Dealing with Danger in Middle Earth

“How long ya been down in Middle Earth?
-Boss


JUST because the hike down was so exhilarating and the terminus so eye-widening, I found myself trekking from the small town of Mirador down the inside of an extinct volcano to Laguna de Apoya, a 48-square kilometer crater-lake so deep that it’s center is the lowest point in all of Middle Earth. Despite it’s volume, the water was surprisingly warm, pool-temperature, due to the honeycombed network of thermally-heated subterranean rivers that fed the massive body. The first time I went there, the crescent day-moon sat directly above and if you looked straight up at it, your view was framed with the ring of white-rock forest you had descended from.

This time around, I was leading a group of Poste Rojo guests down the trail---a small group, Dan, Jess, her cousin Mikayla, Lucie and myself. We were sliding down a particularly rough patch when I heard a scream behind me.

I whirled around with the assumption that one of the girls had fell. What I saw was a 20-something Nica guy with a goatee grabbing Jess by the back of the neck and shoving her down on the rocks. I immediately started sprinting up the hill. It was only then that I saw the Nica’s other arm, which was holding a three-foot machete high above his head in chopping position, the blade’s trajectory ending across Jess’s neck.

The guy immediately started screaming contradictory instructions in Spanish. He was bug-eyed, adrenaline and anxiety saturated, moving in jerks---a nervous mugger is the worst kind, because they’re the ones who are going to panic and kill you.

He demanded that Lucie slowly approach him and hand him Jess’s backpack, who was starting to weep in fear below him. He then yelled at me in Spanish to come to him, but each time I slowly approached with my cash raised in front of me, he screamed “Stop” in English, lowered the blade to Jess’s neck and pressed it into her skin. .

“Do you want me to come to you or stay here!?”---I was too panicked to remember the Spanish. Finally Lucie was forced to walk to me to retrieve the cash.

“Pleeeease don’t leave me….pleeeeeeease,” Jess wept as Lucie stumbled down towards me.

Dan and Mikayla were farther down the path, digging through their backpacks in a dumb panic, trying to find their wallets.

“Just give him the whole fucking thing!” I was trying to hurry them along while keeping an eye on Jess. When I turned back up the trail, I saw the mugger sprinting away and Jess crumpled in a quaking heap on
the rocks, unblooded.

~

Westerners are targeted in Middle Earth. To roughly quantify it, if you are going to backpack around Middle Earth for, say, a month, you are GUARANTEED to have something stolen from you and also have about a 1 in four chance of being mugged by knife or machete or handgun.

As is the case for muggings the world over, the victims are rarely physically harmed. That being said, after the mugging, Lucie related the tale (to make Jess feel better) of how she and a friend were mugged in Guatalajara, Mexico a couple months back. Her friend was stabbed with a switchblade in the stomach and nearly died.

In between my stays in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, a large group of men from a neighboring municipality started invading the medium-sized town at night. I heard from multiple people that there were 50-plus muggings within a week.

Nicaragua boasts the lowest crime rate in all of Middle Earth.

~

There’s certain preventative techniques one can apply to keep your shit in Middle Earth. Many backpackers wear belly-belts---wallets that are strapped under the shirt. When staying in hostels, people use lockers, though it’s always a good idea to bring your own personal lock, in case the hostel employees get grabby. Most travelers carry switchblades, or, more often, flip-knifes, both of which are completely legal in Middle Earth, though these are mostly owned for more utilitarian purposes. Female travelers usually carry mace AND knifes for rape prevention, though rape seems to be the one crime that is no less common when traveling in Middle Earth. Then again, rape is the one crime that is rarely talked about after it happens. The one incident I heard about involved a Shaman who did Iowaska ceremonies. In actuality, he was NOT a Shaman, just a shit-bag rapist who led a girl to the middle of the rainforest, then held her there for hours. After he had finished, he just left her there, and she got lost on the way back and almost died of shock and exhaustion.

~

However, you are much more likely to be hurt in Middle Earth by the non-human. Since I’ve been down here, I’ve been cut with a machete, gotten ringworm and been destroyed by bedbugs. I have gotten off relatively easy. Backpackers just seem to always be recovering from some sort of injury down here. People I've traveled with have been stung by scorpions, stabbed by stingrays, bitten by bullet-ants, infected by bot flies, attacked by swarms of army ants, gored by bulls at carnivals, been in truck accidents, quad accidents, bus accidents, motorbike accidents, been cut up by coral, gotten concussions from being smacked by their own surfboards, twisted ankles while hiking, broken toes while hiking…the list is endless.

~

After the hold-up man fled, we were still stuck a good 20 minutes from civilization. We had two weapons, both brought by Mikayla, a small pocket knife and a pink can of mace. We organized ourselves with the females grouped in the middle, Dan leading with the blade out. I trailed a few feet behind, finger cocked on mace’s trigger, safety off. Jess was being a fucking trooper---she was more distressed about the loss of her 600-dollar camera and its photos then the actual mugging.

“We passed that asshole a while back. He must’ve looped back and trailed us until the guys were in the front…the blade wasn’t even that sharp.”

We descended without speech. When the trail opened up to coral and blue beach houses and the Laguna, we let out our breath as one.

You learn to deal with this kind of shit while down here---you have to, it will happen nonetheless. In a perverse way, it’s part of the genuine experience.

As a group, we sat on the thin beach and looked out over the aquamarine Laguna while smoking a thin joint of Jamaican brick-weed.  It was a beautiful day.

Then we shucked our outer clothing and rollicked in the choppy waves.

Altogether, it wasn’t a bad day in Middle Earth.

Bruja The Witch-pt. 2

 Bruja The Witch---pt. 1


Bruja- (Spanish) n.-A Witch

My room at the GM was a single. I had always stayed in the dorms at hostels, other than copping a single my first night at Poste Rojo under the misguided assumption that I would get laid during the Anti-Valentine's Day party. Whenever I think I'm going to get "some," it never materializes. Perhaps this was the reason I had been dry my entire journey. This was rather ego-busting (among other things) because everyone around me seemed to be swimming in pussy/dick. It almost seemed as though I had to be dodging it.

Although singles are supposed to provide a quieter environment, I was jarred awake at 4 AM to the sound of a semi charging me down like a running rabbit.

After shaking the sleep out of my head, I realized that the semi was about a dozen feet to my right on the road outside. The main road that led past Granada was closed for repairs, so all the early-morning commercial traffic had been diverted past the hostel. I slept little after this.

~

John and Miguel knew Granada. When we had been out the night before, they seemed to be close personal acquaintances with all the waiters and bouncers and staff at the bars---even at Caesar's, the local's pub, where we were the only cheles in attendance. 

John needed some supplies for the hostel, so the three of us---John, Jackie and myself---dove back into Granada's central market.

It turns out that in my prior excursion, I hadn't really delved into the depths of the market---it went much deeper. We were walking in a thin line down one of the lanes, twisting our bodies to avoid smacking into vendors walking with their wares and tuk-tuks tooting their passengers along when John suddenly pulled a right. A thatched roof passed over our heads; the air grew darker and hotter until it pulsed with bartering and the scents of roasting meat. We trotted down a set of steps like we were entering a cave...light passed through the roofs above, but when I turned back, any light or air from the entrance had vanished among the clutter of stands.

John went to his fruit lady---they knew each other, and therefore John wouldn't receive a gringo tax.

The gringo tax was applied to anyone white in Nicaragua, to any product they bought. It wasn't as harsh as it seemed. Unless you were in a Pali Supermarket, Nicaraguan businesses didn't have set prices. The packaged goods weren't labeled with anything, the taxis didn't have meters and the fruit stand prices were open to interpretation. You were expected to barter, and the vendors simply cited a higher initial price for cheles. If you were a chele and didn't know how to barter, you would end up paying up to (and above) triple the price of a local.

As John chatted with his fruit lady, the scent of pork entered my nostrils. There was a pig-stand to my left, where an entire porker was carted in and deconstructed into various dishes---fried pig's ears and cheeks, stew, entrails, soup, roast meat...some pink hunks that were yet to be used were still visible, chucked on one of the side-tables.

Farther along, deeper, we found an entire fucking restaurant in the market-cave, complete with tables and a kitchen...the restaurant had no set boarders, but instead vaporously bled into the stands and shops around it.

~

We exited the market-cave blocks from where we entered it. It was early Friday afternoon, and the central square was raucous with vendors, tourists, skateboarders, nuns, drug dealers, Catholic school students in uniform, large white carriage-horses to tug cheles around, small brown horses to lean products to the markets, loose goats, pick-ups outfitted with amps in their beds that blasted music and adverts, bands...the energy and aura of the place was insane, and would only grow more intense as the day boosted along.

John had been taking Merengue classes, and when a band took up a rhythm, he started moving to the beat while walking. A Nica lady clapped her hands together in delight and told him he should take a dance with her kid daughter, who was standing a few feet away. John loved kids, and shuffle-danced over and asked with comic formality if he might dance with her. The kid looked up sternly and said:

Uno Dollar

~

That's something you don't really see in Costa," John later said while philosophically staring into the sky (he hadn't paid). "People here try to get money out of you for anything, and that's not really the case over the border."

He was right, but, then again, Costa was far richer than Nicaragua, which was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti.

It was mid-afternoon, and I wondered if I would ever see the Bruja with the scars on her legs.

~

"Where were going, there ARE no roads."

I smiled down at the bruja as I woke her with this phrase, which had floated tot he forefront of my mind and seemed appropriate for the surreal day. (I hadn't had a time-piece since I was mugged in Puriscal and had learned to tell the time through natural objects---now was the time of day when the street-dogs woke from their siestas and were seen crawling out from underneath parkt cars.) She smiled at me as she woke from her curled-up position in a chair at the Euro cafe. Her various talismanic necklaces slacked as she rose to a sitting position.

"Finally found you," I smiled.

"I've been back and forth over the last few days...I'm glad you caught me."

...

"You were going to ask me something...whaaat was it..." The bruja stretched her neck, her braids falling across her face.

I pointed at her left leg, the one with the scars on it.

"Oh yes..."

The fountain in the cafe's garden plashed amongst the greenery and a swirl of dust whipped in from the street outside.

...

I had first seen the scars when I had photographer the bruja in the nude---cross-hatched slits raised from the skin of her upper thigh.

"...I first started cutting when I was a teenager, and it was for emotional reasons, just to feel something. You know?"

I did.

"...but now it's all about ritual. Blood is a very intimate, very powerful liquid...I use it for spells...when I used to cut for emotional reasons, I never really knew how to take care of the wounds...now I use I salve I make and they don't really scar."

The bruja's talk scared me, sending a nervous twist vibrating down my middle (stretch your mind & experience).

"...sometimes I use the blood for penance, to ask forgiveness from the universe, or from someone I've failed." (Who have I failed today/not but myself.)

I cleared my throat.

"When...when I started, it was due to depression...just to feel something. As an adult, it has always been out of anger."

"Anger at what?" The bruja leaned forward and stared at me with her mystic's eyes.

"At myself. The worst I've ever cut was because of a girl...I found out a year after she had dumped me that she had cheated on me with some random dude and had started dating him immediately after she broke up with me...we were still very close when I found this out, ad I forgave her within a few hours...the next day, it all hit me, and I got drunk and slashed the shit out of my ankle with a shard of plastic...I blamed myself for it all going down the way it did, I felt I deserved what happened and deserved to bleed...I didn't give a shit and stumbled around raving...there was blood all over the house."

The bruja's earth-marbled irises narrowed and then expanded until they were larger than her eyes. I continued into her doorways:

"It's embarrassing, y'know?...having all these scars...I was scared of being sent to a mental hospital after I slashed my ankle, so I only went to a clinic when it got infected...the scars are so bad everyone thinks it's ringworm, and I have to explain it's not, then they ask what it is and I can never tell them...I feel like a middle-school girl, like I'm weak...it's embarrassing."

"Well, you have to ask yourself if you consider it a bad thing because you think it's bad, or because of the opinions' of others." (Who have a failed today/not but myself.)

The bruja rose suddenly.

"We should go."

~

For once, I knew the time: it was five o'clock, and everyone had spilled out into the central square until it was difficult to walk. The sun still blazed, though it had dropped below 100. We saw a procession in the distance with a dark-skinned Jesus dragging a ten-foot wooden cross. Nicas in street clothes walked alongside with their heads bowed. 

The bruja didn't like Christianity, so we walked to a different farmacia. You don't need a prescription for anything other than painkillers in Nicaragua, and the employees didn't even give us a sidelong glance when the bruja ordered up a couple packets of Xanax. She tucked them into her many-pocketed belt.

"We should go back to your hostel," she said.

~

The bruja had condoms in her belt also, and we entered and removed ourselves from each other until darkness had fallen. She bit the boar's tusk around my neck and we came at the same time.

~

The bruja had to leave immediately afterwards---she was heading North and I was heading South to meet up with Poste Rojo folks and then down to Uvita to Envision Fest. We wanted to see each other again, but that oftentimes doesn't happen on the road.

Bruja The Witch---pt. 1

Granada is uninhabitably hot during the dry season. The fact that 90,000 people inhabit the city nonetheless is confounding to me. They also do it while wearing shirts---I’ve recently noticed that the only dudes going around bare-chested are cheles. So, in another one of my weak attempts to not appear like a culturally-insensitive tourist, I refused to remove my tank top in the 105-in-the-sun urban haze as I tramped with my 40-pound pack in the search for the GM hostel. I had scrawled directions on a Poste Rojo bookmark, but, as my energy and mental competence drained over the course of two hours, the simple directions became schizophrenically confusing. Or maybe the pen had played some sort of cruel joke on me, the bastard, writing differently than I had told it. No, that made no sense. It was my HAND, my HAND, that had done something other than what I had instructed it to do, and had written incorrect bullshit directions to fuck me up. Or maybe…nonono, THAT was it, my hand wasn’t foolin around, it wasn’t a fuckin JOKE, the perverted evil fuck was leading me into a trap of disastrous consequences and…

I was somehow standing directly in front of the GM hostel. I realized I had passed by it once, but quite possibly multiple times, probably thousands. All the doors…all the doors seemed to be locked, both the inner wooden ones and the outer steel security gates. I slammed desperately on anything with hinges like I was fleeing Nazi Storm Troopers until I saw movement inside and finally a white-skinned Latino gatekeeper cracked the inner door and slipped the left side of his face out.

“…yyyes?”

“Uh, I’ve, I have…got a reservation?”

“Fvor tonight? Bekaus we’re not really open yet.”

“Yessss….I do.

“Yyyou do? Bekaus we’re not really open yet.”

 “The reservation was made by…Jackie made it?“

“Oh yyyes! Jackie!”

“Jackerrr…Jackie.”

 “Jackie said you were coming! She won’t be here fvor a few hours, but, here, come in!“

I entered, stumbling over my dumb, dragging feet that kept sinking deep into the sucking floor on top of them being dumb and dragging and dropped my bag in the room with rubbery arms and immediately headed to the bathroom where I pissed neon-Gatorade concentrate. I hadn’t drank anything during the entire walk. The gatekeeper asked me if I wanted anything when I exited and I croaked “water” like a horse and he pulled some from the tap without moving his feet, his two too-long fingers just stretched across the room and flicked. I didn’t know if I could safely drink Nicaraguan water and figured I couldn’t but it looked so silvery-pure that I chugged it down.

I didn’t get sick from the water, but I certainly had been sick from a lack of it. As my head cleared, the gatekeeper became Manuel, the Mexican co-owner of GM, a charismatic fellow and friend of Jackie‘s. Jackie, who I had befriended while staying at her hostel in Costa, was staying for free at GM, which, even clear-headed, was not officially open for biz.

~

The black-bright solar orb started to beat Granada at dawn, and by 10, it was so hot that everything started to melt like wax. Sluices of coralpink shops sludged down the facades of mustardyellow cathedrals and drip-dropped onto the vast complex of marbled ruins behind the GM. The ruins were a forgotten hospital that had been looted until it crumbled, and it’s massive pillars now stood stark against the hot sky with nothing on top. The dark veins of the rock was the lichen taking over. Jackie and I sat on a pebbly wall one night and two men rose from the dark and approached us, their stride slow and hard. We were expecting squatters to hit us up for change or something much worse, but it was only two sun-wrinkled security guards, who testily told us that it was illegal to be here and also that we should be careful because the wall was about to collapse.

It was very odd for a place with so little infrastructure to secure a field of doorways to nothing. I was in San Juan Del Sur for a week without seeing a single cop. There were a few cops in Granada but the majority were Policia Tourista, police making sure cheles weren’t inconvenienced. The real cops were the Policia Nationale---large men with wrap-around shades who cruised around in matte-blue pick-ups, two in the seats, two hanging off the bed of the truck, leering. They were really the only thing that scared me in Granada. Cops in Central America were more likely to rob you than help you.

I saw one of the matte trucks transporting prisoners. The bed of the truck had been fitted with a steel cage that looked like it has been purchased discount from a Western zoo…two men squatted in the back in caps and street clothes, puffing on cigarettes.

As the black-bright orb hit its zenith, even the tourist areas started to stink like feces. Street-dogs are far more numerous than their owned counterparts in Nicaragua, skittishly sidling up to garbage heaps, hoping to not get hit. They shit where they would, as did the goats that were herded through the streets and the small, brown horses that leaned produce to the market.

~

One night, me, Manuel, Jackie and John, the co-owner of GM, went out drinking on Granada’s main boulevard. The split roadway is lit with streetlamps all the way own to it’s terminus on the trash-littered shore of Lago Nicaragua, a body of water so large it has bull sharks.

After finishing our watery Tonas at Ceasar’s, we were set to go home when my stomach turned in hunger. There was a bar with its kitchen still open, so we sauntered farther down the boulevard where I ordered food to go. The menu was Western, and twenty minutes later I received a weak-looking fajita carne and some thin fries smothered in neon-yellow paste.

We had begun our walk back to the GM when I heard a yelp and two Nica kids aged about nine ran up behind me.

~

The Granadan cab I waved down already had a passenger seated in the back, but this was normal----Nica cabs always packed in as many fares as possible. The lady was about my mother’s age and a sweetheart---she noticed that one of my backpack’s zippers was jammed open and helped me to free it without me having to ask for help.

When the zipper had been fixed and I looked back up, we were in a part of Granada I had never seen before. I had seen shacks and poverty up to this point in Nicaragua, but compared to this, what I had seen was middle-class. The road was two ruts that wove around and through leaning boxes of scrap tin that wouldn’t keep rain or rapists or packs of street-dogs out, but would certainly keep heat in. Everywhere there were large pools of brown liquid that smelt like sewage and people burned trash in their yard just to get rid of it and the smoking garbage-piles leaned and sank into the sewage. Everything natural had been polluted to death, so there was no plants, only packt dirt and loose dirt and the few lone trees were blackened skeletons. The Nicas kids here didn’t wear shirts, but I looked again and realized that most of them didn’t have real pants either, so maybe they had one pair of clothes for school and one for church, but even this was an assumption.

The lady actually lived in an apartment complex in a nicer area. As she got out, I remember thinking that is was good she lived in a cleaner, more respectable place, then realized my word choice and hated on myself the whole back for it.

Maybe I had thought this because I figured the lady was kind, and wanted her to live in a nice area, and I shouldn’t hate on myself for what is ignorance at worse.

But the point is, these are my own neurosis and are White-Boy problems and I should realize this.

~

The two Nica boys circled around my back and met in front of me, blocking my path. They then simultaneously began asking me for my food while trying to grab it from my hands.

“Nononononono….”

The kids were smiling as they pawed at the container.

“Look, you can have some…un piquito…”

I popped open the top container, but one of the kids slapped it back closed and continued to try to work it out of my hands.

I was at a moral loss. I wanted to help out these assholes. This was MY food, not theirs', these poor devils. They were better dressed than I was. They were smirking. They were only children. I hissed at them like street dogs-I tried to pop open the containers to let them grab some fries-I hissed again.

This probably lasted only about 20 seconds. John then sensed my trouble and looped back and spoke something in Spanish to the children that made them scamper off.

When I arrived back at GM, I shoved the tasteless grease down my throat and fell into darkness for the night.

Bruja the Witch---pt. 2

Stupid American!

The last time I traveled extensively abroad, Obama had just been elected to his first term, and people around the world were in love with America. Europeans in particular were enamored, due to part to Obama’s tour of Europe while he was campaigning---I remember one pundit saying that his loop was “the first time an American Presidential candidate campaigned in Europe.”

Unfortunately,  Obama has since not lived up to the Euros astronomical expectations. Not being able to address Obama directly on his failings, Europeans have decided to confront me about them.

“Obama said that he was going to leave Afghanistan and Iraq immediately, but look---you guys still have troops in both countries.”

Europeans also take it as their charge to confront me about the failings of the American Education System. I guess it’s nicer of them to blame the stupidity they perceive in Americans as an institutional fuck-up as opposed to a failing of character, but it does get very irritating to hear things like:

“Oh, Wow…you know a lot of stuff for an American.”

I will give the Europeans (and Canadians and what-have-you) one thing off the bat: Americans are not very well-traveled. In Nicaragua, you see more Canadians than Americans, which is only surprising when you realize that America has 11 times the population of Canada, and, on top of that, we’re technically closer. It’s pretty standard for Canadians and people from Australia and Europe and Brazil and…well, most places, to travel extensively during their 20s.

Of course, this negative fact doesn’t apply to me, or any other Americans traveling down here for that matter. Like the people I know from New Paltz, most travelers view themselves as detached from the bumbling hoard that they perceive as the American swarm. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with this. When a drunk traveler of the European persuasion started demanding to know why there was no cheese on the hamburgers Poste Rojo was serving at the family dinner, one of the American volunteers snappily responded with,

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were American…can my fellow Americans at the table please tell this guy what an American he’s being?”

I suppose she was trying to keep the levels of aggression down to a degree, but the fact remains that she was directly comparing the Euro’s boorishness to being American---she was trying to embarrass him into shutting the fuck up by saying he was acting like…like…one of us…

A particularly anti-American German fellow in his early 40s was really getting in my face about such things. We started talking about the ridiculousness of the Republican candidates during the 2012 election, but I became miffed by his usage of the word “you,” as in “you never elect anyone who really changes anything,” or “you create an education system that makes most people stupid.” I had to stop him.

“You hafta stop using ‘you‘…it’s not like I created these problems, or got these people elected.”

“But they represent you, no?”

The German was particularly educated, even by European standards, so I didn’t need to fill him in much about the Electoral College system.

Later on, he plopped himself down on a bar stool next to me and immediately opened with, “so, how many languages do YOU speak?” He knew goddamn well that I didn’t speak any languages other than the one he was addressing me in.

“Uh…just English, really, and the Spanish I’ve picked up down here.” I thought about mentioning my French basics, but I knew that he was probably fluent, and I wasn’t about to go through the humiliation of stumbling through a conversation in that tongue.

After several conversations like this, a couple bordering on arguments, I had to address his overall viewpoint.

“Here’s my overall perception of the conversations we’ve been having:”

“Yes?…” The German slyly slipped his stool towards mine.

“I am very critical of America…I have a lot of problems with it and I often discuss them with other Americans, but, when a foreigner uses the same arguments, I automatically become defensive.”

We talked for a bit longer, during which he said I couldn’t do basic math and that I needed to lose 7 kilos (about 15 pounds) to be a healthy weight by European standards. He showed me his abs. Then he said something that was just too much.

“I mean, I know more about your political system then you do…”

“…I very much doubt that.”

“Oh?” He cocked an eyebrow.

“Yes…I’m not trying to antagonize you, but it’s kinda my realm…I definitely know more about he American Political System.”

I knew he was going to try to test me, to make me look like a Stupid American.

“So…according to you, why did you drop the atomic bombs on Japan?”

Again with the fucking you. I wasn’t even born yet. I leaned back.

“What you want me to say is that Truman dropped the bombs because a land invasion would cost an estimated million American lives, but the actual fact is, Japan was getting ready to surrender anyway. The reason Truman actually dropped the bombs was because he was aware the Soviets were working on their own nuclear program, and wanted to rattle their cage and show them he was willing to use the bombs.”

The German leaned back, impressed that I knew this basic history. He stuck his hand out to shake. In his mind, I was not American.

Granada/Treehouse Vortex

Granada’s market is a multihued riot of shrieking-fresh products and booming sales-pitches: capitalism before The Man took over. Crooked wooden stands haphazardly jut in from the boring buildings-proper, allowing a stream of shoppers, motorbikes, three-wheeled tuk-tuks, and the occasional car, horn wailing, to slowly pass through. In the maze, you can cop gutted fish, backpacks, phones, bananas, guavas, 17-cent coffees, kilos of salt, vinegar in translucent plastic bags, sacks of beans, sacks of kernelled corn, quart-bags of filtered water, sugar, pineapples, shoes, electric cables, loose cigarettes, moonshine, Frescas, guavas, ect, ect, ect.

The tourist population of Granada is the demographic opposite of San Juan del Sur. The average tourist age of San Juan was probably 25, while the average age of the Granada tourist is a good 30 years older. The epicenter of tourism in Granada is the mostly-unattended mustardyellow Cathedral. The small park adjacent and the European-style cafes serving cappuccinos and nouveau pull-pork sammiches have a population of probably 90% tourists, but the percent of cheles drops off rapidly after this like the continental shelf off the east coast of Florida. The tourists must be scared of the sharks and crocs, because, at the market, only three blocks away, there is not a tourist to be seen.

Grenada turned out to be a stop-over: I was there for about 36 hours, wandering the markets, avoiding the stinking, milky streams of water that flowed everywhere, street-dogs lapping…I ate cheap-ass nouveau pulled-pork sammiches, saw a trio of 70-year old American men walking hand-in-hand-in-hand with a clearly under-aged Nica prostitute like it was nothing, like they were putting milk in their coffee…they took her to a European café where they she drank beers and maintained her perfect posture before they all disappeared into a hotel…

                                                                                 ~

The Taxi kept blindly doing loops in the small field that may or may not have held some poor peasants crops until it was practically pulling donuts.

“Over there, maybe?”

“I don’t think so…” answered Byron, my traveling mate for the moment.

The Taxi Hustler pulled another loop, kicking up dust and pebbles. We passed too close to someone’s property, and five or so enraged dogs started chasing the cab.

I stared at the rudimentary map on the pamphlet advertising The Poste Rojo hostel. “I …think?…that’s the “bamboo field” over there…”

We passed another Nica’s property, and a half-dozen more red-eyed, unneutered hounds charged the cab and joined the pursuing pack.

“Maybe we should just get out here?” Byron suggested

“With the fuckin dogs?”

“Good point.”

~

Finally, after some loops and twists, both in the Taxi and on foot, we made it to the top of to the steep hill which held Poste Rojo, the treehouse hostel. The whole thing was a delicious hippie-lodge, complete with a hanging foot-bridge, outhouses and howler monkeys. The hill the lodge sat upon was only a couple hundred feet high, but the vista spread in front of it was flat, flat with fern and deciduous rainforest, so the high, sun-baked greenery stretched hazily to the vanishing line on the horizon. Most mornings, you were woken by the demonic cries of the howler monkeys as they crawled on hands and feet overhead….their small, rust-furred bodies let off noises that sounded  like the death-knells of hellhounds played in reverse.
There were Cicadas everywhere. They were loudest in the evenings, but their pitch was high and constant enough that it evaporated into white noise. But if you stopped for a moment and listened, their screaming buzzes moved to the forefront of your audio, and they were as loud as jet-engines.

                                                                           ~

Byron and I arrived on Valentine’s Day. Poste Rojo was throwing a Black Heart Party---an anti-Valentine’s event. Everyone was to dress up really fuckin metal and listen to the harshest music possible. Keys, a member of the Poste Rojo clan, had been in Grenada all day, picking up a goodie-bag of inebriants for the event. Keys was a semi-professional surfer, but referred to surfing as his “job.” His passion was building sensory-deprivation tanks. Although not much of a looker, Keys was a goddammned pimp.  He claimed that someone once bet him a hundred dollars that he couldn’t sleep with seven different women in seven nights. He lost the bet (as much as one loses in such a situation), only bedding six. The way the women at the hostel fawned over him, I believed the story.

He was currently shacking up with Raeah, one of the volunteers at the hostel. Like all the people staying and working at the hostel, Raeah was gorgeous. Some of the other beauts at the hostel included Cynthia, a slight, svelte, fair-skinned French-Canadian with black, dready sausage curls and a smattering of star-freckles across her cheeks; Alyssa, a curvy Mexican-South Cali girl with long, dark, twisting hair who padded around barefoot in a hippie-dress; and  John, a giant, broad-shouldered, long-haired hunk with sun-kissed abs who looked like some sort of fucking gigolo from a Mediterranean Cruise ship. 

Siena, who could do make-up like a pro, but whose only experience was “hanging out with a lot of drag-queens,” painted everyone’s faces for the event. The gang drank before and after dinner, and we were a lovely, stumbly shade of drunk by 8 o’clock. I was smoking a joint with Cynthia, overlooking the night-forest and the stars, when I heard a giant, splintering crash. Assuming some type of brawl, I scurried over to the edge of the balcony to find a blindfolded Mikey, who looked and kinda acted like Giovanni Ribisi, swinging a chair wildly at a giant blackheart-shaped piñata. After knocking over several more things, he managed to make contact, the piñata broke open, and out spilled myriad hard candies (no one really ate them) and a plethora of Jello shots (they were consumed instantly).

The night danced on. It was a sort of initiation at the hostel to eat a live cicada. My time came when Raeah popped one, then leaned into me, passing the crawling insect between my lips with her mouth. I didn’t know if it was sexy or disgusting---probably some weird combination of the two. I held it in my mouth for a moment, then crunched down. It splintered, and I chewed it to bits, washing it down with many gulps of water. 

~

“Dzis place is a vortex, you know? It’s just so….nice here, and so bEAUtiful.” Cynthia and Cynthia's sister Annie and Byron and I were sitting, watching the solar globe sink past the vanishing-line.

“Every day at dzis place just gets better and better.”

It was the day after the Black Heart party, and everyone was hungover, but in that lazy, giggly way that is quite pleasant. We hadn’t left the grounds of the hostel all day, and, in fact, we wouldn’t the next day either.

People talked about getting sucked into particular places while traveling, about staying for far longer than they intended, about being vortexed . I was weary of this warning, seeing as I was vortexed hard to New Paltz for so long. For me, New Paltz was a joyful, comfortable place (with the necessary plunges & peaks) that sung its honeyed siren-song to me for eight summers. Part of the reason (perhaps THE reason) I left was I became aware that my much preened-over philosophies were too geographically, and therefore culturally, limited---lashed to my vortex, my home.

But there are good vortexes and there are bad vortexes, and a vortex isn’t much of a vortex if you’re only there for a few weeks. So, after a little consideration (mostly financial), I decided to come back to Poste Rojo in a week to volunteer.

The Short Ballad of Hassan the Terrorist

I met Hassan in Castle Tam, the San Juan, Costa Rica hostel that was called "John's House of Wayward Misfits," by a disgruntled former employee that had bailed to other employment. John was the owner; Hassan was a tenet who was trying to find employment there, having partied his way down to his last hundred dollars. Even though John was a surly bitch who had no business being in the customer-service business, Hassan was able to charm himself into the job. He just had that sort of intelligence and charisma.

One night, while drinking boxed Chilean Merlot and ripping on a plastic bong, Hassan let lose with the following tale.

~

Hassan’s parents were influenced by the Black Muslim movement in LA during the 70’s. They dropped their politics and faiths while Hassan was in utero, but his first, middle and fabricated last names were already chosen, all from the Holy Quran. Besides, his parents loved the name, its history, its sound…ha…SAHN.

“They told me it was the late 70’s, so the Muslim name wasn’t a thing…yeah, come the early 80’s, it was.”

Shortly after 9/11, Hassan was at the LAX airport on his way to Seattle, occupied by his friend and drug-dealer Mike, who had frosted hair and an Italian-American surname. Mike strode through security, whistling, and then Hassan was up. The TSA agent scanned his passport, then immediately shot her eyes up with a look of fear.

“You’re…you’re going to have to step to the side, um, sir…right over there…just stand right there and don’t move from that area.”

Keeping her eyes glued nervously to Hassan, the TSA agent reached behind her to a red, unmarked phone plastered to the wall. The phone dialed automatically, and, in less then a minute, three TSA agents rushed over, barely restraining themselves from sprinting.

One of the TSA agents stood between Hassan and the ramp to the plane, while another blocked the escape-route to the rest of the airport. They both had their arms folded tight over their chests, angry looks in their eyes and nervous movements twitching through the rest of their bodies.

Hassan thought it had something to do with Mike’s position as a mid-level ecstasy dealer in LA. Mike, fidgeting nervously between the checkpoint and the boarding ramp, shot a look at Hassan while silently mouthing “what the fuck is going on?” Hassan threw his hands up in confusion.

“Who are you talking to? Who are you trying to communicate with?” the head TSA agent demanded. He swiveled his head over to Mike, who looked terrified. The agent saw Mike was white and turned back to whatever he was doing on the computer.

“Hassan?”---one of the agents with folded arms---”Hassan, you’re going to have to calm down immediately.”

“What? I AM calm.”

“Hassan”---the TSA agent to Hassan’s back---“calm down and stop moving around now.”

“WHAT is going on?”

“Sir, stop talking and just stay put.”

“I JUST want to know WHAT’S going on.”

The TSA agent behind Hassan pressed a button on his radio and, a few seconds later, two National Guardsman ran over with their fingers cocked around the triggers of their M-16s.

One of them spoke:

“Sir, you’re going to have to come with us immediately.”

Hassan nearly lost it. His voice was strained with anger and fear. He threw his hands up, palms defensively turned outwards.

“I’m not going ANYWHERE with you people until you tell me WHAT is GOING ON!”

The national guardsman shot each other wide-eyed looks. The one to the right raised his weapon slightly while the other stepped up to Hassan while reaching for something tucked in his heavy belt…

The red phone rang. Everyone who had gathered---the two National Guardsman, the four TSA agents, Hassan, Mike and the numerous horrified-looking onlookers, turned their heads to the noise. The original TSA lady snatched it up and paused to clear her throat before whispering into the mouthpiece. She paused again for the response. When she hung up, she looked relaxed and smiled and nodded at the other security officials. The main TSA agent turned to Hassan, handing him back his passport.

“Sir, you are free to board the plane. Have a nice flight.”

~

The Terrorist Watch List is not available to the public. Even if Hassan, who was an apolitical atheist whose ancestors had arrived on a slave-ship and who had never left the country at this point in this life, had any reason to believe he was marked for suspicion and fear, he would have had no way to figure it out. In fact, it took him a few days in Seattle to unearth the reason for his humiliation.

“It’s just my name, that’s all it is.” Hassan’s sister, who shared his politically-fabricated surname but whose first name was Hana (the Muslim spelling of the Biblical name, but the US Department of Homeland Security isn‘t known for doing its homework), had never been received more than a passive glance at an airport checkpoint.

I said Hassan was apolitical. When I met him 12 years after this event, he was heavily involved in politics, a big debater who distrusted Obama as much as he had hated Bush II.

…and this was the reaction of a man who was only mildly fucked with by the US government. Extrapolate a couple degrees and a couple countries, where it’s extra-judicial drone executions and random midnight raids, and you see how the US creates his own enemies.

When Hassan on his way to Costa Rica, the young, black TSA girl who scanned his passport shot her eyes up at him in fear. Hassan, with his double-minority status, knew how to appear non-threatening. He emphasized his Cali accent and responded with a sad smile.

“It’s my name, isn’t it?”

The TSA girl’s eyes softened with regret as she reached behind her for the red phone.

Abuse & Douchebaggery in San Juan Del Sur---Pt. I

When I dismounted the stale-aired San Juan-Penas Blancas bus a few hundred meters from Costa Rica’s Northern edge, a wail of Nicaraguan hustle hit me hard. There were about 20 guys waving huge wads of Cords and calling out through the rusted diamonds of a chain-link fence. The other side of the fence was not Nicaragua. It was a mile-wide strip of fenced-in non-country between the boarder-sharers, a land without jurisdiction, a land where there was no citizenship to be. The Nicaraguan money-exchangers had some sort of deal with the boarder guards, or the guards just didn’t give a shit (or this was not thing to give a shit about), and haggled to the various nationalities stepping off the buses.

After the mostly Costa Rican riders got their things, the bus pulled a loop and revved its engines back to the central valley. I stepped across into non-country through a loosely-guarded checkpoint. I had expected sniffer dogs inside. Instead, there was a little strip of corrugated metal shacks selling food and water stuffed inside the corner of the Costa Rican boarder-wall. A couple of large Duty-Free Stores thumbed up across the trampled & sun-scalded grass. The Nicaraguan customs office was smaller, and I was stamped through with barely a glance. Entrance was 12 bucks. Most of the Costa Ricans paid in American---both countries accepted greenbacks sooner than the each others’ bills.

The bus ride had been a hot & dehydrated 6 hours. Add an hour tramping, confused through the Coca-Cola bus station at my starting point in San Jose (that shit is not a station), and an hour tramping through & waiting in line in non-country, and I was ready to bypass the two buses necessary to get to San Juan Del Sur. I was glad when the Taxi hustlers rushed me as soon as I crossed into Nicaraguan territory. One wanted 20 US for the 40 kilometer ride. Another Taxi hustler offered 15 as I was shoving my giant backpack in the first hustler’s car, but he didn’t have Taxi ID and his car looked like it should’ve been euthanized years ago, so I said “too late,” and slammed the trunk.

~

The Taxi hustler tried to tell me the Naked Tiger Hostel was at the top of a massive hill and it would be 10 more for him to drive me up it. I refused four times before he gave up. We smoked a cigarette together and he named the various volcanoes jutting high across Lake Nicaragua. We lazily swerved around cyclists, pedestrians, bulls and pigs as the sun disappeared behind Volcano Conception.   

The taxi driver’s claim wasn’t TOTAL bullshit. He dropped me off at the fortified front gate of The Naked Tiger, and a steep hill passed past my range of vision in the falling dusk. There was a Nico guard at the gate wearing a shirt emblazoned with the Naked Tiger logo. Some sort of shuttle was to come past in ten minutes which could give me a lift to the hostel proper. Before it could, an Ozzie in his 50’s swung up to the gate and offered to give me a lift.

~

“Nah, not the tIgah. I work at the next hostel ova. People in town call it ‘the tIgah rehab hostel.’ Loads of people come ova aftah they’ve been run down by tha partying and drinking and…everythIng else that goes on ova there, sleep it off for a couple days.”

I had heard of rehab hostels before. Marion, from “Hardcore Travelers,” had stayed at one after he had partied himself out at a raving coke hostel in the depths of Thailand.

The pick-up crawled past another guard with a Naked Tiger t-shirt. He was sitting on a stump and cradling a shotgun.

“What’s your name?” I inquired.

“fRed.” he stuck his hand out for a shake while handling the wheel with the other. We passed through a second security gate and the Naked Tiger opened up in front of us. It looked like the villa of a Columbian Coke Kingpin.

“If ya lOOking for a quitah place, we’re just up tha hill.” Fred pointed, we parted ways, and I stepped into the Naked Tiger.

Abuse & Douchebaggery in San Juan Del Sur, Pt. II