Dec 8: The beach and las Penitas
Trip Start
Nov 2007
1
29
33
Trip End
Dec 2007
Leon,
Nicaragua
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Unfortunately, we picked the wrong day to visit. Being the saturday after purisma, all of nicaragua had the day off and according to dennis ´all of leon goes to the beach´. We wanted to spend the night at a hostel then visit Isla Juan Venudo the next morning, a big habitat for migratory birds. However, there were no available rooms to be had and a massive crowd on the beach.
In general, the beach looked beautiful. It was scortching hot but no one rents sun umbrellas (I see business opportunity). We laid our stuff out on the beach right next to the surfing school hut. However, within a few minutes we found out why our friend jill didn´t have a good experience here. There were many roving gangs of teenagers. They weren´t gang members, just sets of friends, but they were drunk. Nicarguan men are very agressive toward women when sober and even more so when drunk. Within 5 minutes of me lying down i was dousted with wet sand. I looked up to see 2 teens walking by. I started to give them a nasty glare when i realized that this wasn´t the type of environment where i wanted to piss someone off. But they saw me and doubled back immediately. Luckily, it was only to apologize. They claimed that they were throwing sand at each other and one missed and hit me. they shook my and mels hand, said sorry and continued on.
A few minutes after that, i decided to get my feet wet and waded into the water. The waves were way too big for swimming but i just inched in. I wasnt away from melissa for 1 minute when two guys approached her. As i saw this, i immediately doubled back, strongly suggesting that they leave ¨Vaya, vaya¨ (go, go!) But they, like the last guys, claimed that they were only trying to ask the time because they wanted catch a bus. And they spent the next 30 minutes telling me about how they weren´t thieves, they loved their mother, they respected the law...bla bla bla. They did tell me an interesting story about how we were laying out on what used to be the dividing line between the Samosa and Sandonista sides of the beach and how his mother had once admonished him... "If you go to the samosa side, they will kill you". He also said that we should be on our guard because theives came from Managua to pray on foreigners at the beach. (Everyone blames all crime on managua. Leoneses would never rob you but managuans would!) ¨They will walk up and ask you the time, then pull you close, pull out a knife and demand your money¨. He reanacted this as i did my best to look cool while trying to translate his spanish and ensure that he was reenacting and not actually robbing me! (the lack of an actual knife and the long lecure on his morals gave it away). He also told me about the american doctor who completed heart surgery on him and paid for his first year of medical studies. Appearantly, many american doctors come here to help as they are chronically understaffed of surgeons in nica.
I think he could have kept talking for hours, but i eventually intervened and mel and i decided to leave the beach. We ate lunch, took a walk along a calmer part of the beach, then decided to catch a bus back to leon since i didn´t have the money for a cab.
Oh man the bus! Not to self and others. Nica buses are usually packed to the brim and that´s ok. but i would NOT recommend being the first person standing on a long bus ride on a huge national holiday on a bus returning from the beach. BAD IDEA!
Mel got the last seat, which meant i needed to stand. And because i was the first person standing, i had to go to the rear of the bus where there is a small open space beind the last row of seats. As the bus started to fill with standing people i very smartly recongnized that this back secion was NOT the place to be and managed to squirm my way up to standing between the last row of seats. Thank god for that! The back section filled and filled and filled to the point that i was worried someone would suffocate. They were pressed solid against each other in a bus that was hotter than the 90 degree heat outside. Bein the first person standing in between seats, every time the bus slowed or stopped, the whole group of 20 plus people would push forward on my back. I managed to position myself in a way that when that happend, the pressure would be absorbed by my hips, and not my stomach, as i really liked breathing. I was never in danger, but i´m a worry wart and even not being able to breath for a second or two would have freaked me out! Also, because i was up near the seats i could lean over the sitting pepole to get some gasps of the fresh cooler air coming in the windows.
After an hour on the bus, we arrived in bario subtavia and started a 15 block walk back to our hotel. the ice cream and nap that bookmarked our day was about the best ice cream and nap i´ve had on the trip.
