Of Visa Runs

Pictures can be so deceiving. That’s why we all love Facebook! I mean, I can have the crappiest of all times, but if I slap up two pictures of some people smiling, then everybody suddenly knows I love my life, and things are AWESOME - - All The Time.

Take last weekend, for example. Jessie & I had looked forward to this weekend away in Nicaragua for weeks! We’d planned, we’d dreamed, and we knew that getting on the bus to this ocean side paradise of a B&B would provide great stories and much-needed relaxation.

And per the pictures on FB, that encapsulated ten minutes here, and three minutes there, it was epic.

But it’s taken over a week of processing what happened, to start looking at this trip as filled with funny stories, as opposed to the hell that it seemed like as we experienced it.

(A collage from our second day)

 (This picture is entitled... "Of missionaries and tan lines")

 (For this NH girl, watching the sunset on the ocean never gets old )

(And because of that, you get TWO pictures of sunsets from two different evenings)

So, I present to you… The story behind the pictures.

For starters, anything that entails getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning should automatically be placed in the “Bad” file. But there were still the pluses to that, like getting on a bus in San Jose that was filled with a Costa Rican rugby team. Even missionaries like eye candy. 

We were dropped off at the bus “station” in Rivas, Nicaragua, which consisted of… the sidewalk. Not even a sign. A taxi driver grabbed my backpack and put it in the trunk of his car. “Are you the driver that is here to take us to Casa Pelon?” we asked… “Si.” And he made it known that yes, he knew how to get to Casa Pelon. But we knew that there was supposed to be a driver picking us up, not just a cab driver who knew where it was. Suddenly, this old man ran up yelling that HE was the driver to take us. The taxi driver was so mad, that I had to reach around him and take my backpack out of the trunk, because he wouldn’t move, and he certainly wasn’t going to help me if I wasn’t going to pay him.

Jessie & I climbed into a little old pick-up truck, with this little old man, and off we went. However, we found out in conversation that he wasn’t really the driver we had been promised. That was his friend, who had called him and told him he’d be too late to pick us up, so could he do it… and surprise… he didn’t really know where “Casa Pelon” was.

Finally, after driving in an “I think it’s around here somewhere” general direction, and asking many people on the side of the road, we stopped at a small convenience store. He got directions (and offered to buy us both a beer), and we arrived at our B&B.

The room was microscopic and dirty. Attached to it was an even smaller, and dirtier bathroom. There were two dogs who scratched and bit themselves constantly, and a cat whose food dish was on the kitchen counter, walking back and forth all over everything. The open concept area of kitchen/dining room/hang out place was cluttered and occupied by the host, in his hammock most of the time. But the ocean was within view, so we looked at each other, eyebrows raised, and headed to the beach.

There was another woman who was staying there… for a year. It sounded like the plot to a bad Nicholas Sparks’ novel. Recently divorced, very bitter and burnt-out owner of a B&B, rents a room to a recently retired widow from the states, who out of all the countries in the world, sight unseen, picked Nicaragua as the place that she would spend her first year of retirement. And this chick could TALK. Jessie said that most of what she said sounded like one of those hashtags on Twitter that goes on forever, and randomly uses every word in the person’s vocabulary.

We got back from our first trip to the beach, and she was sitting at the kitchen counter.

#girlswhatareyournamesdidyouknowthatthereisanalligatoracrosstheroadwhatmadeyouchoosethisplacewhereareyoufromwhereareyoulivingthealligatorsnameispacoandtomorrowwearegoingintotownwouldyouliketocomewhyareyoumissionariesdoyouhavefamiliesiwasateacherandidonotknowanyspanish

#holycrap

Dinners and breakfasts were part of the price that we had been quoted. The website said he was known for his awesome cooking. “People come for the view, and leave talking about the food.” Yup. We left talking about the food, alright.

The first night he served us… spaghetti. One breakfast we got instant oatmeal and a mini-yogurt. And one night we got back from the beach and he informed us that he didn’t feel like cooking, so he’d be taking us out for dinner at a resort down the street.

However, he didn’t have a car, so the three of us walked to a little bar down the road where some of his friends were, and got in their car, (replete with solo cups of beer held tightly in the grasp of the driver, because Nicaragua doesn’t have any liquor/driving laws) and were dropped off at the resort.

We were told to get whatever we wanted, but that he wasn’t hungry so was just going to drink. We finished our food as he finished his third drink.  By then he was hungry enough to eat the leftovers off our plates. And drunk enough to be a… well, people who love me and care about my safety are reading this, so we’ll finish that sentence with “a perfect gentleman.”

Our last day there we had ants everywhere in our bedroom. When he went in to investigate he came out and said, “I can’t see any. But I don’t have any spray anyway, so can you just deal with it for the rest of the time?”

The bus trip back took forever, and my view was a head full of the largest lice I have ever seen, happily staring at me for the duration.

And this wicked long post is just a glimpse… I didn’t even include the:

• “No power, no shower” sign on the bathroom door when we lost power for the third time
• The death of a young man at the hostel next to us, due to electrocution at a concert they were hosting
• “Help yourself to anything in the fridge” – and when opening it, seeing the entire bottom shelf covered with dead insects
• No wifi
• Our host graciously (and drunkenly) reading to us out of “Jesus Calling” the last night… ending with going in for a good night kiss.
• Taxi rides to and from San Juan del Sur, in a taxi that had no shocks and over 400,000 miles on it
• Drunk man in the middle of San Juan del Sur, screaming obscenities and getting hauled off to jail in front of us