Leaving Tola "No lo creo," dad says, shaking his head. Mom is holding back her tears, "Every guest we have...I just start to love them so much." She gives me the family address, home phone number, and many reassurances that anytime we or anyone in our family want, this is our home. I promise to be back soon. With our bags packed full of clean clothes and a bag of still-green jocote (my prize for english homework translation), and my new flip flops on my feet, we head for la playa.San Juan del Sur, my first impression Surfboards and bleached hair, tattooed youth in board shorts, people no longer expect or care if we speak Spanish, tourist prices, dusty construction, constant movement, walls of hanging bathing suits and surfboards, that certain sort of carefree energy and thinly-veiled desperation that saturates a tourist beach town, "un pequeño relax." I can see how people get stuck here but we're not really digging it so far. Perhaps we're just pessimistic because we haven't seen the beach yet and definitely haven't come close to eating the red snapper that Omantzin was telling us about. At least the air is warm and the ice cream cheap.
We have dinner later with our hosts, a young Texan woman who moved to Nicaragua at around age 11 when her family founded an orphanage, and her Nica husband, who works in the local real estate office and is also president of the national surf circuit (a huge deal in San Juan del Sur). They're nice, stil in their "honeymoon/new appliance phase" and they have a lovely house with a breezy terrace, only 500 meters or so from the beach. Abby and I trade stories with Sarah about how our family members back in the States insist that places like Nicaragua and Mexico are so dangerous, an idea we all find funny considering how dangerous most U.S. cities are. Ah well. Here's an interesting article about Nicaragua's safety. And Nicaragua doesn´t even make the list of the 62 countries with the highest per capita murder rate. They list the U.S. at number 24, right between Bulgaria and Armenia.
