It's a Disneyland built to please!
God, how I love Central America! That permeating sweet shit stink, jungle rot and poorly built cesspits. The smell of life become death become life. The smiling impoverished, pura vida to the South, a beginner’s Disneyland built to please, serving up the idyllic surf experience sold hard for profit and paid for by local quality of life.
Nicaragua’s a bit harder, the smiles a tad tighter.
My country has a sordid history within its borders. The Banana Wars of the early twentieth century. In the nineteenth Walker’s private army burnt Granada to the ground, left a lance in the rubble inscribed “Aquí fue Granada.”
Reagan and the Contras, so much bloodshed for foreign interests. The smiles, tight as they may be, make it easy to forget a man my age grew up in the throes of civil war, a child witnessing terror and murder facilitated by rich white men thousands of miles away. Ortega’s face is everywhere, ex-Sandanista savior with his gorgeous propaganda.
“Cristiana, Socialista, Solidaria! Viva la Revoluciòn!”
But I’m a tourist, don’t pay it no never-mind. Take pictures, leave money, go home. Tip well, it’s no burden, just another rich white motherfucker treating their home as his playground. Three hours off the plane and I’m hoovering poison, spastic dancing to import Pop, sweat drenched and soaking the unfortunate young thing I’ve set my eye on.
Her friends are laughing at me, but I pretend I don’t notice. Maybe she’ll make a bad decision, head home with a hard learned lesson about older men.
“It’s the coke, this has never happened before!” Yeah right.
You feel your age after a night like that. All the young ones, so tight and trim, bright eyed and bushy tailed. When did everyone grow a beard? What’s with the long hair? Sixpack model bodies and lumberjack heads. Tell myself there’s no chin under all that fur, makes me feel better when all the ladies coo-coo. I can grow a beard too, you know. But it swings me to homeless drifter, too much paunch for lumbersexual.
Thank my non-existent lord and savior for unregulated farmacias. Standing in the equatorial heat, dredging my broken brain for generic names. Alprazolam and Diazepam.What’s that there? Says oxy-something. Those too, por favor.
Assorted pills from Canadian bottles, an ice cold Toña, a bump of garbage off a hotel room key. Sets the head right, or somewhere close. I fucking hate blow, usually years between uses. But I’m weak. No will, no resistance to peer pressure in the form of “Want some?”
Totally aware of the consequences, could end up against a wall, a cautionary tale for those with my own poor judgment. A total fucking idiot who has, time and again, managed to dodge the price of his own bad decisions. Forrest Gump with a chip on his shoulder and a doting wife that finances his adventures.
We scored our first day, even by my own jaded standards. A twenty-seven-foot tidal swing, early morning offshore stand-up closeout barrels, laughably gentle compared to my Pacific Island home. Rest and water and fun longboard suited cruisers before the tide kicked it back into gear in the hours before sunset.
Played hero midday, an ego stroke of which I never tire. A long-limbed blonde Scandinavian lass with no business in the water caught a board to the dome. Close enough to see the panic set in, ditched my board, tossed her back on hers.
Crawled on top, bear-hugged her to the deck, took a few on the head as we were pushed to shore. Chest pressed firmly against her g-stringed ass, a definite high point, inappropriate thoughts in a life or death situation.
I’m overselling it, she was fine. A dozen-plus stitches from a traveling Finn doctor on a makeshift beachside sterile area. Pretty gory, plenty of blood, but nothing worth going into shock over. You’ve gotta pay to play.
When she doffed her suited and invited me for a swim I thought I had a chance. Pert young tits, a quick glimpse of her pink asshole as she dove beneath the surface. Totally lacking self-consciousness, she broke my heart when ashore I realized she was only comfortable because of my age. No threat here, just a comfortable uncle type.
Would have enjoyed a little more appreciation. Got a cursory thanks, then saw her gush over the doc’s ministrations. I wasn’t expecting a hummer or anything. But if I’m being honest I’d’ve enjoyed a handy.
Then Katie, oh Katie! Slightly pudgy, a 23-year-old sorority sister, so ripe in her fecundity. Living in Nica for a spell, tending bar, joined us on a booze cruise and sucked down “blackout punch” as if there weren’t a hundred gallons waiting below decks.
I don’t drink on boats, a hard and fast rule born of my own terror at being afloat. Always ready for a long swim, to fight off drunken drowning victims unable to self-rescue. When she doffed her suited and invited me for a swim I thought I had a chance. Pert young tits, a quick glimpse of her pink asshole as she dove beneath the surface. Totally lacking self-consciousness, she broke my heart when ashore I realized she was only comfortable because of my age. No threat here, just a comfortable uncle type.
She disappeared the moment we arrived back in San Juan del Sur. Never saw her again, only a memory and a single photo to mark my love. No wonder my wife found me rock hard and ready the moment I deplaned.
That Rousey fight was something, huh?
We found a bar with a pirated stream, drank with our new best friends, watched my heroine get crushed. Offered a Valium early in the night I turned it down, seriously flagging at that point, only bottles of water and shots of sugar thick rum keeping me upright and raging. By the time I’d changed my mind, the option was gone. My own stash kilometers away, those present dissolved into a slurry of hard alcohol and cold beer in the belly of a travel companion.
I witnessed the terrible moment his brain turned off but his body stayed ambulatory. We’ve all been there, it’s never good.
“Let’s go explore!”
Let’s not. Wasted tourists with targets on their backs don’t fare well in foreign locales. Muddled but good-natured, his state never turned belligerent. Easy to steer back inside with offers of nachos and another beer. When his brain hit the reset button every thirty minutes it was an easy rinse and repeat. Keep him safe, keep him sound, don’t take your eyes off him for even a second.
A late night disappearing act led to the fate we all feared. A knife to his throat, gun in his face. A decision to go whoring cost him his wallet, ID, credit cards. Passport was safe and sound back at our hotel, phone long gone, lost early in the night.
A touch of karma, a lesson learned. For all my supposed amorality I am not on board with buying sex. Especially in an impoverished nation with an almost invisible shot at upward mobility.
It worked out as well as it could. No beatings, no injuries, just a fun story to tell once he’s gone through the hassle of replacing things easily replaced. We’re all adults, more than enough money to keep him afloat the rest of the trip.
An interesting realization, that comfort that comes with age.
While the young, dumb, and beautiful danced and fucked, slept four to a room and struggled to scrape together enough Córdoba for a tipica breakfast, we lived large. Throwing money around with a shocking profligacy. A six-hour session followed by the nicest restaurant in town. Appetizers, lobsters, top-shelf booze and a US$120 bill.
“No, it’s okay, I’ve got it.”
Add a tip that leaves the waiter awe struck, a bare nothing by standards back home. The perks of being old. It ain’t all weight gain and aching joints and self-loathing.
That last time I was in Nicaragua I witnessed the height of the Central American gold rush. Scum bag entrepreneur types, buying up local land for a song. Rushing to develop, strike it rich. Move that money out of the country, keep the locals scrubbing cum out of sheets and slaving for tips.
To learn the bottom fell out made my heart soar. The wealthy travelers barely materialized, their places filled by Canadians and Australians and gym rat Euro-trash with minimal budgets and no appetite for luxury. Talked to an ex-pat about it, a surf shop owner who’d make the trek in 2007 with dreams of hitting it big.
There’s no nobility in earning a buck, to do it on the back of an uneven playing field borders on evil. Lip service to job creation is a disingenuous lie, the only real result is a permanent underclass, backs forever bent in servitude to the privileged.
“I moved here to get rich,” he said. “Now I’m stuck. You can’t get anything done, the corruption just ruins you.”
They’re building airport on the Emerald Coast, a last gasp grasp at importing the moneyed set, the type who can’t stomach a three-hour terror taxi from Managua. Already he’s making plans to buy more. Maybe flip, maybe develop. Whichever, he can smell that filthy lucre, it’s almost there.
Nice guy, good company. Killer little shop with an awesome staff and surprisingly good selection of boards. Very fair prices, really bent over backward to make sure we had a good time.
But I’d be lying if I said I don’t hope his dreams crash and burn.
There’s no nobility in earning a buck, to do it on the back of an uneven playing field borders on evil. Lip service to job creation is a disingenuous lie, the only real result is a permanent underclass, backs forever bent in servitude to the privileged.
But it’s a nation with a socialist god emperor, and a national hero in the form of Sandino.
“La soberanía de un pueblo no se discute, sino que se defiende con las armas en la mano.” (“The sovereignty of a people cannot be argued about, it is defended with a gun in the hand.”)
So there’s hope, I hope.
In the blink of an eye we were done.
Hugs at the airport as we split our group. Some off to San Diego, to Florida, a twenty-four-hour series of hell flights and border crossings as I made my way home to my island kingdom in the middle of the Pacific.
My pain at leaving eased by the knowledge I returned to a joke of a life, and by the fact that you can easily carry felony levels of pharmaceuticals through customs so long as you’ve got a smile on your face, a spring in your step, and plausible deniability in the form of a poor grasp of the law.
