The Pregnant Street Dog Saga Begins

The dog had been enormously pregnant for as long as anyone could remember. A small, long haired brown dog with floppy ears - maybe some spaniel parentage - it lurked around Parque Central and Calle La Calzadera, eating trash, trying to beg off people eating on the outdoor patios. It was skittish, everyone knew about it and it was one of the big goals when I got here - bring the pregnant dog in.

I failed miserably twice - got close and then had her take off. Every night we couldn’t get her was another night for her to die giving birth under a car.

Tuesday I am working with Carissa, a short term volunteer, a college girl who only has a week. We’re dispensing sarna meds in hot dogs to the market dogs, much to the amusement of the locals who have no idea what the fuck is going on, only they we keep buying hot dogs for scaly monsters.


Two other market dogs we're medicating but cannot bring in.

We stop in an area with benches to rest and lo and behold, there she is, hugely pregnant and rooting through the trash. And me with only a quarter of a hot dog left. I lure her over but don’t try to slip lead her. I throw some cordovas at Carissa. Please, I'll sit with her you go get meat. Meat. I don’t care what, any. Just get us enough meat that I can bribe her once I get a lead on her. She’s probably going to go batshit when I get the lead on her and raw meat might keep her quieter. Carissa takes off into the maze that is Granada’s Mercado Central in search of raw meat. I sit with the dog. For a while she stays with me, then she wanders off. I follow her and lose her around a corner, under one stall in the midst of a billion. Fuck.

Poor Carissa is waiting where she left me, 2 lbs of beef in her hand.

For the rest of the day it’s hide and seek. We see her, get close, and then she’s off again, around a corner, under a bench, gone.

I am killing poor Carissa who is not used to walking for hours in this heat, through the fragrance of the meat market, stuck with the woman who always forgets to eat. She’s exhausted and her blood sugar is about to give out. The girl is a serious trooper but this is a little much to ask on day one from her. Particularly as we're also doing clinic duty on the dogs in care twice a day.

We decide to call it a day. Right as we’re walking towards a café, there’s Preggers. She appears out of nowhere from around a corner. We take off in her direction. I throw some beef at her. She comes over. I give her more, she relaxes and eats. I slip the lead over her head. She tenses for a second. More beef. She relaxes. Slowly we lead her through the market, towards the street.

Occasionally one of the vendors will ask us what we’re doing. Carissa, who speaks Spanish, explains. Instead of the usual amusement I expect everyone’s reaction is the same: Oh good, how nice, God bless you.

She is no one’s dog, no one feeds her or calls her theirs but they don’t want to see her die in childbirth in front of them.

Carissa runs recon as I lead the dog through the market.

By some miracle of shitty timing we find the only two blocks in Granada with no goddamn cabs on them. The dog is being incredibly good and sweet but I can tell she’s exhausted. Carissa manages to flag down a cab. In a miracle of a different kind the driver agrees to take her. No cab will take dogs. None. I'm going to pay out the ass for this kindness but I don't care.

I am trying to haul her enormously pregnant ass into the back of the cab when a horse driver passing stops, gets down, pushes me aside and lifts her into the cab. The stars are aligning for this dog. No one will help with the street dogs - no one.

Karen and Paul, an expatriate couple who have noticed her and tried several times to get her have volunteered their back house for her. We move her in. She has a bag sticking out of her ass - something she ate and can’t pass. I give her some mineral oil.

The next day I take a much deserved day off. She apparently is acting distressed and Donna and Heidi, another woman, take her to the vet in Managua. Very constipated, though she passed the bag, full of parasites but mostly okay. A goddamn miracle considering how she’s been living. She could go at any second , the vet tells them. Any time now.

The Trailer For The Real Story

We got the pregnant one and are in the midst of a street-dog birth crisis. So far five born live, five dead. Whole story later, but for right now, some pictures.

Heidi saves the last one to be born alive. It was actually not breathing but was she got it going. By this point in time we were all near tears. This was about eight hours into labor.


Mom takes over. Left on the streets all of them, including the mother, would have died.



A different story, also coming. Another one we're medicating on the streets but can't bring in due to lack of space. The locals call him 'Papas' or Potato because of his lack of fur. A nice dog but, yeah, gross. We need room. We need homes. Obviously ones looking like this are cleaned up and treated before we start looking for homes for them.

A Brief Pictorial (No, Honestly, Brief. I swear)

I'm too exhausted for a proper blog entry. All snarkiness and whatnot aside, it's been an exhausting few days. We've brought in three dogs, all in various stages of distress, and began treating some of the street dogs with mange we can't bring in. The people who usually do the clinic stuff frickin' rock - they are machines, really. And all of them have other stuff they need to do first, Peace Corps stuff, other projects. As the only person here who can one hundred percent dedicate myself to clinic stuff I feel obligated to hit hard. Maybe a bit too hard.

In the absense of my usual snarkiness and verbosity, I'll do a little pictorial, instead.

Tyson was the puppy we pulled out of the ditch. He is already a royal pain in the ass - always underfoot and chewing everything in site. Just like any puppy. To see where Tyson came from or what he looked like half dead in a ditch, see my previous post.
Quixote got here long before I did. He's a the big dominant male that's been at the clinic for a while. He was in terrible shape when he got in - wish I had pictures - but now looks like any dog you'd see at any dog park in the states. Aside from his dog-dominance issues he's a sweetheart - it's impossible not to like him.
Frita is also since before my time. She came in about ten days ago. She has bad sarna but is already apparently a lot better than she was before. She is a sweet little shy thing.

We brought One Eye in two days ago. One Eyes is ROUGH. The eye socket is still open and it looks like the eye might have been gauged out. Most of her hair is gone from the sarna and the tips of her ears are destroyed from it. She's almost on par with Scabby, the dog we brought in the last time I was here. That said, her energy level is good, she's a sweetheart and she'll eat whatever you put in front of her. She gets along with all the other dogs. There's a scar around her neck from an old cord that must have been put on, got too tight and cut into her skin. She was someone's dog and you can tell. She likes people.


The other dog, the brown one, we didn't bring in. We don't have the space and his weight is good. Instead we're treating him on the street with ivermectin pills for the sarna.

No pictures yet, but will have some tomorrow of the pregnant dog we finally got today, after days of chasing. It involved a mad goose chase through the market, a pound and a half of raw beef and the bribing of a cab driver but she is in care now.* The puppies are kicking so it doesn't seem she's carrying dead ones, thank god. The infection could kill her. She's staying with an incredibly nice couple that donated a spare room on the back of the property. We're thinking she's going to pop at any moment. Pictures on her tomorrow.

We need a lot of stuff, in some ways. With some fencing and building supplies we could put up three runs in an ex-pats back yard and bring in three of the other really bad ones. But really we need homes for these guys.

* The best part of this is that I was wearing a little sundress and the girl working with me was carrying an eight pound papaya. Quite a show.

Now Things Start To Get Scaly

I cannot seem to get over this very American thing I have of never carrying cash. A lot of places take cards here but never, it seems, the ones I go to. Luckily Donna comped dinner at Café Chavalos last night - all visa, no cordova on me. But this morning when I go to meet her for breakfast Thalia, the woman from San Francisco who runs the vegetarian restaurant on Calle Martirio, breaks it to me as she brings over my café con leche. No cards.

Luckily Donna is running late so I haul ass up to Parque Central and get some cash out of the ATM, change it with the money changers out front, make it back before she even gets there.* As I’m rounding the final corner to go back to the restaurant I hear my name. In a distinctly American accent. I turn around and it’s Nick, one half of the Peace Corps couple, the people who have been running the clinic (on their own time, not the Peace Corps), the past few months. It’s good to see him.

It turns out he’s meeting us for breakfast, too. As we wait for Donna he catches me up on the clinic. Two dogs there now - both street dogs. One female who might be pregnant, one incredibly nice big male who unfortunately beats the snot out of any other dog he gets around. No vet but the ability to do neuters. Nick’s been over there twice a day caring for the two dogs. The bitch had bad mange but is almost over it and is gut wrenchingly sweet. Once she’s clear she’ll go to their house. Another dog, a three-legged one named Tripod, is bunking down with them until it goes to it’s new home later today. I get invited on the field trip to drive it out to Naidame, a little town about 20 kilometers outside of Granada. Field trip. Yay. Sure.

Donna has arrived but is waylaid in the doorway by some people. Donna is always waylaid. It takes her a few minutes to untangle herself before she can come sit with us. It’s like going out to eat with the Pope. I half expect paparazzi to turn up and start taking pictures of her. How this woman has absolutely no ego - which she does, none whatsoever, is beyond me.

Once we order we talk strategy, plans. There’s a hugely pregnant dog in Parque Central in the early stages of sarna that needs to be brought in before it pops. The couple from the bar last night offered to let it bunk in their backyard if I can get it. Donna knows of a puppy out in the barrio, towards the other school that is going down quick. We need to get it.

We talk about the meat market dogs, covered in mange and mean as shit. There’s a short term volunteer coming out who can possible get them invermectin pills in meatballs. The meat market dogs sleep in the same stalls the little kids use as bathrooms.** Whatever little kids aren’t covered in the mange yet are only biding their time.

After breakfast Nick goes to do some errands and I head off with Donna to find the barrio puppy. We drive down to the end of the street, past where the paving ends, onto the rutted dirt road with pigs rooting by the side of it. It’s only a mile from my house but it’s light years away.

Through the houses you can see glimpses of Lake Nicaragua, clean and pretty in contrast to the decay of the barrio.

Across the street from the school Donna stops, there it is, she tells me. I look out the window and see nothing, a pile of garbage next to a ditch in front of a house. I look again and there it is - tan and white and boney, bloody in spots and unmoving. A puppy or what was one. We get out and I get a closer look. I stand over it and it doesn’t stir. It’s gone to meet baby Jesus. There’s no way this thing is alive. No way. Then I see it’s chest move ever so slightly.

Donna goes and talks to the family and I loop a slip lead around it’s neck. It doesn’t move.
Carro, the family says. It was hit by a car. There’s a million little kids all of whom are delighted by the sight of the enormous gringa poking at the sarna dog. They tell Donna to take it. One of the kids makes a clicking noises and the puppy slowly, painfully lifts it’s head.

And then all hell breaks loose. Time for the show, kids.

Here was my critical error: the sliplead. The dog comes to with something around it’s neck and freaks out, immediately alive and whipping around on three legs, baring it’s little puppy teeth at me, snarling. Slip leads work great on American dogs that know what a collar and a leash is. On Nicaraguan dogs it has the same effect as pointing a gun at the them. I’m at a loss here, holding one end of this while the half dead dog goes bonkers.

The kids are giggling their asses off.

Es veterinario, Donna says helpfully. Not exactly true but explaining the difference would be useless and no one cares.

One of the little kids comes up and grabs the puppy, still thrashing around, and dumps it in the back of Donna’s truck. The kid is maybe six. Humbled I climb in the back beside it. When I get the slip lead off of it, it pushes itself against my leg, slumps down in defeat and fatigue. We rattle out of the barrio, the scared puppy pressing itself against me with every rut we hit.

At the clinic we set up a cage for it. I carry it out of the truck and it stays limp in my arms. We get it on the table and I give it some injections - ivermectin for the mange. Antibiotics - well, just because. It’s a good puppy. It squeals a bit when the first needle goes in but makes no attempt to nip. It’s ears are crawling with ticks. The two other dogs living there come over to investigate. Puppy immediately goes after Quixote, the big dog aggressive male. Shockingly Quixote backs down. Three months old, more dead than not, this poor little nine pound thing is still one bad motherfucker.

We lock it up, leave it to rest.

Donna and I go to the Parque Central to look for the pregnant dog. We come up empty but inventory the other park dogs, what can be done for them. Neuter this one, get some ivermectin in that one. There’s another sweet older dog running around, similar to Teddy. We make plans to come back at night and bring it in. If you try to do it during the day people will say they own them, try to get you to pay them for these mangy, sad street dogs.

Later I meet Nick and we take Donna’s truck to drive Tripod and his new owner out to the their house in Naidame. The new owner is another Peace Corps volunteer - a younger girl from Hawaii. She cuddles in the back seat with Tripod while we roll past fincas, little roadside stands, some contruction. ***It’s a pretty drive.

The town is small, dumpy. I feel bad for her. She’s the only one there and you can tell she’s lonely. The dog will be good company for her. We haul ass back to Granada to get Donna her truck before Café Chavalos opens.

After we drop off the truck we go back to the clinic. Puppy has eaten nothing and made a huge mess of his cage. We pull him out, feed the other dogs. Puppy gets pills this time - a capstar to kill the fleas on him, an allergy tablet just in case. He limps on one leg but it doesn’t seem broken. Again he delights in menacing Quixote.

Nick sits with him and manages to get him to eat a bit.

Nestor, the quiador for the school, shows up while we’re there****. He takes to the nasty, smelly, scabby little puppy immediately. He watches it snarl and snap at the big dogs. It needs a name, I tell Nick. Nick consults with Nestor in Spanish. Tyson, Nestor suggests. Like the boxer. So Tyson it is.

After everyone has been fed and cared for we leave, parting ways in front of the school. Toni, Nick’s wife, has been out of town but will be back tomorrow. We make plans to do dinner when she gets back, invite the short term girl who’s supposed to be showing up.

I go home and scrub for a long time. The likelihood of me having gotten something off the dog is below slim but it’s a psychological thing. I always feel itchy after dealing with street dogs. I take my slip lead, a book, some money, head back towards the parque to grab some food and have another go at the pregnant dog.

My new roommate, a nice older british guy, is watching television in the courtyard. So you’re going back to work then, he asks me. Something like that but not quite. Going to eat, too. Have you eaten at all today? he asks. With Donna, breakfast. Well make sure you eat your food - don’t feed it to the dogs.

(Interesting side note two: Aside from café owners in Liberia, other residents that I barely know are also watching out for my caloric intake. Rest assured. Other side note along the same lines: walking everywhere makes me hungry. I kill an enormous hamburger and some ice cream that night)

After I eat I walk around the park, finally spot the pregnant dog. She gets close but seems to sense my intent and takes off, enormous stomach wobbling. I follow her for a while but it’s a lost cause. Plus the streets are full of folks having a Saturday night and I can almost guarantee that the dog is going to flip it when I get her on lead. I generally try to avoid making huge scenes if I can help it. Disappointing but it’s time to pack it in. We brought one in today.

It’s still early enough that I could go out, visit some friend’s bars and restaraunts, socialize a bit. But I know the house is empty - all the other residents are out doing some such things and I can use a little solitude. I wander home to my bed, a book, some music.


*Yes. This is still safe despite my oopsy at the border. I changed the money right next to the bank security guard and got a wicked good rate.
** Gross, yes, but true.
*** Finca: A farm or ranch. Granada is a big city but a lot of Nicaragua is pretty rural.
****Quiador: one part handyman, one part caretaker, one part guard. Pretty much every non Nica family has one and all business have at least a security guard. Nestor, who is about eighteen, has been there since the last time I came.

Being Reabsorbed Into The Fold and the Importance of Blessed Dinette Sets.

In the states I can drive a car, work a reasonably complicated job, handle a mortgage, do all sorts of things. Here I am stymied by a $12 cell phone. Totally stymied. I got into college with less effort than it’s taking me to figure this out.

The instruction book is entirely in Spanish. Entirely. I try to decode it to no avail. The last chapter in the manual is called ‘juego’. Juego? Isn’t that the word for juice? How is juice involved in this?

Jesus God. I am helpless.

I bag the whole thing and go to Lilly’s toting phone, manual, and box. Help. Please. I fuck around with my blog, read some emails while she fixes the time, figures out what my number is, messes with it. Lilly deserves a combat medal for landlady-ing. She hands it back to me, reads me numbers to put in my address book. Her. Donna. One of the other people living in the house. The peace corps couple that helps at the clinic.

Lilly has a new cat, Esquina, Spanish for corner. I ask her about it. Some kids had it in a plastic bag on the corner outside the café she tells me. Donna chased them down and took it. She was yelling at them ‘Give me that kitten, you little fuckers”. I adore Donna. And they handed it over to her and here it be, lounging on the sofa in the courtyard next to Pacino.

The ex-pat couple that lives around the corner projects movies onto the side of a building every Friday night. They have a little slideshow/documentary about Calle Santa Lucia they always play first. It starts at six but by the time we head over at 5.45 the street is packed. The whole neighborhood - young, old - turns out for this. I sit on the stairs between Lilly and Esperanza, an elderly Nica woman from across the street. Two American women who rent apartments at Santa Lucia Social Club come out, too. Aside from us and the guy who owns the house and does the slideshow, the rest of the crowd is Nica. It’s already a street party - people are visiting back and forth.

The first few strains of classical music play and the slideshow starts. Everyone goes silent and then it becomes audience participation. A picture of the hot dog stand starts everyone cheering. Everyone loves hot dogs. Same for a picture of the tomato vendor. Those are good tomatoes. A picture of a couple kissing slides across the screen and every whistles and hoots, ay-yay-yay, suggestive noises, even the elderly people are laughing.

The Pulperia on the corner gets big cheers, as does a picture of the street sign for Calle Santa Lucia. Another street sign, for a street a few blocks up, gets hisses. Everyone is happy, laughing. A picture of the house of the ex-pat who does this comes up. Everyone whistles and hollers. He raises his hands above his head. The music changes to an upbeat Nica pop song. The teenagers clap with the beat.

A few pics of the bicycle repair shop on the corner are crowd pleasers. A picture of the sign for the funeral home elicits some hissing. Dead people don’t go over too big. There are photos of almost everyone in the neighborhood and whenever someone’s picture comes up everybody ribs them, hoots, whistles, laughs. There has to be fifty people out with more gathering and everyone is laughing, enjoying themselves.

In the states this would require ten different kinds of permits and several noise complaints. Here it’s what happens on Friday nights. The Calle Santa Lucia show followed by a movie projected on the wall. Tonight it’s a James Bond thing but most people drift off after the slideshow.

After the slideshow ends we mill around on the corner for a while, chatting. Lilly introduces me to some of the Nica neighbors. I chat with one of the American women staying at the Social Club. All of a sudden an older woman in a batik dress walks up on the sidewalk. I recognize the voice before I turn around. Kit, my clinic compatriot. I stand up and she hugs me long and hard. We catch up.

We are, she says, going to Corn Islands in June. Has Donna talked to you about that yet? No, I say, I haven’t seen Donna. She came by to see me this morning but I was still asleep. Kit’s in a hurry, she wants to leave for her house at the Laguna before it gets much darker. She’ll tell you, she says cryptically. We’re going.

As she leaves drums start up in the street. A procession turns the corner - a priest, some altar boys, a bunch of people carrying a statue of Jesus holding the cross, a truck with a loudspeaker on it blaring prayers and hymns. It’s followed by a herd of vendors - cotton candy, sweets, cheap toys, ice cream carts. We stand in front of the Social Club and watch. People are hauling tables out of their houses and onto the street. I am Catholic and have no idea what the fuck is happening here. Lent, Lilly explains. Every Friday during Lent churches take turns doing these blessings and processions. They’re blessing the tables.

I grew up steeped in Catholicism and I have no fucking idea about the hows and whys of table blessing. Even still I adore it - it’s pure Catholic theater - gaudy and public and compelling and completely indecipherable.

Between this and the slide show ask me why I love it here. Go ahead.

After the parade moves on I go in, grab my laptop, head out. The plan is stop by Café Chavalos, see Donna, then head to the vegetarian restaurant with wireless access, finish some online stuff, go to the square and buy a card for my brand new $12 movi-star* cell phone. It doesn’t happen.

All the chavalos are gathered outside restaurant, smoking cigarettes, looking tough. As I walk up they start hooting, whistling, mama mama, bee-yoo-tee-ful. When I turn to walk up the stairs they clam up, look embarrassed. They didn’t realize I was coming in. Oopsy.

It’s so good to see Donna. She looks the same - busy and social and in control. I compliment her on a prestigious award she won from the US government for citizen diplomacy. She just laughs.

There’s a new couple there, she’s from Australia, he’s from London. They own a restaurant here. We talk for a long time. She used to be a high powered personal assistant to a billionaire in London. They had a Mercedes SUV, a nice house. They bagged it all to move here and do this. It’s a better life, she says. Some things are just more important, more fulfilling than money.

I understand. I like them enormously and they’re well traveled, ridiculously funny.

We have extra room in our side yard, they tell me. We can set up some runs for street dogs who need some rehab. We talk about an enormous pregnant sarna dog roaming around in Parque Central. I’ll try to get it tomorrow I tell them. I have a slip lead. Donna agrees. Do it, she says. We talk about another dog, a sweet older dog with mange who hangs out on La Calzadera, begging off the restaurants. We should bring that one in, too, if we can. It’s small, cute, personable. It should be in a home.

We have room, the couple tells me. Do it. Good people.

Tomorrow the Sarna Dog rodeo begins.

Donna brings up the Corn Islands. They have a huge dog problem out there- we were contacted by some people. We’re going out in June with a vet team to do a spay/neuter blitz. You’re coming to assist.

I have to leave on the 25th, I tell her. She waves me off. It’ll be before that. It’ll be fine.
The feral cat issue comes up again. We only have one trap, she tells me. We need more.
I have a friend coming on the 20th, I tell her. I’ll see if she can help, maybe wrangle one up. If anyone can get their hands on a cat trap and get it through customs it’s Kristen. Leashes too, she says. We can use some leashes. Soft slip leads, some collar and leash sets.

I keep meaning to leave but the conversation never slows. Everyone else leaves, the restaurant is empty but for the four of us. Glass of glass of wine arrives. The conversation deteriorates to True Stories of Horrific Intestinal Distress, gossip about the ex-pat community. It gets later and later. There will be no cell phone card tonight.

After about four hours I manage to peel myself away, head home. Futilely I try to fire a text off to the states but it won’t go through. I fall asleep to the sounds of horse hooves hitting the pavement outside my window.

A note on the nature of slideshows, table blessing parades, Nicaragua: Nicaragua is not Mexico. In Mexico and a lot of other tourist areas you get manufactured events, fiestas put on to give gringos a display of what street life is like in Central America. What happens on Calle Santa Lucia, in Parque Central, is entirely organic, natural. No tequila company is selling shots at the slideshow. You cannot buy large velvet sombreros. No tour buses follow the Lenten parades. If every ex-pat and tourist was to leave Granada tomorrow, tables would still be blessed, chairs would still be pulled out onto the sidewalks for evening social hour. Not to say there is not tourist crap in Granada - there is plenty of it. But these things I describe are not tourist events. It’s just daily people in their daily lives interfacing with their communities, having fun, taking care of each other.

A little whiny gringa side note in contrast: Another Nicaraguan exercise in futility - cotton balls. I go to four different farmacias, a ton of Pulperias. Not only does no one know what the hell I’m talking about, no one has them. I draw pictures, write the words down. Nothing. I get offered cotton pads, rolls of gauze, q-tips, but no cotton balls. I’d like to say this is a serious clinic issue but in reality I just use them to clean my face. Even still it’s annoying.

A couple of picture notes: the religious pictures are not from Friday night - they’re from the Lenten parade down Calle Santa Lucia today. Different Jesus statue, no table blessing, same idea. The dog is the dog from Calle La Calzadera who is known to everyone as Teddy and who we decided not to bring in as the bar owners feed him and he’s in pretty good shape, sarna aside. There are bigger fish to fry.

* no, it’s not some sort of super glamorous phone. It’s actually a cheap Nokia - that’s just the name of the company.

Costa Rica to Nicaragua: The Longest Day Ever

By the time the alarm goes off at 7 AM I’m awake and have been for at least an hour. A combination of heat, street noise and a fan so loud it sounds like I could be sucked into a jet engine at any minute. Goddamn Costa Rica. I don’t feel like unpacking my towels - my bags are packed so tightly that opening them before I get to Granada could spell disaster, repacking wise - so I use the towel the woman at the front desk gave me.

It’s a hand towel. A scratchy, stained hand towel.

And I’ll be sharing the shower with five thousand of my closest ant friends. Fuck.

I bag washing my hair and take a two minute rinse off. The water pressure is good at least, and the cold water is nice after how humid the room is. At the front desk they tell me there’s a Central Line bus going to Granada at 8.30. Just like Tica bus, they promise me, and it leaves right from here.

I go to a coffee shop in Parque Central and order café con leche. Cream with sugar and a bit of coffee - like breakfast candy. Postel? The older woman behind the counter asks me. No, solamente café. When she brings the coffee out she sets a plate with a pastry down next to it. Flaca. She says and pokes my shoulder. Necessito comedor. Don’t screw with the big, motherly Central American woman. I have phobias about Costa Rican food but I eat it. It’s delicious, some sort of breakfast take on chicken pot pie.

(Amusing flashback to a conversation a few days back regarding who will supervise my caloric intake here. Apparently random café owners in Liberia will.)

Back at the hotel the bus is late and I wait outside, on the restaurant patio. The bus will always be late, FYI. Welcome to Central America. The bus will be here when the bus gets here and to think otherwise is pure folly.

There’s a few other people waiting for the bus. An older couple from Oregon starts talking to me. The woman is really cool - she taught some physical therapy classes in Managua years ago. Her husband is horrid. These people, he tells me loudly, you have to watch them like hawks. You’re just a wallet on legs to them.

He says this incredibly loudly and the restaurant is full of Ticans. I want to crawl under the table.

A Canadian guy from Victoria comes and sits with us. He’s doing the Central American surf thing or was until he got mugged in Montezuma. It occurs to me I have no idea where Montezuma is. I should ask but don’t. I am up to my ass in travel insta-friends and am kind of over it. We are all white, thus we are buddies.

The husband is telling fantastic stories in which he finds errors on dinner bills. He has a billion of these stories. I want to choke him.

Eventually the bus comes and we all board. It is like a Tica bus, thank god, all big plush seats and TV monitors. All the white people sit in the back of the bus. I have no idea why but we do. I get two seats to myself. My duffel bag takes up one and a half of them.

I pay the attendant for my fare. As he’s making change a photo falls out of his wallet - a wedding picture. I hand it back. Linda, I say, Tu esposa es linda. His face lights up. All of a sudden he is unraveling a whole slew of pictures - his twenty two month old son, his honeymoon, his new truck. We talk for a while - he’s patient with my Spanish and it‘s good practice for me. It’s a nice break from the Gringo Bitchfest.

There’s a traffic jam up at the border - massive. The bus is stuck about a half mile back from the building where you go to get stamped out of Costa Rica. To save time they send us off the bus while the driver sits in traffic. Luckily we don’t have to bring our checked luggage but everything on board with us has to go. Me and the thirty pound duffel bag are going hiking. Ouch.

I totally had this coming.

While I’m walking up to the building the money changers descend. Two of them, young guys, shoo the other ones off. They offer to carry my bag. No. They offer me 19 cordova to the dollar - 18 is the going rate. I accept, hand them $60. They hand me 400c. That’s not right I tell them. Not right. He pops out his calculator and does the math - it comes up 400. No, I tell him, it’s at least 900 c. They take off.

The $40 Idiot Gringa Tax. Why did I try to change money while carrying heavy bags a half mile away from the border and hence all the armed guards? Street money changers are the best way to do it - you get the best rate and I’ve never gotten jacked before. Truly poor judgment on my part, though, letting myself get peeled off the group and being so far away. Most of the money changers hang out right in front of the banks or the border offices - not way the fuck down, out of sight of the cops.


When I get to the office I foist my bag off on the Canadian kid and go find the cops. I tell them in broken Spanish what happened. They don’t get it. They bring a guy over to translate. Not a cop, just some random Tican guy who speaks some English. I tell him my story. You were stupid he tells me, not bothering to translate to the eight cops standing there. Yeah, thanks, I got that.
I go into the exit office. Stamp me out of this country and let me go. Please.

As the last of the passengers comes out of the office the bus finally gets through. We all get back on for the 500 foot drive to the Nicaraguan entry port. They start hauling all the baggage out from under the bus. Crap. This is new. As we get off to go through passport control the bus driver collects everyone’s customs forms and $8. The husband is sure this is a scam. It’s not, I tell him, it’s just the entry fee.

He doesn’t buy it. She speaks Spanish, he tells his wife - have her translate for me.

Side note: when I am the only person in any given group that is proficient enough to be considered the translator for government affairs we are all screwed. I tell him this. He doesn’t buy it. His wife and the Canadian kid side with him. Translate. Ask them exactly what this is for. Por que? I ask the driver. Por la tariff. For the entry fee I tell the husband. He goes off on some diatribe. Even if I could translate that, which I can’t, I wouldn’t. I hand the driver my $8. Bien. Gracias.

We all get our bags and line up. It’s worth three bucks to me to get a porter to help with my stuff. He hauls everything over cheerfully. They’ve instituted a new system, an all new low in random search stupidity. The customs guy stands next to a big green button with a red light and a green light above it. You hand him your other form and he has you push the button. Randomly either the green light or the red light above it will light up. It reeks of a low rent game show. I push it, the light comes up green, no search. Yay. The Canadian pushes and it comes up red. He is ushered to another table. He puts his bags down on the table, starts to open them. The customs guy looks at him for a second and then waves him on without touching or opening anything.

The border is bustling with vendors - bootlegged videos, food, stolen watches. Every other time I’ve been through there’s been a cell phone guy - $5 dollar phones undoubtedly from dubious sources. I’ve patronized the watch guy, the bootleg guy, the food ladies in the past. Today I want the cell phone guy and he’s nowhere to be found. Damn.

We mill around waiting to be put back on the bus. Little kids come over selling chiclets. One of them tries to pick the Canadian kid’s pocket. They’re rodents, the husband fumes, little rodents nibbling away at you.

They wave us back on to the bus. The porter carefully puts my stuff under the bus. I give him three bucks. He is absurdly grateful. I’m torn between feeling that I over tipped and guilt for not giving him more. All told I have more than 120 lbs of luggage - my body weight, essentially. He’s a small guy, smaller than me.


Once we get back on the bus we hit another jam, parked at the exit for forty minutes. I put on the iPod, fall asleep. I wake up when we stop in Rivas and pangs of nostalgia hit me hard. I think for a bit then fall back to sleep. When I wake up again Ometepe looms off to the right, foreboding and beautiful beyond the fields of cattle and scrub trees. I look for monkeys in the trees.

We pass a road sign. Twelve kilometers to Granada. Almost home. I stare out the window. We pass the cemetery, gorgeous with statuary and massive. The abandoned hospital, regal and crumbling.

Finally the bus stops. The Canadian kid gets off here, too. The husband from hell and his poor wife are headed on to Managua. Do you know a good place to stay? Bearded Monkey, I tell him. It’s run by a nice Canadian couple. You’ll like them. We shake hands and part ways - the end of a traveling insta-friendship. He takes the first cab. It pulls out then stops. The Canadian’s head pops out the window. The driver doesn’t know it. Can you help?

I lean in. No conoce el Mono? I ask him. He shakes his head. I give him some landmarks. Cerca de bombaderos. Oh, si, el hostel grande. They take off.

My cab doesn’t know Santa Lucia Social Club. We drive down Calle Santa Lucia. Yo miro, I tell him, yo conozco. Bad grammar but true - I’ll know it when I see it. A block away I spot the bright blue front. Alli, alli - alta. He takes my bags out, piles them in front of the gate.

The bar is essentially gone and in it’s place is a clothing boutique. The door is open but the outer gate is locked. Nicaraguan doorbell time. Lilly, I yell. Lilly. The bar-come-boutique is in the front of the compound, then a courtyard, then in the way back Lilly’s house and the apartments. I stand in front of the gate with my mountain of luggage. A woman pops her head out of the house next door. Lee-lee? She asks. Si. Necessito Lilly. She smiles, holds up a cell phone, dials. A second later Lilly comes up to the gate with Pacino, her shy, sweet Doberman at her heels. I just, she said, stepped in the back for a second. Come in come in and it’s so good to see you and god you’re so skinny, look at your face but you look great. We haul my stuff in the door, close the gate back up. She gives me a big hug. First we sit and catch up and then we get you settled in.

We go back to the courtyard, to the sofas by the pool. Lilly fills me in. Tom got in a skiing accident but is fine. The one Dutch teenager we both liked stayed in touch. Kit is around. Toni is doing surgeries. There’s two other people in the house, both of whom she’s sure I’ll love. The woman at the Pulperia on the corner remembered me and is happy I’m coming back. There’s a great new American couple on the corner - every Friday night they project movies onto the wall and everyone comes out and watches and I have to go. They made a documentary about Calle Santa Lucia, she tells me, about the neighborhood. All the little kids come and watch it, too, and when they see themselves they cheer. We gossip some, talk about men and kids and taxes and houses and Donna, who got a very prestigious award from the US Government for her work here. Donna will probably want to do breakfast with you tomorrow. But let’s go get you settled in.

In the front room I stop to look at the clothes in the boutique. Lilly has wicked taste and there’s about ten things I love. I finger a cotton shirt. You don’t need it, she tells me. Save your money. She shoulders my blue duffel bag. Jesus, she asks, what do you have in here?

We walk across the street to the house. It looks the same - some changes but good ones. There’s a sofa in the courtyard now, a big overstuffed one. The kitchen has been repainted. The front area has been converted to lending library but it has a separate entrance. Look, she shows me, the mangoes are just coming back in again. There’s a pile of them on the table, soft and ripe.
You get the front room, she tells me, the big one. Last time I had one in the back. It was nice but the front room is actually two rooms - a bedroom with a full size bed and a separate clothing/bathroom. It’s beautiful. She leaves me to unpack.

After she leaves I eat a mango.

I start to unpack but realize there’s things I need. Clothes hangers. Shower curtain hooks and a rod. My energy is fading fast. Shop now or go down. I pull on my flip flops, walk towards the Mercado. It closes at 3.00 but the street vendors are still out. I go into a storefront, find clothes hangers. There are teenage girls working in the shop and they’re fascinated by me. Every time I turn around they’re right behind me, staring at my arms, my hair, smiling shyly. I’m not used to being an object of fascination again yet and it’s a bit disconcerting.

A funny thing about Nicaragua: all the plastic dollar store crap we have in the states is stupidly expensive here. I pass on Tupperware.

And lest you think this is easy, try buying shower curtain hooks in a place where your language skills are severely limited. I’ll give you the word for shower - but not curtain or hook, neither of which I know. A very complicated pantomime ensues. Neither of us get it. I give up. Another day.

I go to Pali, the closest thing to a supermarket we have. In the States, in my own language I lack the ability to shop for myself. My main staple, Clif Bars, are nowhere to be found. I’m at a dead loss. I stare at cereal, yogurt. A younger woman notices me looking lost in the cereal aisle. She holds up a bag of something floury, some sort of cooked cereal. Es rica, she tells me. I smile at her. I can’t cook in English, let alone Spanish. I get tortillas, some soup, some granola, a bag of milk. I look at the fruit but can’t see the point in paying store prices for it when the streets are full of fruit vendors. Pali is stiflingly hot, dark. I pay and leave as quickly as I can. Out on the street I buy peppers, onions, some bananas.

A friend told me that the bananas here are better than the US ones, different. I think of him and buy a bunch. They’re smaller, sweeter, but nothing earth shattering. The eggs are good though - 2 c. each. Nicaraguan eggs are fresher than the US ones, richer. The don’t come in an egg carton, he ties them into a plastic bag that I carry carefully. Though I’m the queen of walking everywhere I splurge, spend 10 c. - about sixty cents - on a cab home.

As I’m putting the food away it occurs to me that aside from the banana and mango, the pastry thirteen hours ago I haven’t eaten anything today. I must have at least walked five or six miles, some of it with a thirty pound bag on my back. For the first time since I left the states I take a proper shower, devoid of ants, and wash my hair. I get dressed and head out to Calle La Calzadera, the restaurant street a few blocks away.

Outside the post work block party is in full swing - people sit out on the sidewalk in their folding chairs talking. Music blares from ten or fifteen different stereos. Kids have hauled makeshift goals into the street and are playing soccer. Mopeds and bikes dodge them. When cars come the kids scatter, pull the goals to the side a bit and the cars slalom through them. The chicken lady is out on the corner. It smells good but I want to sit someplace and eat tonight, read my book. Lilly told me to get her if I wanted to go have dinner but she wasn’t in her front room and I’m not adverse to being by myself.

Some musicians are hauling instruments into a bar. Older musicians, probably a folk band. When I walk by them guitar player turns, smiles, plays a few notes in my direction, then bows.
Nectar, Lilly’s new bar, is on the street and I look in. It’s beautiful, stark and modern and brightly colored, a blend of the Upper East Side and Central America. Pure Lilly. I get a hamburger at a gringo restaurant, sit at a table on the sidewalk, read my book until it gets dark. At home it’s windy and I leave the double doors to my room open for a while, listen to the mangoes thud in the courtyard. When I close my doors the breeze comes through the grates near the ceiling.

I’m contemplating a muscle relaxant for my back when it occurs to me I haven’t called my father. I promised him I’d call. Yes, it’s 11.30 at night but your father isn’t like mine. Shit. I pull my clothes back on and do the ½ mile flip flop run back to Calle La Calzadera, hoping beyond hope that one of the call centers is still open. None of them are but one of the bars is a hotel, too, and they have a call center. I call him over the blaring music, people chattering, and glasses clinking. Everything is good I tell him. I’m here. I’m fine. I’m happy. We talk for a few minutes and I say goodbye, head back to home and bed.

And Here We Go Again...

There is not one latino person on this plane. There is, in fact, no one on this plane that is not white. Like white white, too. Most everyone on this plane, aside from me, is from Quebec. I walk down to the restroom and pass a dozen French conversations.

Welcome to Costa Rica, kids. The Norway of Central America. More gringos per square mile than Iowa.

I am stewing on this fact when the plane finally lands in Liberia. There’s a fire truck at the end of the runway with the sirens going. In the States this would alarm me. Here I don’t think much of it. They like drama, the bombaderos. If you have a siren you should at least show it off once in a while, play with it. A hundred sets of eyes stare out the plane windows in alarm. The fire truck drives in circles, lights and sirens blaring. Weeeee! Have fun, boys.

Liberia airport is an open air pavilion. I get off the plane, down the stairs to the tarmac. I ask a security guard ‘fumo alli?’ and point to a banana tree with a bunch of people in uniforms smoking. The words feel odd, clumsy, coming out. It’s the first Spanish I’ve spoken in months. No, he tells me, fumo afuerta. He points past customs to the waiting herd of taxis outside the front door. No cigarette until I clear customs.

The air is damp and smells like Central America - humid, earthy, a little acrid. It feels good on my skin.

Pretty much everyone knows I’m a little concerned about clearing customs this time. I have supplies for the clinic with me this time, as well as a ton of other crap. I’m the first person to be snaky as hell about the Costa Rica Tourist Infestation but I’m also enough of a wuss that I have my own sheets, towels, conditioner with me. There was an emergency stop on the way to the airport this morning for a shower curtain.

The guy in front of me holds up the line. He left the ‘destination’ line on his customs form blank and the pretty Tican customs woman is trying to get the information out of him. ‘I’m just here to be here, you know?’ he tells her. ‘Just want to go where it feels right, travel some’.

They need to offer courses on how to clear customs for dippy surfers. All the poor woman wants to know is where he’s staying tonight, something to put on the form and instead we are all being held up for a treatise on the nature of international travel. She finally manages to elicit an answer of sorts from him and then I’m up. I haven’t claimed my bags yet and if I get pulled for a search it will hold me up forever - they haven’t even brought them off the plane yet and I have made full use of the baggage allowance. The flight was already delayed and I’m sort of up in the air about where I’m staying tonight. I just want to get through this.

I hand her my passport, my forms, say hello in Spanish. She smiles, asks me the normal questions. Soy voluntario en Nicaragua. Voluntario? She asks. Si. Con animales. She beams at me, stamps my passport, hands it back. Bien. Gracias. Adios.

Sometimes people surprise you.

I get my bags, prop my pack on a box and slide it on. Something creaks, clicks in my back. I’m getting too old for this shit.

Outside the taxi driver hustle is in full swing, dozens of them holding up signs and yelling. I make an executive decision to just go to the crappy hotel I booked and if it’s a nightmare I’ll figure something else out. But right now I just want to be headed someplace with a bed, a shower, access to a bottle of water. All of the French Canadians have formed a huddle in the midst of it and stand there looking lost.

The drivers are yelling out ridiculous prices - $20 American to Parque Central, a five minute drive. Like sheep the Canadians aquiese, peel off from the herd, follow different drivers. A bunch of drivers cluster around me, yelling over each other. Alone and buried under a mountain of baggage, I look like a prime target for a ridiculous fare. Fucking Costa Rica.

Habla ingles? I ask. Necesitto habla ingles. One of the drivers grabs a teenage Tican boy away from a cluster of French Canadians. He doesn’t seem to be a driver, more of a driver referee and translator.

I ask how much to the hotel and he quotes me something ridiculous - $15, more than the room costs. No way, I tell him. It was $6 last time. He smiles, ‘the problem with Costa Rica’ he explains in flawless English, ‘is that the taxes go up all the time‘. I argue with him. The drivers try to interject in Spanish, coming down a dollar or two. Ocho. Ocho y no mas. Diez, one of the drivers yells. ‘He says $10’ the kid explains. And I said $8. Finally one of them steps forward. Ocho. He says. I nod and he picks up my bags.

I didn’t, one of the Canadian women says in accented English when I walk past, know you could do that. I thought it wasn’t allowed.

And all of a sudden I feel good, confident. I know how to do this, how to find my own way.
My driver’s name is Huell. We have a stilted conversation. Between my crappy Spanish and his few words of English we have about one fourth of a language between us. I tell him I’m going to Nicaragua. He offers to take me to Penas Blancas, the border, instead. For a second I consider it. Just go straight there, skip Costa Rica entirely, get through the border, get a cab to Rivas and try to find a place there tonight. It’s a good thought but impractical. I don’t know if the border closes and I don’t much feel like walking through it with over a hundred pounds of baggage. If it is open, will there be a cab this time of night? Will I wind up camping out there? And even if I can make it Rivas tonight, Rivas is kind of a shithole. A Nicaraguan shithole, as opposed to Liberia’s Costa Rican shithole, but a shithole none the less. And I’d be hitting it pretty late at night. And if Huell is already jacking me for a five minute hotel fare god only knows how much he’d jack me for a 78 kilometer trek.

No, the hotel.

The bad news is the place is still the same pit it was last time I stayed there. The good news is I have a lock on my door this time. More bad news: they put me in a room in the way back. By the time I haul my stuff all the way back there and see it has a lock I’m lacking the energy to complain about the fact that it’s the size of a closet. Literally. A very small closet. The single bed hits both walls and the fan is pointed towards nothing and unmovable. The bathroom borders on terrifying. I pile my stuff in, close the door, lock it and sit and think for a bit, be a little melancholy.

My original plan was to skip the Costa Rican Experience as much as possible. Go directly to hotel. Go to bed. Get up. Get the hell on a Tica bus pointed north immediately. But I’m not terribly tired, I have a lot on my mind and I don’t want to be sitting in a small, stuffy room poking through the contents of my own brain. I grab the key, stuff my valuables in the Ugly Orange Nicaraguan Hippy Purse and head off into the night. Five feet out the door something occurs, to me. I go back to my room, take off my sneakers and socks, put on my flip flops, roll my jeans over my calves and head back out into the night.

I stop at the Jumbo Supermercado for a two liter bottle of water which I stick in my bag. Ugly, yes, but highly functional. I savor what will probably be my last glimpse of American-style grocery shopping for a while. Everything is clean, well lit, nicely arranged. Distinctly un-Nicaraguan.

From there I walk the mile into Parque Central. It’s at least 9.30 on a school night but the streets are alive with people. Skaters are trying to do kick-flips across the gazebo. High school kids are walking endless laps around the park, flirting with each other. Older couples sit on the benches and talk. Herein lies the difference between the US and Central America. Public space is truly public space, to be used and enjoyed. Life is lived outside, with other people, not in your house in front of your television. I sit on a bench and smoke a cigarette, people watch. A couple of older men make hissing noises at me. I ignore them and they keep walking. Ten feet down they hiss at another woman. Be rude not to.

And I sit and observe and remember and stew a bit. Think of the last time I was here, think of where I was last night, where I am now, where I will be tomorrow. And then I walk back to my room, pull a chair out into the courtyard and plug my laptop into the only outlet I can find, light a cigarette.