Las Peñitas
So the other day I met up with a cool dude named Abbas, he hails from San Fransisco, CA and is here in Nicaragua on business to start up a new non-profit called Global Glimpse. We chatted a bit and then head out together to have lunch. I had some grilled pork and he had a pan-seared fish that was scooped out of a holding tank live with a net. Both of our meals were marvelous… we enjoyed a long and touching conversation and then headed out to the beach.
After a sweaty and long bus ride we made our way to Las Peñitas. The main road here is lined with houses, and beach access is limited in parts. Abbas and I made it to Playa Roca, where he was interviewing a Norwegian woman for a position with his fledgling non-profit. I sat for a while alone, sipping a liter bottle of Toña and watching the waves crash on the rocky shoreline. After a while I plugged in my earbuds and listened to some Dennis Brown, walking out onto the natural jetty and wrote a few paragraphs in my journal.
I ended up watching the sun set over the pacific, always a wonderful sight. I also got into a fairly heated argument with one hag of an ex-pat. She had apparently been robbed recently, and took offense to a statement I made. I said ¨when I`m in the USA, I miss Nicaragua… but when I`m in Nicaragua, I almost never miss the USA.¨ She exploded and argued vehemently that the US was a better place to be. I tried to argue the point that the US has done plenty of bad things to me… it forced tons of fat onto my bones, it reinforces awful social norms, it makes me feel lonely and disconnected… etc. etc. But this hag-owner of this beachfront hostel kept ripping on me. I ended up leaving hastily with another ex-pat named David, and we both stood on the back of the horribly overcrowded bus heading back to Leon.
Overcrowded? Understatement. Imagine 180 people on a school bus. Stop. Think again, re-imagine. Imagine ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY PEOPLE on a school bus. That´s right. We were crammed beyond sardines, standing and holding on for dear life to the railings that line the aisle. David told me
¨wow, I`m blown away. I`ve never seen Cookie like that (I guess Cookie is the name of that awful hag). She`s normally so calm, I`ve had political arguments with her countless times but never seen her like that. She must be very upset, she´s had a bunch of money stolen from her recently and a laptop too. She must be angry about that. Pluse Jorge, the Cuban guy, he`s her boyfriend and his daughter was recently gang-raped by four men. The police wont do anything about it because they`ve been bribed.¨
My mind is just doing loops at this point, I shudder, and ask
Well, how much was the bribe?
¨4,000 Cordobas, yeah that`s what I heard¨
That is $210 dollars. That`s how much it costs to get away with rape there. I can barely handle it. I wonder if I could go and bribe the police with 8,000 cordobas to go and arrest the rapists. Horrible, pure and simple.
So, I got ripped on by this woman who took her stresses out on me and it was kinda rough. David jumped off the bus and headed back to his house. He gave me his phone number before and insists I come visit so he can turn me on to the works of Carlos Alfonseca, a poet from Leon who lived in the same house Ruben Darío lived in and went insane there. I will most likely take him up on that offer!
So anyway a zany day. Enjoy the photograph above as much as I did while taking it, even if it was depressing in a sense.
Its a shame writing these short sinopses… I know so very much gets left out. Obviously, there is nothing I can do here. You would have to be there, in my body, to live it out and realize exactly what I experienced. I cannot bring you all to Las Peñitas and that afternoon although I try to… Indeed, you could only truly experience that ball of energy if you had been there in person.
4 years ago