San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua (March 25, 2008) -- The streets in this tiny little beach town on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua have no names.
I thought at first that the street signs had simply been stolen during the the wild, week-long party, which was none too holy I should add, that ended on Easter.
But no. They just haven't gotten around to naming the streets.
I arrived here just in time to see the end of this party.
Despite the blazing sun, I gloomily thought that it was going to be a very long week. There were boudin-like tents set up on the main beach in front of the town with families living out of them like refugees.
I was sitting at a bar above the fray, drinking a beer, watching a woman dish out water to tired or drunken partiers while holding a baby no bigger than a football.
Dare I insult the natives, I didn't ask what on earth was going on or if the hundreds of people sitting on the sidewalk for no apparent reason were going to be there all week.
I heard this party was ending on Sunday, but this was something more than a party. I still don´t know how to describe it.
But thankfully the party ended that night and I watched as the people on the sidewalks waiting for chicken buses, as they call them, raced to get on board when some arrived a few hours later.
Most of the people on the beach and the others who were renting homes (35 to one house in some cases) headed back to the capital of Managua or to where ever else from which they came.
The sticks they were using as supports to hang the tarps and tents and carpets, were there on Monday but gone by today.
Nearly all the garbage has been picked up. Almost 70 people in Nicaragua died during the week-lng festivities, the paper reported.
Mostly from being drunk and swimming or being drunk and riding in the back of a pickup truck that might have hit a bump, knocking them out> and into oncoming traffic.
So the days afterward have had the over whelming vibe of a town-wide hangover. Sleepy and just wanting a cold dark room where they watch a movie. It' now back to being the peaceful fishing town that it usually is.
During the first few days, I was working on two articles I´m writing and so I didn' have much time for sunbathing besides the occasional beer inbetween interviews.
But today I decided that I had worked enough and so I headed to the beach. The transportation, for lack of a better word, to the beach was a open air truck that had a line of benches going down the middle and the backpackers and me sat back to back as w bounced down dusty dirt trails they call roads to one of the most amazing set of beaches I´ve seen.
The surf was huge today and the joint passing surfers who live here were happy. Though one, when I told him I was writing an article and wanted to talk with him, said quite clearly, Don´t write the f---ing thing. He was scared about more tourists.
He would later concede, as if his words of wisdom had made me want to change careers, that if I didn' write the article somebody else would. Ah, surfer zen strikes again.
There were worries when I first arrived that this might be a dangerous place. But while far more rustic than I've seen, the people overall are friendly and it's safe for now.
If it stays that way, I can't say with certainty since more tourists with more money are awfully tempting since the locals live on 150 dollars a month.
That camera around the neck of the person walking down the street sure looks appealing.
But I feel safe and am no longer worried about being in danger while here.
Will I be happy to be back on roads that are smooth even if the beer is expensive? Yup.
Take care,
Brett
