I’m back in Central America. Back in San Juan del Sur, intrepid tourist destination/fishing village on the southwest end of Nicaragua. Back in the company of my brother Ezra and his roommates Ian and Nicole. Back in the land of sun, which is not shining as boldly these days, preferring instead to relentlessly disperse it’s heat from behind the cover of thin clouds. Occasionally the clouds swell enough so that we’ll get a short period of cooling rain, but the effect doesn’t last long after the rain stops, and leaves behind an increased level of humidity in the air as the water is evaporated by the mid-day heat. Needless to say that one is never quite able to escape the feeling of stickiness, however, I think that I’ve acclimated to it fairly quickly, as it’s not bothering me too much.

The route I took to get here was a bit different this time, as I flew into San Jose, Costa Rica, which is about a 7 hour bus ride from SJDS, compared to Liberia (the city I flew into last time), which is a much more reasonable 2 hour bus ride from SJDS. San Jose is by far the largest city I’ve been to in Central America, not that I’ve been to that many. The cab ride from the hotel Brilla Sol, where we stayed the night, into downtown San Jose to get to the TransNica bus terminal was an exciting one. It started out pretty mellow. In hindsight, I suspect that the cab driver was easing us into his driving style, which I would classify as “somewhat deranged”. We had agreed to share the cab with an american woman from New York who was staying at our hotel while she learned an important lesson: try not to leave your computer bag in a cab, the one with your new laptop, your money and your passport in it, no matter how frustrated you are that the driver is trying to get more cash out of you. Otherwise known as “it’s important to keep your wits about you while traveling”.

After agreeing to share the ride into town, Ezra and I slid into the back seat while she took the front passenger seat. As I said, the ride started out mellow, as the driver found his way onto the freeway during highly congested rush-hour traffic, and we settled in for a slow journey down the packed 3 lanes. Eventually the cars started to loosen up, however, and the woman from New York started to give the driver her theories on how to effectively and efficiently maneuver through this sort of driving situation. He was agreeable to it all, but it soon became apparent that he needed no tips as he began to dart and weave through the still fairly dense crowd of cars, alternately jamming his foot down on the gas, then slamming on the brakes. I can’t imagine the number of clutches and brake pads they must go through here. I can only suspect that they know how to get to the secret land of clutch and brake trees where car parts grow plentifully year round. Maybe it’s a secret they learn at birth. That would explain a lot of things, actually. But I digress…

As we finally left the freeway, I loosened up a bit, expecting that one would likely be driving slower while moving through the downtown of a largish city. This was apparently the wrong thing to expect. Throughout the entire ride, our driver had been switching between 2 or 3 radio stations which all seemed to be playing the same selection of music. Yep, you guessed it: 80’s pop rock & roll hits. As we entered downtown, our driver turned the volume up and picked up the driving pace considerable, as the dramatic synthesizers of Europe’s “The Final Countdown” began playing through the small, tinny speakers behind our heads. The driver aggressively weaved his way through the 4 lanes of downtown traffic, seeming to take the song at it’s word, as if we didn’t make it to our destination by the end of the song it would mean certain doom. We finally arrived at the bus terminal and parted ways with our heroic driver and the now somewhat shaken woman from new york. We waited around for about 15 minutes before we were allowed onto the cushy Nicabus to settle in for the long drive to the border.

The countryside is considerable greener than when I last left it. This apparently happened overnight. Well, not overnight, but certainly within the time span of a week, as Ezra said that it wasn’t like this when he left. This of course is the product of the wet season. The aforementioned occasional heavy rains are causing a rapid transformation of the land from brown and barren to green and lush. During parts of the trip, I was almost able to imagine that I was back in the willamette valley, an illusion that was helped along by the near-sub-zero air conditioning on the bus. It’s 90 out, but the humidity makes it feel more like 105, and I actually got cold on the bus. I had to borrow Ezra’s sweater that he happened to have in his carry-on bag. The bus really is pretty comfortable, though. The time and miles pass along fairly quickly, the scenery is nice, and we got to watch a spanish dubbed version of “Dodgeball” which constantly skipped and stuttered due to the bumpy, windy roads over which we travelled.

So, by around 4pm on Thursday we finally got into SJDS, and I settled into the new house, just across the street from the old one, affectionately called “Casa del Blanca”, and sometimes also known as “Casa de Gringos”.

Next: Ooh, pretty pretty jungle!