Cannon Ball Run from Rivas to Granada

I am your travel guide today because my wife has already discussed more eloquently my own feelings than I ever could.

The power is out here in Granada, as it is most days. The rumor grinder says it is because the electric, curriente, company is Spanish owned, and Nicaragua nevers pays the bill accrued by governmental offices. Entonces, therefore, no power for the people during the day. It is a nifty story but I do not believe it. I saw this written yesterday on Ometepe: I wanted a bicycle so I prayed to Jesus everyday. Then I realized he doesn`t work that way, so I stole one and asked for forgiveness. The people here are both humble and worldly, and have strong wills that pull towards laughter.

Last week, we drifted down south to the border, frontera, with Costa Rica, and settled into a community of Pacific coast hostels, surf shacks really, and infrequent houses all together called Mahjagual. In between the clear waters and potent surf, the horizen was dotted with sea stacks more akin to the likes of Oregon. No bugs to speak in the way of bad mosquitos, and that`s always a plus.

The first couple of days the olas, waves, were huge and a bit thrilling. Probably in the 10 to 20 feet high range. When they broke and the sun shined through, the aquamarine colors seemed more like the carribean, and the sound as though a building had been leveled. Water temperature was perfect, slightly cool, as Nicaragua is by far the hottest country to ever boil my skin and vital organs. I swam my ass off all the days. Food was bad. I ate hamburgers with fries repeatedly. Eventually, to save a little money with our friend Jen, we rented a little house for two days about a 10 minute walk through pastures and monkey trees inland.

Exhausted by good times, we left and stopped in a close by town called San Juan Del Sur. Here, unfortunately, and soon for Mahjgual, are American and Canadian developers and realtors everywhere. Housing developments completed, under construction and some just a dollar pipe dream are chopping down the rain forest and every hillside. Just south of the border in Costa Rica is Tamarindo Beach. When I went there 13 years ago it was nothing more than a few houses, a good break, and a bunch of old surfing hippies living in pop up trailers. Now there is an international jetport, highrise condos, endless developments, where never a spanish word is spoken between tee times and tea times. Heather and I sneeked into a fancy resort in San Juan, to swim in their infinity pool that was oh so nice, and there were gringos and laptaps spilling into the deep end. Get here now. Think Tamarindo, Nicaragua in 5 years.

We split up with Jen in San Juan, she had to go back to work and could not hang with us slackers, or as my friend Jamie in Asheville calls us Team U. unemployment. Anyway, we caught the ferry on nearby Lake Nicaragua, which is about the size of the state of New York and used to part of the ocean and has fresh water sharks, which never tried to eat us by the way, to the picturesque two volcano island of Ometepe. Thomas Wolfe is eating his heart out after that last run on sentence.

You can not help but be awed by an area where herding and riding horses is not just still a part of life, but is the predominant way of life. The giant volcanoes overshadow everything, and why I argued last week with my wife that I was going to climb one without a guide, I turned tail pretty quickly once I actually saw them. Other adventurism of note, we went for a bicycle ride down a rocky dirt road, and while I was taking pictures with one hand and steering with the other, I was cut off by an oncomer and promptly flipped over the handlebars. Shaken, sore and dirty I pushed on, until I said I needed to stop and check my groin region because of a particularly stubborn pain. Where upon, my wife screamed because I had blood running through shorts between my legs. Broken superficial vein in my ball sack was my self diagnosis. Everything else intact and we continued on, and Heather is pregnant now already. Anyway, between surviving tyhoid fever, stitching my own leg up, and busting open my testicles open, I should avoid any wimp like heckling this year.

Stillness

Stillness. Yes, absolute, utter stillness. We´ve had endless amounts of it since leaving the orphanage and I am sure, by now, are both well qualified for holding some sort of metaphysical enlightened seminar in Asheville. To feel the exacting warmth of the breeze, the patterned lapping of the waves- taking notice when they falter or quicken, the rapid rate of growth of my husband´s nose hairs, or the horses splashing their front hooves, cutting into the water, biting at it like some dogs do, and then lunging their bodies sideways into the lake, scratching their backs on underwater rocks, throwing their feet high into the air and then getting up to do the whole routine again. We can now recognize the difference between the calls of the toucan and parrot, are keen and can predict the hours that the howlers will heckle, can free up huge empty spaces of our mind as one´s body gets into the rhythmn of washing all of your clothes by hand against a cement board, and then there are those sweet pleasures of floating in the ocean being graced on your cheek by a robin size blue morph butterfly.

We are lucky, we know it, for all of this time to be mindful, to see, hear, and notice more than the normal being who is always in motion out of necessity and/our rapid culture. But the flip side of all this luxuriant stillness and traveling comes the cravings to hear the Rolling Stones cranked up loud, to sink into a movie at an air conditioned cineplex, to have a piece of dark chocolate or cheddar cheese soaking in your mouth, to lounge on the porch with friends slapping off the mosquitos and being mesmerized by the fireflies. Or hiking up in those sweet Appalachian mountains, skinny dipping in the steal your breath away streams, knowing where you are sleeping for the next few days, cooking a wholesome meal, picking blueberries, hearing Matthew strum and croon away on the guitar, being near to those you love, digging in the red clay soil of the South, giving to others instead of having them wait and serve you, again being part of a community, contributing, feeling whole.

With only 20 some odd days left on this adventure, we are coming home with something a bit of a surprise. Of all our amazing travels and brilliant or gut-wrenching experiences, we have lost a smidgen of that wanderlust for somewhere else, the endless journey, the paradise lost, the more perfect way of life in someone else´s land, someone else´s culture. We have found home and packed deep within us now is a much greater sense of what very little we need to be happy and how most of what we get wound up in a wad about in the states, just doesn´t matter at all. Not at all.