Xmas in Nica

I stood as close to the window as I could get, packed in tight surrounded by Nicaraguan families waiting for their relatives to walk off the plane. As I watched as each woman, child, man and family passed through security, I became slightly antsy and nervous that perhaps my people did not make the flight. Finally, after convincing myself that maybe they had all dyed their hair and had body transplants, I saw Carol, then Mom, then Mad and then Emma. They walked straight to the baggage claim and did not look my way. They had not seen me yet, but I watched them, willing them with my mind to stop looking for their suitcases and look through the glass window. At last, they found the last piece of luggage and turned to walk through the last security check before they could get to me. On their way out, they did look up and we saw each other. My emotions were out of control. My eyes teared up as we finally came face to face for the first time in 7 months. Man.

We headed outside where it had started to sprinkle a bit and waited for our cabbie, Moises, to pick us up and take us to Granada. Someone once said that "all great journeys start with a mistake"(that quote has been very roughly translated, by the way). Well ours did not start with a real mistake, but it did start out right from the start as an adventure. We piled 6 people, including Moises, and 5 suitcases plus carry-ons into the taxi, then get pulled over about 20 minutes into the trip. As my family does not speak nor understand too much Spanish, I think they were pretty nervous about the cop stopping us...fortunately it was just a routine checkpoint for taxis.

We continued on to Granada, sin problemas. Christmas Eve day, we spent with my training buddy, Nico, and his parents. We rented a motorboat and boated to our very own private island. Literally we had the whole island to ourselves, with exception to the restaurant owners and staff who actually live on the island. We were swimming in Lake Nicaragua off the shores of Granada (I wrote about the Isletas of Granada in a pervious post)…how fantastic. We just rented the island out for a couple hours, but if you wanted to buy an island all you would need would be $20,000 and perhaps a boat.

Christmas Day, my host family from training came to Granada and met us down by the water. It was so incredible to have all of these people so close to each other, even though they could not really speak. Through my translating, words exchanged here and there and body language, we were able to communicate well. My family and I then started looking for a rental car…we had not thought of it ahead of time that renting a car would be a lot easier than traveling by bus with all of their luggage. Lucky us that not one of the rental car companies in Granada had an automatic car available in Granada nor in Masaya. Our best bet was to make our way to Managua and try there…OR we could call up the random number I received from a hotel clerk who told me that his friend rented out cars. His name was Rafael and he was our last hope. We thought it to be a bit odd the way that we came upon Rafael, but decided to give it a try. After sitting in his living room, hearing about his family and talking car business, we were just about to give up hope, when a car pulled up. Our rental car pulled up. Our bright yellow Mitsubishi sports car complete with spoiler, loud rock n roll and remnants of marijuana smell, pulled up and we got in. With the windows down and the warm Nicaraguan wind blowing through our hair, we began our adventurous ride up to Chinandega. The ride started out fast as we got used to people staring at our hot and sexy car, but slowed down as soon as it started to get dark. We somehow got stuck behind every single slow vehicle that was on the road that night- a potato truck, a melon truck that we were almost positive was carrying a dead body and a truck so large and so overstuffed that it precariously sat on its wheels very close to tipping over. We decided to spend the night in Leon. With my fantastic sense of direction (ya right…I got lucky.), we ended up exactly where I wanted to at the Best Western in downtown Leon, settled into our room, ate supper and went directly to bed. The next morning, we finally made it to Chinandega and then to Corinto.

More to come soon…