and down the stairs, were people standing, preventing me from seeing anything out of the windshield.  My field of vision was a rectangular tunnel: all seatbacks and heads to the front of the bus, a human wall to my left, windows to my right, mercifully open.  The warm water washed away the sweat and grime, and a couple of cute Caleñas I met, after they waved and yelled at the gringo punishing his calves with a soft-sand run, the older of whom is studying medicine in León, made me forget the grueling ride to arrive.

Last night I met Justin, a cool kid originally from Greensboro, who'd studied at UNCC and the University of Michigan, with whom I share a love of alcohol and Latina complexions, and we ended up on a six hour binge -- beer then tequila then more beer then a lot of rum then more beer, some driving -- with a random group of Nicaraguan men we shared a table with at the crowded BárBaro.  I woke up to a cleaning lady telling me it was time for check out, and was I planning to stay another night?  I wasn't, but I didn't really have a choice.  Still in León.

With word of good pizza spreading fast, I joined a few nice British girls from the hostel while they ate.  Dinner was unceremoniously interrupted by a heavily intoxicated, well dressed Nicaraguan gentleman, with a nice collection of shiny gold teeth; I'd noticed him standing behind our table, admiring the white skin of my companions, and my Buenas, apparently, was an invitation to sit down.  He knocked over one of the girl's drinks, didn't seem too perturbed, and wiped up the spill with his elbow.  Within a minute or two he'd picked up the glass and started drinking what was left.  He never reached for the pizza, but I tried to move it out of arm's length.  His English was indecipherable, mostly gibberish, but he was proficient in drinking lingo: "You give me beer. Yes!"  He was stroking the girls arms regularly, shaking hands with everyone, repeatedly, every time he thought he'd mastered another phrase in English, which was often.  "I am English!"  He'd cock his head and coo at the girls, "Amor. Entendés? Jooo are wuv."  He told us he was driving himself. 

I went to the bathroom, which I thought would be his cue to whip out his cock, after the girls assured me they'd be fine.  When I came back, he was gone, and I'd missed the best part: the stagger slash lean-in for kisses-that-never-materialized when he said goodbye, shaking hands with the girls, his head just hovering in the vicinity of their faces.

Waiting for the dinner check a car stopped in the street, far from the intersection, far from the stop sign, in front of the window in which we were sitting.  A different Nicaraguan man just staring and smiling.  Then he waved.  After thirty seconds or so, he made his way to the stop sign, and then off. 

White girls.

Choridedos and Vení, cagame! Muriendo de risa en Estelí

I finally pried myself away from Masaya, hitching a ride to the bus station at the back of the Mercado Municipal from Marbel's dad, loaded up with gifts from the family -- trinkets and snacks for the road, zapote and a heavy portion of moist sopa borracha, a traditional spice cake bathed in a sugar-sweetened aguardiente.  Off to Estelí.

The drive to northern Nicaragua is refreshing, driving through verdant mountains, distant volcanoes framed against the sky, the air noticably cooler.  Arriving in Estelí I thought I'd check out my old digs, Hospedaje El Chepito.  There was a new TV in the corridor around which the rooms are arranged.  Inside the rooms, the walls had been redone, extended all the way to the ceiling, buffering sleepers from the snores and proclivities of their neighbors.  The concrete floors had also been tiled.

On the other hand, huespedes now gathered in front of the TV, watching at full volume until some hour long after I'd gone to bed.  There was also an impressive cockroach infestation; when I brushed against one of my shoes the next morning, two cockroaches scuttled from their dark refuge under its sole.  The shared toilet was also sans seat, yet someone had bricked the lay-up, smearing a portion of the extra-wide rim with waste (it was cleaned, mostly, by the next morning).  My bed was covered in some sort of crumb, and there was no sheet with which to cover myself, so I was forced to rise at various points of the night to layer myself against the cool.  A long sleeve shirt, first.  Later, socks.

I changed hostels the next morning, spent a night in a dorm at a backpacker-populated joint, remembered that, for the sake of undisturbed sleep, I prefer to have my own room, and moved to Hostal Santa María the next morning.  More cheaply rented rooms in a nice family home than a true hostel, it was a gem: clean, cheap, a nice family and a desayuno típico included in the price.

My days in Estelí were spent walking familiar streets; sitting on the curb, sipping cans of Toña with Eddy and Santiago; chatting with Isamara.  Not sweating.  More than anything else, I spent afternoons with Luz Marina, relaxing on benches in the shaded parque infantil, chatting for hours, laughing frequently como retardados.  We're a silly pair, from two separate worlds.  Her favorite food is gallo pinto. She lives in one of the barrios somewhere far across the panamericana, somewhere I've yet to visit.  She doesn't like to walk there after dark, and she needs to help her mother prepare dinner, so the descent of the sun whispers for us, hasta mañana.  Her mom toils, sunup to sundown, and earns less than US$100 monthly, and on afternoons that she plays the lottery, at a dollar per ticket, accompaniment for the gallo pinto becomes a longshot.  Her father, with arthritic knees, is barely able to work.  A brother contributes some, and gifts Luz Marina a few pesitos when he can.  A cousin in the US wires money, when he can; infrequently, recently, as he'd been saddled with expensive personal medical bills.  She can't afford the medical attention she might need.  She hasn't gone out to enjoy the city's nightlife since I last took her out, over two years ago.  She's as good a friend as I have.

We walked out of the city to La Casita, went out to lunches at restaurants she had only glanced at before.  Mostly, we laughed, and smiled, and enjoyed.


Yesterday afternoon we said goodbye, I caught a cab from my hostal to Cotran Sur and, a bus change later, stepped down in León, drips of sweat from the tip of my nose discoloring the dust at my feet.  If I were sleeping in a leak-free coffin equipped with an industrial air conditioner, it might not be enough. 

Staying in what's truly a backpacker hostel, at least fifty beds, the bar area is a whirlwind of English-speaking, Spanish-butchering Europeans and a bilingual staff; loud packs of travelers cackle drunkenly from every corner.  I'm suddenly at a loss for how to communicate.  I drink a liter at the bar, aware of the path of each individual drop of sweat sliding and stopping and sliding again down my back.

But the city is beautiful, the architecture impressive.  And every new destination promises new culinary experiences, like the repocheta asada, a corn tortilla, estilo nicaragüense, folded, filled with cheese, and grilled, served hot with pickled onions and a cabbage salad.  To combat the heat, a raspado -- quite simply, shaved ice swimming in condensed milk, or whichever other syrup of your choice.  Whether the ice is frozen agua pura, and whether the haggard iceman has washed his hands anytime, ever, before scraping the block, then molding the shavings into a packed dome in your bowl, are questions one can't really consider, especially with a size large not even rounding fifty cents.  And the blackish flecks caught in the cloyingly sweet, light-brown stew, well, I'm just hoping that was cinnamon crusted under his fingernails.

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.

I feel like dying

The way Tegucigalpa climbs and crowds from the valleys to the peaks -- crooked wooden planks strung with plastic sheeting fluttering in the wind like flags of poverty, the rusted red of tin roofing cutting swaths between foliage, as bunched as Brazil's infamous favelas -- looks entirely improbable.

It's the type of extreme density that makes more sense in a plane-bound metropolis, hardly so here where steep slopes jut so suddenly and sharply, houses affixed precariously to precipices as if secured by tacks, where it looks like The Hulk raged under the land, trying to punch his way out.

But Teguc was just a blip in a long day busing from Estelí, Nicaragua to Siguatepeque, Honduras, a nondescript city where I passed the night on the way to La Ceiba. La Ceiba is a grungy northern port city on the Caribbean coast, where the population is a diverse brown and black, Latino and Garífuna respectively, and panhandlers can pester you in Spanish or English. Ceiba is Honduras' party capital, where beer flows freely and girls six-to-sixty, fit to flab, can bust out the Punta, the traditional ass-physics-defying Garífuna dance. The Garífuna celebration of God's generous endowment of rump. Awaiting me in Ceiba was La Feria Isidra y Carnaval de la Amistad en La Ceiba, a wildly popular annual festival that hops barrios nightly, culminating tomorrow with the city center Carnaval.

Nightly Ceibeñas and the visitors packing out every hotel stream to the designated barrio, where beer tents and busied aproned women waving skewers and spatulas prod and flip smoking slabs of carne and chorizo on oil-bathed grills line every street, funneling the hordes doing their best to spill as little beer as possible in the storming swirls of humanity swarming and sidestepping their way between any of the various stages scattered across the barrio's intersections. One advancing army -- los rockeros -- hellbent upon seeing someone reproduce amusingly accented Metallica classics. The opposing flow, more agile, avoiding collisions with grace and shimmying hips, gravitates toward thumping basslines, reggae and reggaeton, where smooth-moving masses of dark brown and blacked skinned Ceibeñas groove, sweat glistening, in clothed and standing simulations of sex. I join the white-teed, twisted 59fifty-capped admirers along the edges. Rhythm and booty. My dry eyes alert me I'm not blinking. If I turn around, I can enjoy professional, scantily clad dancers doing 360° revolutions, thrusting their midsections in and out, opposite the movement of their cocked arms. Air sex. Then they're back to back(side)-to-crowd, when preposterously sumptuous posteriors flap faster than Hummingbird's wings.

If there's a good place in the world at this moment to risk contracting HIN1, malaria, or AIDS, it's probably La Ceiba -- for the feria-driven influx of Central Americans, the Caribbean coast location, and proximity to San Pedro Sula, respectively.

Accordingly. La Ceiba: almost dying and going to heaven.

Got that WMD

There's nothing that lifts the spirits faster than spying a chubby faced tot behind the dash of a Power Wheel, cutting circles around Estelí's Parque Central's centrally located gazebo. The fact that families pay money to have their kids scoot around in Power Wheels, often escorted by the surly, chain-smoking entrepreneurs, is fun in itself. More fun, however, is the chubby-face factor. Funnier than fat, sausagy fingers -- "chorizitos" -- are kids with faces that look like they're filled full of pus, like a giant wasp swooped down and stung them smack on the cheek.

My most recent resolution is to avoid killing any more goats. Yesterday while running toward Managua on the Pan-American, I startled some goats grazing roadside. The pack of goats proceeded to run uphill, and I continued on for another twenty meters, reaching the halfway point of my run, at which point I doubled back. At which point I noticed the goats sprinting back downhill, chased by three barking dogs. As the goats exploded out from the bottom of the gravel driveway, one of the smaller goaties neglected to look both ways before crossing the street and got smacked by a pickup. He was in the middle of the road, looking quite stunned at the new shapes his body and bones had taken, as I continued on...

Lastly, the true test of a man's passion for his mango is the number of half-inch to inch-long yellowish, fibrous strands snagged and dangling from his front twelve when he drops that mangled, much gnawed upon pit.

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.

The Fritangera and the Cañon

The Cañon de Somoto is a cool excursion. The kilometers-long rift runs through mountainous northern Nicaragua, the cool waters of the Rio Coco running through the slit below the cliffs. The Cañon offers a lazy afternoon floating in inflatable rafts (pulled by Nicaraguan men for a few bucks) or swimming in the refreshingly cool waters (which, unfortunately, requires your own exertion). It's way better if you're accompanied by your Nica-kissy-cuddly of indeterminate age. I'm still almost sure she's 19. Since she's pure morena and I'm pure gringo, we've been endowed the superpower of restoring everyone who sees us to infancy. Which means they forget it's impolite to stare. And stare. Since Luz Marina is older than 14, it's a given that people assume we're married, and our canyon guides inquired such.

Keeping cake close to my heart.

So I keep doing this thing where I eat an ungodly amount of cake, feel near-comatose as my pulse plods, veins running thick with icing, and promise myself I'm not going to ever do that again as I sink into sleep with a bready-brick in my stomach. Every next day, enchanted by twenty-five Córdoba cuts of fantastic layer cake that would leave Fat Bastard begging for a doggie bag, slices that standing side-by-side would dwarf Shaq's shoes, my willpower crumbles and I end up tempting shoulder dislocation hauling another hunk the twelve blocks home. And the repostería also makes giant donuts -- at least the size of the rims on my old Geo Prism -- that it smothers in a thick yellow cream dotted with raisins. These donuts somehow weigh even more than the cake, as if the secret ingredient is some undiscovered ultra-dense baking element from planet pastry.

What else? Well, all this flirting with diabetes usually takes place after my nightly bout of Thanksgiving-style gluttony. A recently discovered frintanga that completely hides its dinnerware beneath mounds of gallo pinto, cabbage salad, and whatever so-cheap-as-to-be-practically-free side item(s) I've elected to eat that night; side items that are essentially a fingernail's worth of something, say a mixture of chicken and rice, deep fried until it's fist sized. Or bigger.

That C$5 enchiladas are delicious deep-fried pockets filled with said rice and chicken. They look exactly like, though are probably less healthy than the "fruit" pies/turnovers you can buy at any Seven/Eleven, the empanada-looking crapsnacks that are stacked on shelves in either the traditional waxypaper bag or the more modern cardboard box. Regardless of the style of packaging, you'll recognize these treats for the huge grease stains soaking through the outside.

Dad, you can postpone that dentist appointment. I think we shoud go ahead and preemptively book be in for the gamut of major heart surgeries.

Cocksucking in Public

Few things are as surreal(ly arresting) as a two-year-old dressed in a princess' flowing white stroking the sticky, blood-saturated nape of a maimed gallo cradled, lovingly, against the chest of her father. Her white dress already spattered with splotches of deep red for her proximity to the ring of violence. Her sister, pigtails spilling over her Winnie the Pooh backpack, sports speckles of sangre on the backside of her hand, catching flecks flying from the frenzy below while she grips the top rung of the ring.

Los Gallos De Oro was the scene of my first pelea de gallos. Cockfight. Cross from Central Estelí into the rougher barrios across the Pan American. Don't flash your camera. Walk down some dirt streets and follow the squawking. Hand twenty Córdobas to the bruisers posted at the door and step inside. On the left are wife-beater donning men crowding card tables, fists clinching crumpled Córdobas, a bottle or smoke in the other. Next the bar and fritanga, doing quick service distributing cervezas y enchiladas.

A scale with a dangling horn-shaped depository, constricting enough that a gallo slid inside can't fidget and disrupt it's weighing. Further back -- past the long urinal whose curtain cover can't contain the rank odor of stale piss; past the walls of crates stacked ceiling high, from which emanate clucking and such -- the ring. Very professional. A 20' X 15' egg shaped pen, constructed of heavy wooden posts and sturdy chain link fencing. A swinging door opens at one end, decorated with a Victoria beer poster. Plenty of long, fluorescent bulbs hang overhead, illuminating the pit.

Man swarm in the ring, encircling other men equipping each gallo with devastating weaponry, some jagged, bladed impaling piece affixed to one leg. The doctors of death carry leather wallets that unzip; unfolded, both inside flaps are fitted with a range of these puncturing attachments, carefully arranged and fitted in foam like drill bits. One is removed, fiddled with, replaced and another selected. A precise science of death.

All around there's hootin' and hollerin', bills changing hands. The gallos, one leg each fitted with implements of death, hit the ground, testing their new, improved leg. Once again they're swooped into the air, introduced to each other by the arms of their trainers, necking aggressively but pecking nothing but air.

The pen empties but for a few, and one of the remaining jingles his bell. The gallos are loosed, neck feathers fanning. They posture around on tiptoes then WHOOSH, the gallos merge into a blur of fury, feathers flying out, men inside the ring and out jostling for position, views constantly obscured as the in-ring judges circle, crouch and stand. Half the crowd is shouting, some joking and sipping Toña as bits of bloodied dirt decorate their clothing. There's a pause, a moment of distinction, then the gallos recombine, a fluttering, jumping mess.

Really, when one considers the way gallos battle, it's a pretty fucking cool way to fight. Always trying to kick your opponent in the face. I like that idea. Though I'd hope somebody aiming his boot at my brain wouldn't be intent on puncturing my jugular with a well-placed flash of a militarized ankle. There's the interactive spectating, dodging scattering bullets of blood. And education. The math in gambling. Even better, practicing probabilities calculating percentage changes a trainer contracts Salmonella, for the questionable hygiene in the preferred method of cleaning and refreshing a battered gallo between rounds -- sucking and licking their heads, spitting out the residue. There's nothing stranger than seeing a bloodied cocks head with those crazy, what-the-fuck's-going-on-Tyler-Hansbrough eyes completely disappear inside a human mouth.

There's also nothing so brutal as witnessing true to-the-death. When one gallo can neither stand nor flap its wings, only tilt its beak to try to deflect blows raining down. Then the head starts to bob, pecks to the top of its skull bouncing its chin off the bloodied dirt below. Eventually the head sags to the dirt, falling to the side.

Then the fritangera fires up the grill.

Auto Hotel Chepito

"¿Cuanto cuesta la noche?" inquired the female voice outside Hospedaje Chepito's doorway.

"Setenta por una, cien por dos," replied Yorlenis. Again.

Conferring whispers hissed outside, an intermission long enough that I had time to wonder what period of stay the voice had intended the first time it had asked prices. The door swung outward and a woman and man passed inside. I was concerned about what had happened to their luggage. Maybe they had been robbed too, the barrios aren't safe at night. At least he managed to defend his bike, I thought.

Chepito's rooms are situated along one long corridor, a line for hanging laundry running the center. You can hear people breathe through the walls.

Soon we heard panting and screaming. It didn't sound like they were reenacting the robbery I assumed had relieved them of all their belongings. Maybe there were ghosts because soon the two exited the room and the hotel, bike in tow.

At least for more couples stopped by late at night, all absent luggage. Soon the moans and groans and exultations emanated from their walls too. Yesterday morning, even at 7am, anyone sleeping "late" awoke to a woman receiving some sort of punishment she seemed to enjoy.

And somewhere in Estelí there's a skinny Nicaraguan on his bike, scooting around looking for a hooker to adorn his handlebars. As I'd say, Peddling for P...well, you play with alliteration.

Time for a Baho movement! (Nilbog)

Fresh off a banana-leaf-lined-hushpuppy-style-serving-basket heaped feast of Baho -- all that long-boiled to disintegration-soft spiced yuca, plantain, and tomato, hiding skewer-length hunks of fatty beef, topped with cabbage salad and a tomato and onion chili -- and coconut cake, it's time to relive a few weeks of, well, nothing.

My time in Estelí can be summed up in a few sentences. Situps (which make the bed creak loudly, convincing my neighbors through the unclosed-at-the-top walls, I'm sure, that I'm involved in another vigorous bout of morning masturbation), pushups and a run when I awake. Daily breakfast (gallo pinto, huevos y platanos maduros fritos, con crema, queso, y un cafecito) for C$25 at Super Las Segovias. Returning to Hospedaje Chepito to deposit a Frosty in the freshly-cleaned men's toilet closet (the consistency may or may not be related to my decision to save a few bucks by drinking tapwater). Internet. Short spanish study. Stroll to the public market to buy bags of tomatoes, mangos, or a melon, and every other day a liter of milk; the daily lunch rotation, for vitamins, you know? Maybe sip rum and play cards with the cool folks I met in the Hospedaje, Ryan and Sarah. More likely, flirt with the 19-year-old fritangera I'm currently half-linked with, which rewards me in more ways than just extra gallo pinto. Like Spanish practice. Or the semi-date to La Casita that cost a whopping $4 including cab fare, food and drinks. For dinner, always fritanga hopping -- though I finally tired of the nightly greasebath and took a break for as long as it took me to go through a jumbo bag of wheat bread's worth of peanut butter and banana sandwiches (a few meals).

Estelí being a world renowned hotbed of fabricas de puros -- the expansive tobacco farms expanding from the cityish center filling the twentysome factories with plenty of strong smelling harvests for their highly regarded products -- I toured a cigar factory. A week later my eyes are still watering from entering some of the rooms (barely) filled with tobacco. But I did smoke a fat stogie that was one of the "throw-outs". Not that I'd be able to appreciate the difference.

Semana Santa encompassed my week in Estelí, though it was much quieter than expected. There were a few processions of candle-bearing devotees leading crucified Christs through the streets, and a big church night or two, but I witnessed none of the alcohol-fueled fury I grew so accustomed to during Guatemalan ferias. More than anything, Semana Santa appeared a weeklong excuse to avoid work. With less teenage girls selling bootleg whatevers on the main drag, I had nobody to excite with a smile and "adios", so I adopted an adorable 9-year-old Nicaraguan, Milagros, as my honorary little sister. Her family was, in typical Central American fashion, exceedingly sweet, and because I was chatty and, especially, because I made quick friends with Milagros and her older brother and sister, Joseph and Karin -- lots of half-understood conversation, fistbumps and handslaps -- I was fed freshmade gallo pinto and bread, and then gifted a pair of fOakley's on my way out. Yep, I miss my little sister.

Finally, edging slightly closer to bored after a week of doing nothing, I hopped a bus to Matagalpa, another of the larger northern cities. It's much more city-looking than Estelí, with more of a packed urban grid than Estelí's one forever-long packed street, with Matagalpa's barrios spreading out of the center and climbing the surrounding mountains. I met a cute Nicaraguan lawyer who spoke some English, though her constant refrain of "Yeah" and headnodding whether I was telling a story or asking a question undermined her claims of understanding. Every breakfast I ate in one market comedor, where the handmade tortillas were the best I've had in Nicaragua, and the younger server-cook took advantage of the gringo presence to learn essential phrases in English, perfect for attracting extra clientele (i.e. "I hate you"; "You are fat"; "You are an idiot"; "You are boring"; "You are a hypocrite"; and "Eggs.") Daily for dinner I ate a few feet worth of fresh baked pan sencillo layered with honey and peanut butter (leftover from the Estelí binge), and four to five bananas sliced lengthwise.

And I enjoyed the fuck outta the tiny TV I splurged for, those $7.50/night nights. I was mezmerized by all sorts of terrible movies and softcore porn on Cinemax later at night. And I got to watch Troll II, one of the best worst B-horror-movies of all-time. And, get this, not just once. As soon as it ended on one channel, it started on another. Got my fill of Goblins, I did. Went to an organic coffee farm, Selva Negra, further up the mountains too, but that was rather uneventful. The brakeless, breakneck, hitchhiked truckbed mountain descent was exhilerating however. Matagalpa was also noteworthy for the mobile hot dog carts in the park, similar to those ringing parks across Nicaragua, plastered with painted icons who, previously, had managed to hide their hot dog addictions from the public. Spider Man swinging through, snaring a hot dog in his web. There's Winnie the Pooh hoisting a giant hot dog over his head, like some sort of trophy. Winnie's pork friend, Piglet, is noticably absent...or maybe not so absent.

After admiring the hot dog carts, especially the ones decorated by the inexplicable Nike checks, for a few days, I decided to take the watch-me-do-nothing show on the road. Next stop, Jinotega. A beautifully set valley city encircled by peaking mountains, significantly smaller than Estelí or Matagalpa, its Nicas exhibiting that same natural northern beauty. For people that must have something to do, there is a steep ascent to a peaktop cross posted hundreds of meters over the town, above the cemetary, certainly an essential mirador as the skies streak orange and pink and cloudy wisps slide from sight. (A 50/50 combination of sprinting and panting the upward struggle is recommended for those who wish to enhance the reward of Hotel Mendoza's Baho.)

The Managua Family and Philosophy on Animal Fighting

They might well have been a family as claimed. In retrospect, they had all the makings of a cult.

I'd smiled at Elizabeth a number of times during our 24-hour TicaBus transit from Panama City to Managua, Nicaragua; when we'd cross paths disembarked for yet another border crossing, or crashing down the aisle toward the busback bathroom -- solamente para orinar. It wasn't until the TicaBus station in Managua that we exchanged words, and a ten minute conversation in which I revealed I was undecided as to my next destination ushered an invitation to spend the night in Elizabeth's household of fluctauting family, minimum fifteen.

I was going to say no, and I really intended to do so, but delirious and motivationally sapped after twenty-four mostly sleepless hours, I was overwhelmed by the enthusiastic arrival of her escort party: mom, a sister and brother. Mom shuffled up and -- her head swiveling between me and Elizabeth like a speed-addled gore freak trapped between two concurrent crashes -- and implored nobody in particular, "Y es cristiano él?" Harm rarely results from lying, so I answered with an affimative nod.

They flashed judgment blinding smiles and grabbed at my hands and luggage like geriatrics grappling for a basket of free Viagra samples. We crammed into their Toyota model Hot Wheel and belched and bucked our way across town, Christian music blaring at an unbearable volume all the way.

Their house turned out to be a number of rooms attached to the family's church, where a sermon was in progress. The living quarters had one well air conditioned room into which everyone around crammed themselves, rocking in chairs, leaning against walls, splayed across the floor or atop the bed. Christian music pulsed at a decibel level that made conversation impossible and almost drove me to accept the existence of a deity merely for someone to supplicate for miraculous intervention. The hand of God twisting the volume knob. People came and went and sang for the glory of god. It was asked if I was baptized. Shortly thereafter it was declared I would accompany the family to a rural retreat the following week, Semana Santa. Everyone squeeled with glee at the prospect of baptizing me. I excused myself to the bucket shower, which might well have been holy water, and contemplated drowning myself...but I can't execute a handstand for long, so dunking my head in the bucket would've resulted in me toppling over onto the hard tile, suffering some debilitating injury that would have imprisoned me in these eager Christian hands for much, much longer. A combination of frustration and cranium-rattling from the bumping bass vibrated free a river of tears that ran so thick I could've passed on the shower if it weren't for the sticky salty skin feeling I'd have been left with.

Day turned into night and the godspeak raged on, tainting my gallo pinto and pollo frito. I'd informed the family, to the disappointment, that I'd be leaving for Estelí for a bout of womanizing the next morning. "Pero, por supuesto voy a regresar para la Semana Santa. Quiero que pase un sin fin de tiempo con Ustedes."

Once I arrived in Estelí I took the coward's route, sending a thank you email that outlined how, suddenly, circumstances had changed and that Semana Santa reunion, regrettably, would be impossible.

Now I'm back home, Hospedaje Chepito in Estelí, Nicaragua. The girls are still the sexiest I've encountered and liberal with their eyelash-batting and smile-flashing. I've reestablished my nightly fritanga routine, a sagging plate of gallo pinto, cabbage salad, tortilla and chili with a carnivore-pleasing portion of marinated pollo o cerdo. I caught a Estelí vs. Granada baseball game yesterday, and am hoping to experience another national pastime, cockfighting, within the week. Now, animal fighting seems cruel and heartless and morally vacuous until you consider what it really is: just like Gummi Bears battling in your fingers, the loser banished to your mouth, animal fighting is just two pieces of meat competing for the honor of feeding you, titillating your tastebuds, first.

Sippin' on some oil

If, as my health-conscious cousin and Nicaragua's Minister of Health maintain, it's catastrophic to one's health to drink cooking oils like water; if my daily frequenting of liberally-greasing fritangas -- purveyors of platters of slick gallo pinto; shiny, slippery meats; and coaster-sized bricks of fried cheese; all contributing to the yellowish puddles pooling on the food-cleared plates that I sop up with bits of tortilla -- is half as bad as I imagine, then I'll suffer seismic cardiac arrest before I ever make it back stateside. Because streetside grills don't advertise nutrition information, how many cups of cooking oil were used to coat that single, perfectly browned platano maduro, I don't obsess over the calorie or fat or vitamin contents like I do when neatly printed labels are available.

Oh, that two-pound mass of banana leaf-wrapped, pork-stuffed Nacatamal that oozed more oil than the Exxon Valdez? Where at the end of the meal it looked like I'd traveled back in time and been forced into some horrid massaging of jheri curl? Yep, delicious.

My sense of nutrition has returned to its most primal. Like caveman. Make me happy. Mmmm...meat. Carbohydrates. Sugar. More meat. I buy a bag of presliced mango or papaya or a mandarin every once in a while to stave off scurvy, a liter of ice cream or milk to keep my bones from disintegrating. Today I even took a break from fritanga, dining lunch and dinner on the Nicaragüense weekend-specialty Baho. Massive banana leaf-lined cauldrons meld flavors while fist-sized hunks of plantain (in the peel), yuca, and beef simmer in a bath of tomato, onion, and spices. Succulent beef emerges with the toughness of pudding.

At night, the fat lady on the trash and trash-juice littered outskirts of the market is the only person for blocks, perched upon steps in a dark corner, two crazed-looking men babbling behind her. In the act of searching for the signal flames of a fritanga I accidentally stumble upon her. "Hay baho todavía?" I ask. She nods as she pulls back the cloth that, during the boiling midday, shields her steaming treasure from the omnipresent flies. Her bare hand disappears to the elbow as she plucks chunks from the steamy depths that she piles upon the two giant banana leaves palmed in her other hand. The pile rises. "De cuarenta peso?" she inquires, her hand momentarily suspended, poised. "Bueno," I nod, excited to see what the five Cord increase from lunch buys me. The pile rises higher. Cabbage salad from another bucket is heaped atop, the banana leaves are folded over, a plastic bag slipped over and we trade: forty Córdobas for warm dinner to walk. My shoulder starts to ache after a few blocks, and the "stew" is so thick I can eat it with my hands at a table in the park. Passing Nicas don't give me a second glance, so I assume I'm following standard eating protocol. Neither time I order Baho am I offered a utensil or a napkin, nor do I see signs of either.

By chicken bus to Costa Rica tomorrow, but not before a cholesterol-coated breakfast of rice, beans, fried cheese, eggs and tortillas at the Granada market comedor El Maná.

The only kind of movie you can walk into late and still enjoy is porn.

Cousin Jamie and I bussed down from León-- connecting in Managua where I enjoyed another grease feast near the Mercado Roberto Huembes at my favorite fritanga -- to Rivas, transferring to the volcano-bookended Isla de Ometepe via a ferry that careened back and forth to the point we could see our terrified expressions reflected, distorted even more grotesquely, in the choppy waters. Sometime between the broken down bus that carried us to Altagracia, the several gigantic fish and plantain feasts near the Finca Magdalena in Balgue, and the twelve-hour ferry debacle that wasted an entire day of our lives before stranding us on the island for another night, Jamie suggested: "If we get bored we should rape people." (OK, so I'm actually the crude creature who twisted the suggestion that we "rate" people into aforementioned perversion. Despite spending two weeks with her corrupting cousin, Jamie remains a thoughtful, tactful, entirely respectable human.) Not much else happens on Ometepe unless one is motivated to climb a volcano. I was content to read and walk off the finca in search of better, cheaper meals. And groan about the beds, tarps spread and secured tautly between planks of wood; Jamie informed me these torture contraptions aren't called the "worst fucking sleeping idea ever", but rather cots.

Jamie departed Granada -- the vibrant and gorgeous city that marries the grittiness and bustle of León with the grand colonial architecture of Antigua, Guatemala, all bathed in buckets of bright paint -- this morning after our two-week co-exploration of Nicaragua. Sharing rooms and sometimes even double beds, I've only been able to touch my private parts in the company of shared toilets and waste baskets overflowing with soiled, unflushable tissue paper. And could one even revive their shriveled and wilted baby carrot -- would you roll it between the thumb and index finger? -- cold showers are just too damn cold for an enjoyable crotch yank.

Suddenly with private time and I've booked myself into another cheap, cold water-spigoted hostel dormitory. What the hell? Distracted by the prospects of being able to watch Duke and UNC square off this afternoon, I suppose.

If Arcangel the musician is Arcangel the X-Man, Professor X has lost control of his mutants. And they've gone really soft.

I'm finding myself slowly seduced by Latin R&B and reggaeton, spinning romantic tunes in my cranium while I amble down the streets, the kind of admission that would normally leave my lips only as a teary confession while I toed the cliff's edge. Because the flight of my self-esteem is eased by an inability to understand the spanish lyrics -- which must be as abysmal as those of every hourly-repeated teen-devoured TRL hit on America's every Kiss FM -- I haven't sunken to smash-the-mirror-and-saw-off-my-head depths.

Yet.

Shit, it isn't even an option in a lot of these budget hostels.

But climbing all these mountains and volcanos presents an awfully easy solution.

¿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.)