Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Cast of Characters

Thomas: My French/Belgian/English housemate. 26, skinny as a rail, smokes like a chimney, has been living on the island for almost a year now. He sells these beautiful postcards in sepia tones that feature photographs of people, which is nicer and more representitive of the country than, say, a gecko or a sunset. He also makes and sells chocolate. We are both pretty social people but have fallen into seclusion; on a given day we basically only interact with one another. We have therefore developed the closeness of siblings, or of an 80 year old married couple. For all our bickering and exasperation, we were fairly lucky to find one another, because we have many fundamental things in common, politically, metaphysically, counterculturally, culinarily. We are eccentric but not in the same way. We are currently both in the middle of reading a seminal postcolonial text written in 1971 by Eduardo Galeano, called The Open Veins of Latin America; it chronicles the rape and pillage of of Central and South America over the last five centuries. It is incisive, brutal, and bombastically poetic. We listen to a lot of Ravi Shankar and Edith Piaf, and trance music heavily featuring the digeridoo. Thomas likes to watch documentaries, generally of one of two kinds: David Attenbourough nature documentaries, or radical and incendiary anti-corporate, anti-capitalist productions. I have stumbled upon a large and disparate community of people who believe that society as we know it will collapse upon itself in the next 20 years and lead to a huge revolution of the oppressed and independent-minded public. This is a breath of fresh air to me, because the longer I am away from home the more clinically insane my country appears to be. But back to Thomas. He makes crepes about 5 times a day.

Leia: Thomas’s puppy, black and brown and big enough not to be a small dog in the bad way but small enough to be portable and discrete. She is very calm and respectful and spends most of her time sleeping. Every few weeks Thomas pronounces that she is going to die. Then she gets better. Whenever we leave the house, she comes with us and waits patiently outside for us to finish our shopping, or swimming, or visiting. At night she has begun to sleep in the pile of my clothes on the floor, which is incidentally also where the two tarantulas who live in my room sleep.

Martijn: Totoco eco-lodge’s volunteer coordinator. Seriously one of the nicest and most generous people I have met. Totoco has a little eco-farm that hosts volunteers; because Thomas used to volunteer there when he first came to the island and because he worked up as a bartender/receptionist at the hotel, and because he is Martijn’s friend, he goes to weekly pizza night at Totoco. And because I am his housemate, I go to.

Patricia: Martijn’s smoking hot Spanish girlfriend. Gorgeous, fierce, smart, hilarious, and just dynamite in every way, she spearheads Totoco Foundation’s philanthropic work in the community.

Josh: Recpetionist at eco-hostel El Zopilote. He’s a photojournalist and is travelling and writing a book on zero to low-cost travel. He hitchhiked here from the Mexican border, which is easier to do if you are male, huge, hairy, non-descriptly olive-skinned, and fearless. He’s one of those people who loves to talk about himself and blows a lot of hot air, which I find forgivable because he has done a ton of really cool things in his life. Like most of my friends here, he remains pendant of the revolution. Meanwhile a UFO magazine has hired him to spend the entire year of 2012 in the Yucatan peninsula documenting astrological phenomena, taking pictures of Haley’s comet, and slumming around archeological wonders of the Aztec and Mayan civilizations.

Arturo: Zopilote’s live-in carpenter. French, 24, disarmingly mysterious and handsome. We don’t talk much.

Christiano: Owns Zopilote, along with his dad, Bruno. Bruno is an 80-year-old-man-shaped conglomerate of disgruntled sticks. He putters around the farm in his Guatamalan flood pants making natural foods. They make lots of natural products, such as fresh bread, pizza 3 nights a week, chocolate, peanut butter, various liqueurs including honey and lemongrass, basil, and chamomile, nutella, chutneys and marmelades.

Rebecca and Michael: Came from California to babysit Martijn’s house and volunteers while he’s away in Europe for the month. Super new-age and down to earth. They may be my favourite people I have met so far in my travels: welcoming, smart, engaging, and relaxed. Rebecca feeds me Himalayan salt and green tea. They dress like pirates. Also, all the volunteers who were there have quit, so the nonplussed two of them have the farm to themselves. They don’t really speak Spanish, but they are building a pig pen with Pablo, the local worker and trying to explore the island in their free time. I run into them, either by plan or by accident, every two or three days.

Francisco: A local tour guide who I met through a series of random events. He’s 25 and is trying to set up a new tourist information center in Moyogalpa, the island’s biggest port town, in order to streamline and civilize the dispensation of information, hiring of guides and taxistas, and undermine competition in favour of unbiased and helpful information. He smiles as much as anyone I know, and wants to take me horseback riding everywhere. I suspect he hopes we will grow very close.

Roslyn: Along with Martijn she is one of the founders and investors of Totoco. I am giving her yoga lessons.

Tess: Tess and her husband Anton work at a hostel called “Little Morgan’s”, sort of a party place. She’s 28 and an occupational therapist. She does a lot of really great work with the women in Balgue. She teaches aerobics on Monday, yoga on Wednesday, and also lots of councelling and support group sessions. Apparently there are a lot of depressed and anxious women here who feel very disempowered by not only their lack of education but also by living in the patriarchal shadow of their husbands. Patricia also works with these women and the foundation helps some of them get microloans to begin their own business ventures.

Ben and Sarah: Own a delightful cafe, Cafe Campestre, in Balgue. I sell journals on consignment there.

Gary and Laura: Own a delightful cafe, The Cornerhouse Cafe, in Moyogalpa. I sell journals there, too, and every time I’m in Moyogalpa I ritualistically eat a huge slice of carrot cake for lunch there.

Tomasa and Alvin: Our lovely neighbours next door. They have a horse and chickens and three parakeets and two dogs; recently a baby pig has been added to the menagerie. Things that they lend us: shovels, rakes, the blender, the hand mill for grinding cacao, and the grater. Last night I told Alvin I don’t know what our kitchen would do without them, and he smiled and told me that’s what neighbours are for. One day he came over and asked if he could please look at our stove- the wood-burning tunnel one which we don’t use. He took some measurements, and a week later has built a perfect replica in his own kitchen.

Joasca: Tomasa and Alvin’s 23 year old daughter. She is so pretty it hurts to look at her.

Siry Lady: Joasca’s little sister. She just turned 11. They invited us over for her birthday dinner, and we had revuelto de pollo (chicken and rice with veggies, like a Nicaraguan stir-fry), pineapple juice, coke, and birthday cake while we watched Home Alone II (which was the highlight of my week, because nothing reminds me of my childhood like the wet bandits). Siry is really bright and adorable. On Saturday she takes English classes in town, and some mornings she comes over and I give her English lessons. This consists of reading a few pages of a bilingual edition of The Ugly Duckling. It is not only rife with spelling and grammatical errors in the English translations, but it seems be written with reprehensible carelessness as to what vocabulary words are useful and appropriate for beginners. When she doesn’t know a word we write it on a vocabulary list, and occasionally we stop for a grammar lesson when it seems appropriate. Although I was an English major and teaching is all strangers ever assume I am fit to do with my life, teaching it as a second language is something I was totally unprepared for. I am, however, trying my best and Siry keeps coming back, even though she doesn’t appear to actually be learning anything. Today she gave me a candy necklace and I almost cried it was so sweet of her.

Claudio: An aging French Canadian expatriate who lives with Tomasa and Alvin. He used to be an antiques dealer but now he is a farmer. He loans some of the land to other farmers, and seems to use the rest as a sort of grandiose ornamental garden. He is trying to avoid building, which is what most gringos do, in excess really, when they relocate to the island. Thus his living with Thomasa and Alvin and his lack of two-story house with a widescreen television and a refrigerator and lots of other things that most expats bring to their homes.

Mitch: Is also from Boston! Therefore, we became friends immediately when Roxanne (Harrison’s sister) introduced us when we crossed paths in the street one evening. Mitch has been on the island for about a year. He started as a receptionist at Zopilote, and now he’s the volunteer coordinator for Finca Bona Fide, a permaculture farm with a great reputation. I will be moving there in a few days to volunteer. The other night, he and Arturo and I were out eating dinner in Santa Cruz and the Red Sox – Yankees game was on TV. I confessed that I had never watched a baseball game ever in my life, so Mitch patiently taught me (and Arturo because baseball’s not so big in France) the rules so that I could marginally follow the game. Mitch has an important and demanding job on the farm, but I also suspect that he is entirely addicted to busyness. He is probably wound tighter than any of my other friends on the island, and he still has dreadlocks.

Jorge: A jewellery artisan who lives in Managua, the capital. He and I met at Finca Magdelena when I was on the island for the first time, with Laura. He was one of the people who most strongly encouraged me to pursue the journals. I visited him in Managua, where he led me around on a 3-day shopping spree to buy paper and kitchen supplies. What a mensch. He lives in his aunt’s compound, where she rents rooms to students. He has a little medicinal herb garden that he feeds with food scraps, and he has a coconut tree. Jorge dotes on his little niece and sings her lots of cute songs on guitar, and then sings revolutionary songs when she’s not around. He is president of the national artisan’s guild and an active member of the FSLN party. He has a degree in sociology, speaks French, and learned to make jewellery when he lived on the street after becoming disillusioned with academia for a few years. Oh, and did I mention, he’s only 26. Jorge has a beautiful and wise life philosophy, and he is happy, generous, brilliant, and laid back. We went to the two huge markets in Managua, one of which is the biggest market in Central America. I ate beef-stomach soup. One night we made dinner and I found out that Jorge had breaded our fried fish with chocolate-corn breakfast shake powder. It was a new taste, but not so bad.

Harrison: Harrison began talking to me as I was walking down from Finca Magdelena one day. Oh, you live here. I had a Canadian volunteer live with my family for a while. She used to love to go horseback riding. Do you know Punta Gorda? We should go horseback riding there sometime. I’ll take you.

It’s hard to say no when you are not busy. This is an island where it is literally impossible to be, in the words of Lloyd Dobbler, indefinitely busy. You would have to be rude to refuse an invitation. Also, horseback riding is hard to say no to.

So we met on the appointed day, me hoping he would blow me off but unwilling to blow him off. And he had... one horse. I was not pleased. He is 24, single, and maybe five feet tall. And we had to ride the same horse together. It was an old mare who was ridiculously slow. He said we could go get the other horse in the pasture that likes to run, so we did, which was a fun journey farther east of Balgue than I had gone before. And the other horse was great, but Harrison wouldn’t let me canter much because I might tire him out. How lame do you have to be. Conversation was excruciating. “The other horse was slow, wasn’t it?” Yup, it was. “This horse is fast”. You bet. “You like that, right?” Mhmm. “You like it” I like fast horses, yes. I promise you this was not a language barrier issue because Jorge and I don’t have conversations that sound like this. I finally lost it and asked him what he thought about the upcoming national presidential election. I may as well have asked him to tell me his most embarrassing childhood story. He then told me he had had a foreign girlfriend. “Congratulations”, I told him bitterly. I proceded to tell him how I hate being a piece of ass. He said, but people tell you they love you. I said, Jesus, learn the difference between love and lust; you can’t love someone you’ve never met. He told me that gringas are nicer and prettier. I called him a racist. He manipulated me into coming home with him and meeting his mother, who I adored. All in all, I have to say that the date was not a success.

Daren and Ileene: My landlords. They are in their 40’s and own a bed and breakfast across the street. They are nice but obviously a little eccentric, which creeps me out only because I cannot put my finger on it. I guess it’s the way they talk to their dog, Dozer, who is slightly blind and deaf. He takes his job as a guard dog very seriously, but does a poor job on the uptake, so when he figures out somebody’s there, and also that they are way closer to the house than he should have allowed them to get before noticing them, he is a vicious sonofabitch. They speak to him like he’s a lobotomized human, “Dozer, Dozer, calm down. Dozer, relax. Relax Dozer. Friend. Friend, Dozer.”. Like so many aging hippy parents they seem committed to raising their young without the use of the word “no”. Occasionally Dozer comes over to OUR house and trots around like he owns the place, which to me seems extremely impertinent for an animal that takes territorial boundaries so seriously.

Charlie: A fat cane toad that lives in our yard, so named by yours truly.

Chronical of Events and Situations

The lines: Thomas and I have concluded that: We live above the poverty line. We live above the crepe line. We live below the water line. We live below the utensils line. We live above the starfruit line. We live above the book line. We live below the hygiene line. We live above the documentary line. We live below the protein and the balanced diet line. We live above the chocolate line. We live below the cultural events line. We live below the getting laid line. We live below the clean sink line. This is how we speak about our lives.

Water

The house in which Thomas and I are living was built equipt with five sources of running water. Two taps in the yard which run water directly from the Madronal water system’s pipes. One toilet, also hooked up to the system. One shower, and one sink, both of which get their water from a 500-gallon cement tank in our backyard, which has filtered water from the system. The shower does not work if the tank is less than half full. The sink does not work if the tank is empty.

It has been almost a month since the sink stopped working.

Where does the system water come from? As you know, I live on the side of a volcano, called Maderas (“wood”). Maderas has a large crater lake at its summit (I have seen this lake). The island’s shores will not see rain from about November to June, during a time referred to as either “summer” or “the dry season”. However, because clouds form around the peaks of the volcano, it rains up there every day, and even when its not raining there is a line above which everything is always wet because of condensation. In the dry season, while the monocropped banana fields and dusty roads are dry and dead, the slopes of the mountain are verdant with a cloak of trees and other green plant life.

Why am I telling you all of this? To drive home the point that Ometepe, in its magical geology, is never without water. The water system is a series of pipe that lead all the way up to the crater lake. Also let us not forget that this is a fresh water island and that I live a ten minutes’ walk away from the large lake in Central America.

However, during the end of the dry season water gets a little bit tight. The pipe is set up such that there is the main tube that runs off the mountain and like a taproot it has many little pipes leading off of it to supply individual houses and neighbourhoods. Quantum physicists are not sure that gravity really exists, but for the purpose of our discussion, gravity is what runs this water system and so therefore people at the bottom get more water pressure. When water is scarce, “the people in charge” don’t let as much out, and so now most of Madronal is out of running water. There is no organization of this system and no communication. Daren and Illene have water; we don’t. To be more specific, we can turn on the taps in the yard, which on a given day will yield from about a teaspoon to a gallon of a water every half hour. Due to a stomach-churning amount of visible sediment, this water is not drinkable. We use it to do dishes.

How does this water shortage affect our lives?

Drinking water: Daren and Ileene give us gallon jugs of water from their tap. These are kind of heavy but not a big deal, except for your fingers. It is therefore painful to carry more than one in each hand.

Showering: Daren and Ileene have been generous enough to let us use their shower whenever we like. This is nice, but not as nice as not having to walk 300 meters to your neighbour’s house carrying your toiletries and a clean change of clothes and a towel and several one-gallon jugs to refill for drinking water every time you want a shower, which in a 95 degree climate that is getting progressively more humid as the rainy season approaches is about constantly. Thomas and I also rinse frequently in the lake. Sometimes I fill a 2-liter bottle with lake water and put in the shower for if I just want to rinse off before bed or something. Hygiene has taken a turn for the worse.

Dishes: But nothing like the dishes situation, which is the most abject scorn for cleanliness and appropriate human separation from putrefaction of which I have ever been a part. When we were in our second week of getting mere teaspoons from the outside taps, it was difficult to wash our dishes because we were frankly drinking most of the water we got from Daren and Ileene. It turned into a sort of triage in which we only washed what we wanted to use, and the rest of the dishes rotted in a pile. I may not have mentioned that our sink is flat. While most logical sinks are a bowl that slopes down to a drain, our sink is a basin that encourages the buildup of foodscraps in remote corners. When your foodscraps are raw chicken that you have failed to wash off a cutting board for a week, life gets really difficult. When we got hungry, Thomas and I would generally cast a glance at the kitchen sink, sigh, pull a spoon out of a bowl of soaking crepe mix and wipe it on our pants, and make a cup of tea. Things are a little better now that we are getting up to a gallon of water from the tap. I have also requested that we only use one bowl for crepe mix, instead of rotating three through various stages of crustiness, and it’s been a hit. There’s nothing like running water, though. One night it rained really hard. We lost electricity and put all of our dishes in the rain, hoping it would help clean them and loosen the crud. It did, but the impact of the huge drops launched liquid soil all over the outside, and sometimes into the inside, of the dishes. I managed to clean them all by moonlight, but it was not ideal.

Laundry: In the lake. Which we sometimes did before anyway.

Going to the bathroom: Unfortunatley we learned that we lacked enough water to flush the toilet when Thomas made a lot of poop in the toilet and was then unable to flush it. Ever since, we’ve been going to the bathroom outside behind the big rocks. It’s like camping! For a month.

Here’s the thing. Thomas and I are first-world novices, and there’s been a learning curve; But the fact of the matter is that there are huge numbers of people who live without running water, or have almost no potable water, as a way of life. With global warming, more and more areas will see extreme droughts. Think about this.

Yoga

So at first I worked really hard to set up a business proposition with hostel Finca Magdelena so that I could become the yoga instructor there. I had business meetings (!!!!) and bought a cell phone, which I really didnt want to do, but whatever. I made a sign, I revised it, I translated it into Spanish, everything. I did the same for another hostel. Lots of hard work and walking around the island.

It failed. I am an optimistic person usually, but I have no hesitations in saying that this particular business venture crashed and burned like the best of them. I didnt have too many sunken investment costs luckily, though, and everything worked out. I was in Tess's yoga class one day and Roslyn hired me to teach her a private lesson. Now there's a group of five of them and we do lessons twice a week. I make mad bank, and its so great. They're engaged and enthusiastic, make lots of juicy noises. We laugh and groan, and they're at a good ability level. I have a lot to teach them, but they can also do a fair amount. Each class builds on the ones before it. I am in my element.

Maderas

I climbed the volcano! With Francisco and two travelers I met in Moyogalpa the day before, who invited me to join them. So it was an improptu volcano climb. We climbed 4 hours up, the first half dry and the second wet. Up toward the top it was so lush and green, everything mossy and muddy and just lovely. At the summit is a flat field (wierd after hiking through cloud forest and rocks the whole time) with a huge lake. It's always covered with mist, so it looks like something out of Arthurian legend. We had a picnic lunch up there and then hiked 3 hours down. I walked funny for the next week.

Journals

I have been making and selling journals in two cafes. It has been great. They have petroglyphs from the island on the cover, and are super well recieved. There were some major learning curves in getting everything figured out, but it worked. I'm almost out of materials, and I'm not going to get more, but it's been a good first excersize in entrepreurship.

Chocolate

We make a lot of chocolate to satisfy our crepe addiction. We buy the cacao beans fermented and dried already. Then we roast them to get the remaining moisture out. You do this to coffee, too. You then have to peel the beans and grind them. Thomasa lends us their hand mill for this. Once we left it outside and it got stolen. We asked Thomasa about this and she had an idea of who stole it. When Thomas confronted him, he said he didn't know. When Thomas mentioned the police, he said, ok, my friend took it and buried it behind your house. Thomas said where. He said, I don't know. Thomas said, show me. And so he did. Thomas unburied the coffee grinder and returned it to Thomasa. Anyway. You grind in sugar with the cacao, and then you have a paste. Let it dry, you have a bar of chocolate. Mix in some sugar, milk, and butter and you can heat it into a sauce.

Garbage

There is no way to dispose of your garbage in Ometepe except to burn it or bury it. Hacienda Merida has a program where they will pay you a few cents if you bring them a two liter waterbottle stuffed compact with trash. They use these as building materials for houses, sheds, etc. So Thomas and I spent a couple of days stuffing 3 months of accumulated trash into bottles with a stick of rebar. It was disgusting. Not only was there rotting butter wrappers and milk containers, but also piles and piles of cigarette ash. It's good to take responsiblity for your own trash- I bet if everyone had to put all their trash in water bottles, they would think twice before buying so much crap.

Insects

Insects exist to fly around and die. The empirical evidence is littered all over the floor. Over the course of my time here, the insect swarms have had a flavour-of-week type of turnover. It began with little flies, shaped like mosquitoes but smaller, that were sometimes so thick your eyes would plow into them while walking and you’d have to fish squashed bugs out from your eyeballs. Every morning a thin dust of them accumulated on the floor. These were a mostly nocturnal phenomena. During the day we had little wasps that land and crawl on everything but especially humans. Thomas and I tried to determine whether they were more attracted to body odour and sweat or perfumes and toiletrie scents. My conclusion is that they flock to me indiscriminately. Although they are wasps they are totally non-aggressive and they only sting when you accidentally pinch them in your armpit or your kneepit. They don’t mind being swatted at. Thomas once had one in his coffee and it bit his tongue. Then there was another fly, almost identical to the first, but this one was so small it could get in between the holes of my mosquito net. And bite me. For a few days I wondered if I had fleas or hives, because this swarm began the night I was delirious with fever and vomiting, so I didn’t know if I was imagining the little bites or if it was bugs. The next wave was cicadas, but amazingly they made no noise. Leia loved to catch and eat them. Then the rain came back. The island had been a steady 95 degrees and sunny every day since I arrived. We are now moving into the wet season, and get at least a few minutes of rain every other day, and have had a couple earnest thunderstorms. It is delightful to see everything coming back to life. A carpet of little sprouts has sprung up in the yard. And with it have come crickes, grasshoppers, and every insect imaginable. At the moment we are swamped with brown beetles the size of lima beans. Leia doesn’t even eat them they are so fucking big and repulsive. Also we have houseflies which have the maddening habit of not only landing on you but returning back to the same spot again and again after you shoo them away. But the magical thing is that the fireflies are in bloom. Yes, there are fireflies back home. But not like this. You look into the darkness and it sparkles. Fireflies like the darkness and so they do not come into my house; therefore they do not die there, so they are in my good graces in every possible way.

Spiders and scorpions are not insects, they are arachnids, and arachnids seem to have no come-and go season. Likewise, mosqitos, which are an insect, are always present, but in pretty manageable numbers. Our house provides a home for a handful of tarantulas, none of which are quite so large as my hand. They like to sleep in my clothes when I am not wearing them. Sometimes there are scorpions on the walls. And there are many smaller spiders which barely even make blips on my radar anymore, especially since the category of “indoors” no longer exists for me. “Indoors” is something that happens in America.

Then there are the trooping ants. Usually they are a moving river no thicker than your thumb. But sometimes they are a delta with estuaries and ponds flowing into one location, and this is when you can hear them. All their little legs moving over dead leaves makes a sound like rain. Occasionally they invade our home for an hour or two, and then we have to leave, but they only eat dead insects (of which we have an abundance). What eats our foods is a rodent. It looks more like a mouse than a rat, but it is a mouse the size of a remote control. Really the only problem with the trooping ants is that they bite viciously. It is the kind of biting that hurts so badly you can’t tell if you have more ants on your feet biting you or if the same bite is just still stinging. If you walk through an ant trail, they will redirect themselves within seconds up your foot and sting you. So you have to just keep an eye out where you step.

Moving In

This is our house: you walk up a dirt road that leads off the main road, for about 300 meters. You walk up the stone steps and follow a path about 200 meters through scrub brush, banana trees, spikey trees, other weird trees, and tons of little bushes that love to stick you with their seeds. Skinny little dirt path. The whole yard's dry as hay and full of huge volcanic boulders. If I was a kid I would be climbing all over them. I still need to do that one day: scale all of the big rocks in our yard. The whole place is screaming out for me to make little winding paths all through it to little garden courtyards. I may buy some little cactus plants, you know, those kind you can always find, I think the name has something to do with hens?

There a bougaivilleas everywhere. I am making a magic garden, with candles on the rocks, and I am making a brick patio and hanging windchimes that I'm going to make with seashells I found in Montezuma. Also, the island has every kind of large decorative seed you could dream of, which is fun to make stuff with.

Then we have a house at the end of this path. The most important room in the house is not a room, actually, it is the covered porch in front, which consists of a red cement patio supported by a few wooden beams. I spend 80 % of my waking time at the house on this patio. We have a hammock, and I just today bought a second hammock for myself. We have mosquito coils, an ashtray, Leia's dog bowl, and not too much else besides whatever we leave around. At the far corner are two doors, one to the kitchen, the other to the rest of the house.

I spend about another 15% of waking house time in the kitchen. We have an electric hotplate with two burners. Also we have a sink. There is good news and bad news about the sink. The good news is that I can drink the water! The bad news is that the sink is flat-bottomed. It is probably about 2 by 4 feet of slate with a drain in one corner. This is hateful to me, because all the gross little food bits (which are mega-gross and totally gag me to begin with) just float from one side of the sink to another like lost little souls in rotting food pergatory. But the nice thing is that we have a window over the sink where you can throw all your compost, and it really doesn't smell bad! I think because Leia almost immediately eats most of it. If you noticed that I do not mention any other appliances, a fridge for example, it is because we don't have one. But you know, rice and beans and veggies is all we eat, and that can last just fine from one meal to the next. But usually we give Leia the leftovers. She is useful like that, like a pig, but we don't get to eat her later. She's Thomas's puppy, a little mutt just the right size to be small without being a 'small dog'. Very obediant, pretty much leaves you alone, good tail wagger and watchdog. Very gentle.

Then inside the second door you come into the living room. There is nothing in the living room. Ok, just kidding, we have a machete, a tent, and a large sisal mat. Also hiking boots. The bummer is that the windows are totally open air (as is a large space between the roof and walls), so if you are not in the house you have to keep the windows shut so that the children don't come in and steal your stuff. There is a lightswitch that Thomas wired himself and occasionally gives you a good zap of electricity to keep you going strong.

Off of the living room are Thomas's room and my room. I have a little bed and a mosquito net. I am going to build some bamboo shelving to put my clothes on. I have two windows that look onto the yard (although I usually keep them locked and barred) and a little ledge on one wall where I keep most of my worldly possessions including tons of books.

When I first moved in I was a whirlwind of cleaning and scrubbing. I moved in 100% in less than 2 hours. I haven't cleaned my room since, even though the dust of dead insects is accumulating on my little shelf.

When I first got to the house, supplies were spare. The previous room mate had taken a lot of things with her. We had no tables. No chair. In the kitchen we had 2 pots (plenty), 2 pans (also plenty), two spoons, a fork, a butter knife, a cutting board, a half gallon tupperware, and one plastic coffee mug. For 4 people. We now have pretty much everything we need. Although the chair situation could improve. We have two broken plastic lawn chairs, but if you stack them, because they're broken in different spots, you can even lean back a little. Gently.

But what we do have is peace and quiet, relaxation, nobody telling us to do things differently, good friends, and fresh air 24-7. Thomas has a brilliant collection of world music and blues. One night I made minestrone soup for us, from scratch. I gave the cooked bones to Leia. We listened to Edith Piaf. Thomas ate out of the half gallon tupperware. I ate out of his little glass ashtray. And it's as happy as I have ever been.

We do our washing in the lake. The first time I really botched it, doing it in a rough spot with lots of waves, so I lost the soap in the lake and really just sort of 'rinsed' my clothes, then laid them to dry on a dead boat while I read on a tree that had fallen into the water.

My god, I am always so dirty here. We have the classic dustbowl situation: very dry land, all the dirt in dust. No pavement anywhere. Wind. Plus, it's about 90 degrees so I'm sweating buckets, and the dust just clings. People plan their days around midday heat, making sure they don't do ANYTHING. Or at least we do.

Funny story: I was swimming in the lake (we have a great swimming hole about 5 minutes from our house) and I played keep it up with a ball with some guys. I went home, and two of them caught up with me on horseback. We chatted a little, and then, in perfect English, this 16 year old tells me, 'I will visit you in the night. You will enjoy it very much'. The things you just don't expect, let me tell you. My little brother (also 16) better not be saying those kinds of things to the tourists in Boston.

Ometepe (The Beginning)

I had a headcold and I felt pretty lost without Jay. It was no big emotional thing- I had known from the start that this was the way things would go, and I didn't feel hurt or anything. But I felt sort of vulnerable and closed off at the same time. The trip from San Jose to the island was some of the smoothest traveling I have done, I landed a hostel, and I bunked down in Moyogalpa, the island's main city, for two days to weather out my cold. It's hard to travel when you're sick, even though colds never seem like much when you don't have one. Also I don't like meeting people when I'm snotty and gross.

Then I headed to Finca Magdelena to hopefully run into Thomas, my housemate to be. He often sells postcards at the finca, so I figured it would just work out. I was still sort of sick and didn't want to talk to anyone. I shared the 20 minute walk up the hill from the bus to the finca with a very French Frenchman. He liked to complain about the walk, which was onerous, but he was not sick. It's amazing, because Thomas is French but he is not like anyone from France I've ever met. He doesn't have the self-important bravado. He's part English, but he's not funny and vulgar like the English guys I've met. He's sort of a gentle, underspoken waif who is really good at saying exactly what he needs and gets along with everyone. He's sort of a watermark presence, in that he doesn't come off really strong but then you miss him when he isn't there.

At Magdelena I met Marcy and Leif, two friends who met while traveling. When I first saw them they were doing crazy modern dancing to the sunset, which I respected. We chatted, and it turns out that Leif is obsessed with coconuts and eats them every day. This was a major and also fairly eccentric thing to have in common. So we went into town to go coconut hunting. No luck, but we did eat at Cafe Campestre, owned by Ben and Sarah from England. I said hi to Ben, and asked him where Thomas lived. Without asking who I was, he gave me clear directions to my new house. This was good becasue who knows when Thomas would check his email and know I was here.

Lunch at Cafe Campestre deserves its own paragraph. I had a spring greens salad with slices of organic roasted chicken, avocado, beets, and honey mustard dressing. And the best garlic bread I've ever eaten on the side. Way out of my budget ( a seven dollar meal!) but really the most delicious food I've eaten in this country. If I ever actually start to make decent money here, I will for sure have to treat myself once in a while. Leif told me about his amazing education with the audobon school. He also did a semester at Kripalu, and is a massage therapist, and knows permaculture and wilderness survival and herbal healing. I wish I knew all that stuff!

That night Leif and Marcy invited me to participate in a full moon ceremony with them. It was also the spring equinox. We stated what we were grateful for and what we inteded and hoped for the future. We sang lots of beautiful rounds. It was so great to share something so special with practical strangers.

Then the next morning, Thomas arrived to bring me home! I was so relieved, because I was worried that the plan would fall through, especially becasue we had been having the minimum of communication since we last saw one another. But it all worked out. He also invited Marcy and Leif to come stay with us for the week or so they planned to be there. So we all set out for home together.

Panama II

Next we went to El Valle and stayed at a great little camping place. Except, you know, it was camping. We listened to fantastic live music and played vollyball, and went to some thermal pools. Also, it was really really carnival, and so the kids were sabotaging pedestrians. They lined the streets with waterguns, buckets of water, waterballoons, everything, and they attacked mericlessly. It was so fun to see socially mandated chaos. And they loved nailing "los americanos".

We went to Panama City, which was big and wealthy. The cab driver got very lost on the way to our hostel, and when we got to a very small and poorly labeled little place, the lady told us, "ugh, they never know where anything is". I thought that she was being bitter and crabby, but it turned out that actually cab drivers don't know where ANYTHING is in Panama city.

We visited a little bit of Carnival activities, getting some slushies and getting pegged on all sides with handfuls of paper conffetti. We explored several parts of the city and had a bunch of great meals. Getting Indian food was one of those moments that fill a huge gaping hole inside you that you had gotten used to. We also went out for Italian, Chinese, Pizza, and good desserts. I bought a cute dress, which I continue to wear every time I need to feel reborn and a little bit chic. It's very colorful and has a funny cut, you know, just the kind of thing I go for. I think I wore that dress for about 6 days straight after I got it. I don't want to sound slatternly or poor or despicabl gross or anything, but new clothes ARE that exiting when you have only had about 5 outfits for 6 months.

We did the requisite canal visit. It was pretty cool. There's not so much to say, or to see. Modernity. Commerce. Big boats. You can fill a loch faster than a bathtub. I did learn that. And that was cool.

Before the canal we woke up at 4 in the moring to go to Parque Nacional Soberania. It was a lush big national park that was very close to the city. We went with Jose, a really lovely guide who has been to the Darien Gap many times. This makes him a huge bad ass, ok? And he was so gentle and patient as Jay and I huffed and puffed along behind him. We saw an eagle, howler monkeys, white faced monkeys, coatis, little duck birds, blue morpho butterflies, a poisonous snake (about 30 seconds after I mentioned to Jay how relieved I was not to have ever encountered a poisonous snake in the wild), and A PACK OF WILD BOARS which our guide was scared of but I, not due to ignorance but rather an Indiana Jones brand of bravery and fuck-all, was not frightened by at all.

That night Jay and I took a 16 hour busride back to San Jose. Then Jay became sick, and by sick I mean he was super feverish and felt malaise. However, he was a major trooper. Not only did he not complain about being sick, or about being in a kind of shitty hostel, but he also did not complain when I made him drink my adaptogenic herbal tea. To top it all off, he decided that just what he needed for a swift and comfortable recovery was a 6 hour bus-ferry-bus-bus-taxi trip to Montezuma. Trooper.

He rested for the rest of the day in a hammock, while I explored a river running on top of a lime formation, with pools and tons of iguanas and little fishies and polliwogs. Then I collected seashells and made a three-course dinner.

Montezuma was beautiful, but overpriced. Very hippy, small town, but a lot of tourists. Our lodgings were beautiful and our hosts were gracious. The food in town was magnificent.

We went horseback riding along the beach to a waterfall which is one of only 7 in the world that falls directly into the ocean. I galloped through the surf, which, just to let you all know, is the main reason why I was born and why I exist. To gallop horses on the beach. That is the meaning of my life.

I couldn't walk regular for the next 6 days.

Then it was back to San Jose to take Jay to the airport. I was sad. He was also sad but expressed it in a caring and manly way whereas I cried. The next day I went off to Nicaragua. But that is a story for another time.

Panama Part 1

So first I was really exited about Jay coming, and it was all I could think about. Then I literally ran out of excitement and also it was too physically unbearable to be that worked up about the future. And then: what if he decides not to come? What if I miss the bus? What if he misses the plane? What if the plane crashes and he dies and I feel guilty for the rest my life? What if he comes and we meet up just fine but we don't like each other any more and have a horrible time for two weeks?

As you guessed, none of these things happened. So far we have had a wonderful time. I have been incredibly remiss with my blogging efforts, so I will try to catch up the highlights.

Day 1

I wake up at 5am in San Pablo, and leave Turrubares forever. Now, I like to make changes resonant and emotionally weighty and feel moody and grave about things, and consider how they have changed me and how I feel being positioned between two worlds, etc, but actually none of this interested me. My attitude was very clearly one of good riddance.

I got to San Jose and found the hostel, which was a new one. See, before I had stayed at Pangea, which is a great hostel but only if you like dance beats everywhere, all the time. When Jill recommened a great article about hostels in the Tico Times, I found the Molino Rojo. Our rooms was...very red. Actually I have never been in a redder room. And neither has Jack Nicholson.

It was raining in the morning, which freaked me out a little bit, because it isn't supposed to rain in Costa Rica in March and it's definitely not supposed to be raining when I pick up Jay. This is a disaster I hadn't even remembered to worry about.

I had some churros for breakfast, and then I SOLD 3 BOOKS. This is always difficult. But to make it easier, the lady would only give me store credit, and so there was little I could do to prevent me from buying 2 new books: Quartet, by Jean Rhys, and City of Thieves, by some guy. It felt like heaven to buy new books. 7th Street Books in San Jose has the best selection. Really really cosmopolitan. So of course it took me at least an hour to pick out the books.

Then I went to a piercing parlour and had my nose ring put back in. And then I went to a cafe and read, and bought some very bad hash browns.

It took me a little bit of searching to find the right bus, but I did find it. I was frustrated because it looked like I was going to get to the airport really early, and have to wait for Jay for 1 to 3 hours, and waiting for people makes me self-conscious. Luckily, I made friends with this cool couple who were traveling around the world teaching chakra hoolah hooping workshops. I think I am going to have to start dressing more like the kind of people I like. I obviously dress too normal because I don't think you could pick me out of crowd the way I picked these people out. I could see, by their loose, hemp clothes and long hair and artistic body jewelry that they were my people.

The second good thing that happened was that Jay made it through customs and baggage wicked fast. His luggage was embarassingly light compared to my pack. I had gotten rid of so many things, and still it was so huge.

The rest of the day I spent being extremely shy and nervous and giddy. Then we went out for very bad Italian food and were asleep by 9 oclock.

Day 2

We woke up early to catch the bus to Panama. Then we got horribly horribly lost and I asked directions at least 5 times, and when we caved to find a taxi the taxi driver drove us all the way across the city to somewhere I totally didn't recognize. What upset me about this was that it was exaclty the right place, and there is no way we ever could have found it without the ride.

We missed the earlier bus so we had to wait until 11. Then we were on a bus for 6 hours which was too long. Even though Jay was willing to quiz me on Spanish flashcards for a long time.

We got to the border after dark. It was very hot and rainy and my bag was heavy and I was sweaty. We stood in the line to get our exit stamps from CR. Then we had to wait in another, even longer line to get our entry stamps for Panama. After at least 45 minutes of waiting it was our turn, and the man said, where is your onward ticket. Well, I don't have one. You need one. Well, I don't know my plans yet. It doesn't matter. You must buy a bus ticket.

I had heard about this. Because theoretically you can't enter Costa Rica or Nicaragua without a return ticket either, but those countries do not take this rule seriously enough to put it into practice.

I was very hot and tired and frustrated from a very long day. And now someone IN CHARGE was trying to TAKE ADVANTAGE of me by making me pay 38 dollars for a ticket I didn't want. This activated my "Someone is telling me what to do" sensor. So, I got upset. I informed the personel that it was not fair and I did not want a ticket. At one point the man told me to go speak to some bus boy who speaks English, and then I really got upset, because on top of being told what to do I was being INSULTED. I told the man that I speak Spanish and understand every word he is saying but that it was not fair. There are many times when I do not understand anything someone says to me in Spanish but this was not one of those times. And you have to understand that Costa Ricans are the most nonconfrontational people on earth, and I was picking a fight. At one point I almost burst into tears, but I told Jay that I needed a moment, which he respected, and I closed my eyes and breathed and centered and did not have a meltdown. We finally bought our tickets and got through the border just in time to catch the last bus to David. I of course felt horrible the entire bus ride because I had been childish at the border and my plan had been to be on my best behavior in front of Jay. It's just that when I feel like I am being taken advantage of I feel like I have to defend myself. But there are some times when I need to just be graceful and recognize that fighting will not get me anywhere.

We got to David so late, that we missed the last bus to Boquete, where we had made a reservation for the night from a bus stop pay phone. So we took a taxi there, even though it was expensive. The taxi got lost and couldn't find our hostel for a while, but then finally managed to drop us off. Then he left us in front of a hostal that was... locked and closed for the night! We tried knocking. We tried walking around to different entrances. No one. So we walked to the supermarket and called from a pay phone. No answer. I bought a Milky Way and a package of blueberry fig newtons as a consolation prize, then asked the cashier for a hostel recommendation. Across the park. We stumbled over to Mamallena, where the lights were still on and the door was still open. Do you have any private doubles? Actually, do you have ANYTHING? Luckily, they did, even though it was bunks in dorms. But the hostel was great, laid back, lots of young people to talk to. And a hot shower to take.

So, a good ending to the most frustrating day ever.

Day 3

ok, so now it is like 2 weeks later when i am writing this and there is no way i remember all the action blow for blow, day by day. in fact, i was so overwhelmed by how behind i was that i declared to jay that i was going to abandon blogging altogether. because he is magnificent in every way (joke. sort of.) he convinced me to do what i could. thus, the highlights.

Coffee Plantation Tour in Boquete

This was jay's thing, that he wanted to do, because after all when one has harvested coffee for over a week by hand, oneself, in the mountains of ecuador, you don't need to pay someone to tell you how it's done. How wrong I was. First of all, there were pine trees, which i honestly would have paid to see, all on their own. Boquete is at elevation and being out of a tropical climate was exhilarating. I learned a lot more about coffee than my ecuadorian host parents had ever been able to tell me because they were the kind of people who were averse to answering any questions whatsoever. Also Don Tito had used old car parts to build all of his machines, which was very cool. And we got to taste and make different roasts, and really it was just so interactive and fun.

We loved Boquete. It was for sure our favorite place in Panama. The temperature was comfortable, I got to wear my hat at night, there were hot water showers, and our hostel was fantastic.

Rugged Outdoors Adventure in Boquete

My thing was that i wanted to go to a waterfall. Actually, as many as possible. So there was a trail, and we went, but very late. Jay and I had a problem with getting out early in the day. You might assume this is a euphemism for, Jay and I could never stop cuddling in the morning and we stayed in bed most of the time. You would be wrong. While I can cuddle until I starve to death, Jay is a person who likes to DO things, which is one of the reasons we are a good team. Another is because I like him so much that I don't get really mad when he takes it upon himself to be my human alarm clock. I don't think he appreciates how special and unique this makes him.

Anyway the reason we had trouble getting out was because we had made no plans ahead of time. This includes hostel bookings.

Normally, this is fine. But when you decide to visit a country during THE BIGGEST PARTY OF THE YEAR, that is happening even though you had no idea it was happening, finding good lodging is an olympic challenge. It just so happened that it was Carnival. Add to that your own internal lack of itinerary, mix in some no habla ingles reception desks, and you have the entire morning.

So what I am getting at is that it was very late and so the sun was going to set and it was going to get cold. Swimming in the waterfall was not really that appealing. But we kept hiking. And then we saw a trail that was thin and dissapeared up the side of the bamboo covered mountain. Look, a trail! I said. I love little trails that I don't know where they go. And Jay said, let's follow it!

We climbed that mountain on a tenuous zig zag for probably 45 minutes. It was exquisitly beautiful. And when we got to the top we ate dates and brie on bread.

We walked part of the way back in the oncoming dark with two lovely kids who we met waiting for the bus. We didn't know if the bus was coming, although they assured us it was. We asked them how far it was to walk to Boquete. Oh, far, they said. That's Latin American specifics for you. How many hours do you think it would take? Oh, six?

Luckily, the bus came.


Before I get any further on what we did, I want to say what things were like. First of all, Jay and I got along just absolutely famously. This has been the case ever since we met, after we got over the awkward hump of being on a fairly blind date. He was an ideal travel companion: enthusiastic, curious, laid back, accomodating, funny, and real nice to look at. We were sort of 'that' couple, you know, the ones with stars in their eyes who are nauseatingly attentive, affectionate, and adorable. I never stopped feeling super grateful that he was there with me, that he not only tolerated me but continued to like me, and that he treated me better than I ever could have asked for. We had some really great, interesting conversations. They ranged from what happens when we die to what would happen if one of a pair of inseperable siamese twins committed a murder, how would you deal with jail because the other one had been tied and gagged and so it wasn't his fault? (Ok, I came up with that one. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section)

Then there was panama. I didn't think much of it, after all, its name is sort of boring and i had never heard to much about travel there. But i LOVED it. It was amazing, really, because it is a more wealthy and developed nation than Costa Rica. This means that things were by and large comfortable, convenient, safe and user friendly. However, it had so much more culture and personality than Costa Rica, or even, dare I say, Nicaragua. There were indigenous women still wearing gorgeous traditional clothes, selling hand made tapestries. There were things for sale in gift shops that were way cooler than shot glasses that said the country's name. There was a feeling that this country had figured itself out and even adjusted pretty well to the 21st century. I would highly recommend travel in Panama, and I would love to go back.

Geisha Coffee

Is famous. It won a lot of awards. And Boquete is famous for cultivating it. As with all nice things, it is mostly an export good, and so there is only one cafe in town that sells it. Jay and I totally went because he loves coffee and i love nice things. We paid 9 dollars for 10 oz of this majestic coffee.

And I did not like it. Because what 'citrus notes' and 'fruity body' and 'sparkly' actually translate to is, this coffee is unbearably tangy and doesn't really taste like coffee. Banana bread and teaching Jay Rummy 500, which he procedude to woop my ass in for the rest of the trip, totally made up for the dissapointment, though. And anyway, I suppose its better that I like the cheaper stuff.

*Ok, so I am currently on Ometepe. Jay has gone home. I am leaving on a bus quite soon. So I am going to publish this post as is, and hopefully I will finish with the rest of the trip soonish. Where I am moving has very bad internet, so it may be a little while. Jay, please feel free to add any of your own anecdotes or corrections for Boquete and San Jose number 1 in the comments section*

Life On The Oregon Trail

Yesterday our car got stuck fording the river, and I almost ate an iguana.

Let me explain.

Kenny got a bunch of people together to go to the river. Pablo and I came late, after we left work around noon, so we took a cab. I hope for your sake you never travel on a road with more sharp and frequent turns than the road we took to get to the river. I think I turned green. When we got to the river, we didn't see our friends, so we called them. They were at a different part. We would have to cross the river with our car. Now, we're in the dry season, so the vast river bed has been reduced to a rocky tundra-like terrain through which a modest and shallow stream flows languidly. But. The cab was an old sedan. We crossed the river once. We crossed the river twice. Then, we crossed the river a third time in the most secluded area we had been to so far, and we got stuck.

Ok, so the water was less than a foot deep, but our front tires were at least six inches deep in gravel. I took this opportunity to point out that where I'm from, we get stuck in SNOW. At this point water began seeping into the car through the floor and there were puddles where our feet should have been. But, our feet were outside of the car because we were pushing it, along with a man who had been biking past and stopped to help. Just as we got out of the river, we saw a white, fluffy dog in the distance! Casper! We had found our friends.

If I had to give one piece of advice on traveling, in Central America or really anywhere, it is that inconvenience MUST be funny. You MUST laugh when these sort of things happen. Really, everything that is not physically painful or damaging has to be funny or else you will end up like an apple left in the sun, shriveled and cranky and bitter.

They went iguana hunting and cut it up and boiled it. I had pledged to myself that I would eat it because that's the kind of person I am. Also, I would have been able to say on my blog, "I ate an iguana". Unfortunately, we left before it was ready.

The river was beautiful to swim in, with a bottom of polished stones. I made friends with Maria, my 13-year-old neighbor. The neighbor's boys showed me a big fallen tree you could sit on like a see-saw. Maria wants to be a forensic scientist when she grows up. Her dad is the town judge.

The day at the river was super typical: grilled beef stakes wrapped in corn tortillas, soda, Pablo singing on guitar, people sitting and lying around, and me feeling like a large adult retard. I mean literally at one point I was sitting in the river, while everyone else was chatting and joking, just putting handfuls of little rocks on my legs and watching the current take them away. For probably at least 5 minutes. And I suddenly realized that I must seem like I am so totally handicapped- after all, I barely talk or understand anyone, and I wander around silently and touch nature. What a life.

We went home in the back of a cattle truck in the moonlight, which was fun. When I got home, I was dying for french fries, and guess what? You can get them in San Pablo! I got those french fries. I got em good. Except, of course, they were bad. Undercooked, so they didn't have the outside crispiness that is essential. I think about New York City a lot. I think about this one night, last spring, when I was staying with Eric, and it was 10 or 11 at night, and I said, "I want pizza", and 15 minutes later I was sitting down at the counter of a pizza place eating pizza. New York is so unbelievably magical, you can get anything you want. Do you know, in SoHo, there is a macaroni and cheese restaurant?!!? That's all they serve. Gourmet mac and cheese.

Luckily, I live in what appears to be the mango capital of the world. The mangoes on the trees proliferate like cancer. They will all be ripe within the month.

Unluckily, I am allergic to mangoes. I learned this. I get a horrible, terrible rash for days. Not worth it.

Bob has started hoarding desserts in the fridge, in tupperwares that say, "Roberto's, don't eat". I mean, like, sheets of cake the size of a book. And his new year's resolution was to lose weight! What a prick. I am afraid that their negative attitudes and childishness will rub off on me and I will become a horrible person. I am appealing to my higher self to stay good.

I only have 9 days, including today, left. I am feeling so unimaginably impatient, so I have instituted a three-pronged survival plan:

1) Stoicism

2) Meditation

3) Studying Spanish

Stoicism means I am trying not to get riled, or believe in the urgency of leaving. It means staying patient and trying not to fantasize about the future.

Meditation is the act of meditating. Which I am not really doing, even though it is part two of my plan, which means I plan on meditating. A lot.

Studying Spanish is the only fun and enjoyable activity sometimes. I love it. My brain is like a sponge. Although I still speak at the proficiency level of an adult retard.

Do you know what else I've been thinking about a lot lately? How much I love the two home alone movies. They were the best, and I haven't seen them for years. When I get home, I'm totally going to have a home alone movie marathon.