How (Not) To Walk Across The Costa Rica/Nicaragua Border

by Dave Seminara on

You can learn a lot about a country by walking into it across a land border. VIP’s enter at the airport or zoom through in a car, but when you walk across the frontier, especially in a developing country, you get a window into how ordinary people and traders travel.

Before leaving on a recent trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua, I tried to research the logistics of how we would get from the Liberia airport, where we were supposed to drop our rental car, to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, but found no definitive take on how much it costs or what the transportation options are. So when a cab driver I talked to at a gas station in Liberia offered to take us from the airport to the border the next day for $80, I wasn’t certain if it was a good deal but agreed to it nonetheless for lack of any better ideas (with my wife and children in tow, we weren’t up for taking a chicken bus).

Francisco, our courtly silver-haired driver turned up on time, but we soon realized that his A/C was broken.

“Too expensive to fix it,” he explained. “Sorry.”


Not a good sign on a sweltering hot afternoon, but he said the ride took only an hour, so I had no problem sweating it out. We puttered along in Francisco’s old pickup truck as swarms of cars passed us on the Pan-American Highway. I knew we were going slow but had no idea how slow because Francisco’s speedometer was also broken.

As we neared the border, we passed a few security checkpoints where police officers checked for illegal immigrants, guns and drugs. The homes on the side of the road were smaller and more improvised the closer we got to the border and even before we arrived in Nicaragua it seemed as though we’d left the middle-class comforts of Costa Rica behind.

Our hotel in San Juan del Sur, the terrific Villas de Palermo, hooked us up with a company called Iskra Travel that was supposed to transport us from the border to San Juan del Sur for $45. But the driver was supposed to meet us at the border at 1 p.m. and Francisco was sputtering along so slowly that we didn’t reach it until 1:30, and we hadn’t even cleared customs yet, so I had no idea if the driver would wait for us on the other side.

There was a long line of travelers waiting to get into Costa Rica but when we asked where to enter Nicaragua, people in line pointed off in the distance. There’s a no man’s land that must be a good mile long between the two countries with very little shade. It was sweltering – easily 90 degrees (probably more) – and we were transporting two small kids, a stroller and a few pieces of luggage.

By the time we reached a uniformed Nicaraguan border guard, my shirt was completely soaked through in sweat. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1949, so the border area isn’t the kind of tense frontier where photography is a problem. I took advantage of the loose atmosphere by snapping a photo of my wife as the Nicaraguan border control officer examined her passport.

I assumed we were going to be waved into the country in a matter of moments but the guard had a problem with our passports. My wife and I both have very mediocre high school Spanish and it took us a few minutes to realize that he wanted us to go back to Costa Rica to get an exit stamp.

He said we all had to go back, not just me, and I wasn’t about to walk the mile in the hot sun with all the baggage again, so I hired a rickshaw driver to cycle us back to Costa Rica (see photo below).

At first, I was annoyed by the hassle, but within just a few seconds of being on the rickshaw my mood brightened considerably. There was a light breeze and being carted around felt like a beautiful little luxury that was well worth the $8 (round trip) our driver asked for.

Back in Costa Rica, we were directed around to the back of the immigration building to a room that was empty save a few officers at their desks. Lots of people were waiting to get into Costa Rica but we were the only ones leaving.

“They sent you back for exit stamps?” asked the Costa Rican officer, watching the beads of sweat pore off my chin onto my T-shirt.

“Yep,” I said, and the officer and a colleague sitting next to him laughed, as if our exertion was the most amusing thing they’d experienced in years.

On the way back to Nicaragua, our rickshaw driver asked me how much I paid for my camera. Given the situation, I wasn’t eager to admit that it cost $1,200, so I lied and said, “$100” (see video).

“I’ll give you a hundred for it,” he said.

“No thanks,” I said. “I need my camera.”

“OK, $150,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “But my camera is not for sale.”

“But I need a camera,” he pleaded.




I just ignored him and soon enough we were back talking to the same Nicaraguan official and this time he stamped us in. But our brush with Nicaraguan officialdom wasn’t quite over. We walked another few hundred meters and then stood around in the hot sun wondering where to meet our driver from Iskra Travel. We were 90 minutes late and I assumed he’d given up on us.

A trio of young men came by to hector us about buying forms from them. I was sure it was a scam and ignored them, but my wife, who is from a small town in the Midwest and can’t help but be nice to everyone – even annoying pests and con-men – entertained their sales pitches.

“They have badges,” she said, “they seem official.”

I examined the peskiest guy’s badge and confirmed that he worked for some travel agency, not the government. He wanted us to pay $1 for immigration forms that were supposed to be free. We headed off to the east of the road toward a cluster of buildings and noticed two car rental companies: Alamo and National – good choices if you want to use a company that has offices at the border.

We gravitated to a line where we paid about $4 to a bored looking clerk who then pointed us to another line right across from his booth. As we stood in that line, my older son made a card with his birthday and half-birthday on it to give to the Nicaraguans (see photo above) and a mentally-disabled person began to emit piercing calls, followed by maniacal laughter and ear-to-ear smiles. My older son covered his ears and everyone else smiled nervously or gave him some coins. It was a welcome to Nicaragua I’ll never forget.

A man carrying a sign with my name on it emerged and I was thrilled and amazed that he had waited for us. We made it to the front of the next line and the clerk asked us for $48 U.S. to enter the country. I handed him three $20 bills and then struggled to understand why he wasn’t handing us back our passports.

Clearly there was a problem with our poor Spanish; we couldn’t for the life of us understand what it was. I confirmed once more that he wanted $48 and pointed to the pile of bills I’d given him totaling $60. After a few minutes of mutual incomprehension, someone behind us in line came forward to interpret.

“He says one of your $20 bills is no good,” the man said, before handing what looked like a perfectly good 20 back to me.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, totally confused.

“He says there is a crease in the bill.”

The bill looked fine to me but luckily I had another one in my wallet that he found acceptable. After much ado, we were finally, officially allowed to enter Nicaragua.

Within a matter of minutes, we could see the twin volcano peaks of Ometepe Island rising like pyramids across Lake Cocibolca and we were bathed in the lovely artificial frost of fully functioning A/C. It felt great to be in Nicaragua.

[Photo/video credits: Dave Seminara]

An Evening Of Costa Rican Rodeo Madness

by Dave Seminara on

The reed thin drunk was just barely sober enough to avoid being flattened by a rampaging bull. The crowd roared when he broke into a nifty little dance, complete with somersaults and a crash but many were also hoping that he’d be trampled (see video). I was rooting for the harassed bulls to teach the dozens of insane men in the ring a lesson, but I dared not admit that to anyone. Costa Rican law mandates that a cowboy should be sober while riding a bull, but there is no such requirement for the spectators, even though many of them choose to be part of the action, right in the ring.

I’m not much of a rodeo guy but they are an integral part of the culture in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica, so when we heard about Expo Liberia, a rodeo and carnival that was supposed to be one of the biggest and best in the area, we decided to check it out.

As we entered the fairgrounds just off the Pan-American Highway in Liberia, a regional hub in Guanacaste, a police officer approached us with a warning.

“Be very, very careful here,” he said. “There are a lot of criminals and drug addicts around.”


Not exactly what you want to hear any time, but particularly not with your wife and two small children in tow. Nonetheless, we appreciated the warning and the fact that there were police officers everywhere. We walked past a row of bars that were competing to see who could play the loudest music from the most distorted speakers (see video). I’m not sure who won but the fact that there were so few customers at most of the bars seemed to amplify the noise and absurdity of the situation.

One of the bars had a guy singing what sounded like Costa Rican show tunes and it was completely empty. We felt horrible for him but not bad enough to subject ourselves to the music for more than a few seconds.




My kids had fun squandering a large chunk of our hard earned money on rides, inflatable jumpy houses and cotton candy and I was dismayed but also impressed to see freelance port-o-potty entrepreneurs charging the equivalent of a dollar to use their facilities. A host of small children hassled us to buy them tickets for rides and we almost succumbed until one of the Costa Rican carnies intervened.




“Their parents are here,” he warned. “You don’t have to buy them anything.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Probably at the bars,” he said, gesturing toward where the distorted, pulsating music was coming from.

After my kids had exhausted their tickets, we gravitated toward the rodeo ring, where my sons watched in fascination as a group of jeering men and boys poked, prodded and harassed a pair of confined bulls. They were obviously getting them in an agitated state for the evening’s show but I decided that I didn’t want to support their endeavor by buying tickets, even at just $4 a pop. (Though apparently the bulls aren’t actually harmed in Costa Rican rodeos).

But as we were wandering around the side of the ring, we noticed that there were just as many people, it not more, watching the show for free under the stands. Curiosity got the best of us, so we stood alongside other cheapskates and vendors, who flogged little bags of fruity drinks, nuts and other treats, and settled in for the show.

“All these people standing underneath the stands, this doesn’t seem safe,” said Jen, my wife. “What if this thing collapses on us- we’ll all be dead.”

I pondered this prospect and considered what a small news item it would be in the U.S. Dozens perish as Costa Rican rodeo stands collapse. But as soon as the first bucking bull came charging out of the gate, our attention shifted from the rickety stands to the action unfolding in front of us.

There were scores of men- and not a single woman- standing around in the ring, but I had (wrongly) assumed that they would take their seats once the action started. After the sabanero (cowboy) was thrown off of the bull, attention shifted to all the men in the ring. Some of them appeared to be trying to taunt and smack the bull, while more prudent guys hopped up on the side of the wooden stands to steer clear of the beast.

For the first few seconds, the bull was angry and he actively charged a few men. But then he kind of just pulled up and stopped dead in his tracks, as if to say, fuck this, I am not going to take the bait and chase you macho assholes around this ring. A few of the men tried to bait him but he just stood his ground and glared at them. Eventually, as the men became more aggressive, he took the bait and started charging, sending all but the most clinically insane scurrying up onto the lower wooden rungs of the stands.

I asked a woman standing next to us why there were no women in the ring and she chuckled.

“We’re too smart,” she said.

The scene repeated itself time and time again. The men wanted action and needed to harass the bulls to galvanize them to play along. I don’t care for the idea of proving one’s masculinity by tormenting animals and it was hard to reconcile why so many guys wanted to be in the ring.




I didn’t stay long enough to witness any injuries but apparently it’s common for at least a few people to get trampled each night. Brian Wedge, a photographer from Maine who blogged about an evening he spent at a Costa Rican rodeo, actually photographed people lying injured in ambulances at the rodeo he attended in 2011.

But while I didn’t get a kick out of the tormenting of the bulls, I loved the dancing, strutting drunk guy who commanded our attention. As you can see from the video above, he was, when he could remain upright, a very good dancer.

After nearly an hour of watching the spectacle from underneath the stands, we’d had more than enough. I was happy to escape before the stands collapsed or a bull came smashing through the flimsy wooden beams that separated us from him. But I wished I could have taken the bulls with me to spare them the indignity of sticking around to provide amusement to the locals.

[Photo credits: Dave Seminara]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Coping With Loss Overseas

by Dave Seminara on

Coping with a personal loss overseas in an alien culture without your normal support network can be one of the most challenging things about life in the Foreign Service or indeed any peripatetic international career. I’ve been blessed to reach age 40 without ever losing a close friend or relative.

But six years ago this spring, while living in Budapest, my wife and I lost a beloved pet, Homer, a Labrador retriever who died unexpectedly when he was just a year old (see photo). Those who have never had a dog they really loved won’t be able to grasp what a deep loss this was for us but it was by far the hardest thing I ever had to deal with in my six years in the Foreign Service.

We got Homer while I was going through a difficult time coping with an illness and we quickly became inseparable. We didn’t have kids at the time, so Homer was our baby. We traveled with him, let him sleep at the foot of our bed, and spoiled him rotten with presents and treats. Every time I came home from work, he would be so deliriously happy that I often couldn’t wait to walk in the door.He was popular in our neighborhood in Washington, D.C., but when we moved to Budapest, he was like a rock star in our neighborhood, where everyone knew him by name and would linger at our gate for the chance to pet and hug him. We were the accredited diplomats, but he was the real cultural envoy.

We took him everywhere and one weekend while we were sitting in an outdoor restaurant at Lake Balaton, a few hours from our home, he started to have some sort of seizure at the table and within a minute or two, before we could get help, he was dead. He was just 14 months old and he died on the one-year anniversary of when we got him.

In the days to come, we consulted local vets to try to find out what happened. They concluded that his thymus ruptured, he went into shock and died. Just before he died, he was running around in the back yard of the restaurant, and we had thought that he swallowed something poisonous. If we had been in the U.S., we would have felt more confident that a restaurant wouldn’t have something toxic in the yard but in Hungary, we really had no clue.

I’m sure the vets in Hungary are just as good as the ones in the U.S., but at the time, we couldn’t help but wonder if their diagnosis was correct. We were at a loss to understand why our dog had died and having to try to make sense of it in an alien place was bewildering to say the least.

On my first day back at work, I was still grieving, and having to tell my co-workers what happened brought back all the emotions. I struggled to relay the news, which everyone had already heard through the grapevine, without crying. People were sympathetic but I couldn’t help but feel like no one had a clue what I was going through. I had been at post for only a few months and felt like no one knew me well enough to understand what a deep loss this was for me.

The worst part of going back to work was talking to my boss, who wasn’t an animal lover and clearly had no idea that I was grieving.

“Other than the canine misadventure,” he said, with a smile and a chuckle, “How was your weekend?”

Canine misadventure? I just looked at him puzzled, shocked really, at how he could consider our dog dying unexpectedly at a restaurant a “misadventure.” For us, it was a tragedy. Others have faced much bigger tragedies, but for us, it was a big loss nonetheless. I was speechless and had a sick feeling in my stomach. I had no idea if I wanted to cry or punch him and, to be honest, I was so shocked by his insensitivity, I don’t remember how or even if I responded.

My wife and I had each other to lean on and that’s more than single people have when they face a loss overseas. But my boss’s reaction drove home a point for me. I was in a place where no one, save my wife, really knew me or gave a damn about me. I needed a support network – my parents, my good friends and people who knew how much I loved Homer.

Many in the Foreign Service have suffered much more devastating losses than we did. And many are forced to decide if they can afford to fly home for funerals of friends or more distant relatives if they are in out of the way posts. Karen O’Neill DeThomas, for example, wrote a very moving story about the loss of her teenage daughter to meningitis, and after reading it, I felt like the pain we experienced was nothing compared to her loss. She said that her Foreign Service experience helped her cope with the tragedy and I think there’s something to that.

When you live overseas, whether in the Foreign Service or not, I think you are forced to become self sufficient in many ways and, if you spend time in developing countries, where there is poverty and suffering everywhere you look (Budapest certainly doesn’t qualify on that score), it can put your loss in perspective.

No matter where you live, the only thing that eases the pain of losing a loved one is time. When I think about Homer these days, I feel sad that my sons never got to meet him and that his life was cut so short. But I don’t focus on the tragic ending. I remember the joy he brought to us and others during his brief, but memorable life.

Read More From “A Traveler In The Foreign Service“

[Photo credit: Dave Seminara]

Robbed By Cab Drivers In Nicaragua And Chicago In The Same Week?

by Dave Seminara on

Where the hell is Camilo?

Those were the words that I kept repeating to myself, sometimes replacing the word “hell” with more sinister, unpublishable expletives. I was sitting in the Rancho Marsella restaurant at Playa Marsella, a remote beach that is 20 minutes down a dirt track from San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, wondering where Camilo, a local cab driver who had taken us to the beach and had my $1,200 camera in his trunk, had gone.

Camilo had told me that he planned to hang out at the beach and would be ready to take us back to our hotel whenever we were ready. He seemed eminently trustworthy, so I didn’t think twice about stowing my Nikon D7000 in his trunk after I had taken a few photos of the empty crescent shaped beach.

After an hour of lounging in the beach’s only tiny patch of shade with a group of Italian backpackers, I went to the beachfront restaurant to use the bathroom and noticed that Camilo wasn’t around. I assumed that he must have gone for a walk or a swim, but an hour later when we returned for lunch and saw that he still wasn’t there, I checked the parking lot and saw that his car was gone.

No!$#@!*


No one at the restaurant knew where he went or had his phone number. I had his phone number written in my notebook, which also had all my notes for the stories I planned to write, but that was inside my camera case – in his trunk. I knew his name but had no idea where he lived or what his license plate number was. We were too far from town, down a brutal, rutted track, for him to try to pick up other fares, and he had explicitly stated that he wasn’t going to leave the beach. Was Camilo off taking photos with his new camera somewhere?

I started to panic and curse myself. Bringing a $1,200 camera to a beach in a poor country like Nicaragua is a bad idea, but as a writer, I take my camera everywhere because you need good photos to accompany stories. Still, why had I given him the temptation of leaving the camera in his trunk? There were no more than a half dozen people on the huge beach, so even if I was in the water, what was the chance it would be stolen?

“He’ll come back,” said Jen, my wife. “He probably got bored sitting around.”

I hoped she was right but feared she was wrong. He wouldn’t be able to get $1,200 for my camera, but its value still probably represented a few months work for him. And something Camilo said on the ride to Marsella stuck in my mind. “We are poor people here in Nicaragua,” he said. The words just kept rattling around in my head. We are poor people.

After 15 or 20 minutes of fretting, one of the guys at the restaurant suggested that Camilo might have gone a mile or two up the road to watch a youth baseball game. But we had passed that game on the way to the beach and when I asked Camilo if he liked baseball, he said “no.”

Still, it was worth a try, and one of the men at the restaurant drove down to the game on his moped and five minutes later, returned with Camilo, who looked aggrieved. I have never been so relieved to see a taxi driver in my life.

“I just went down to check out the game,” he said.

I told him that there was no problem but clearly the guy on the moped must have explained that I looked pissed off because Camilo sat on a step near the bar looking angry while we ordered drinks. I bought him a drink but I could tell he was hurt by the fact that I had doubted him.

On the way back to town, he pointed out his house, a typically humble, working class affair that had a small store attached, and said, “That’s where I live.” He might well have added, “I may not be rich, but I am not a thief.”

Over the next few days, Camilo drove us on a few more outings – to Granada, the ferry to Ometepe and around town – and I even had a chance to visit his home and meet his son, Camilo Jr. (see photo). We became friends and I came to realize that he’s an honest man. My fear that because he came from a poor country he might seize the opportunity to take my camera was unfounded and wrong.

Five days later, we encountered a similar situation upon our return home to Chicago, but this time, Jen and I reversed roles. After a long, grueling day of travel from Granada, Nicaragua, to Chicago, via Houston, our little boys were asleep in the cab when we arrived home at 11 p.m. We were dressed for summer and the temperature outside was below freezing, so Jen and I decided to carry one sleeping child each into their beds and then return to the cab to get our baggage.

But by the time I got back outside after delivering my 3-year-old into his bed, our driver, a young man who appeared to be from East Africa, had what looked like all of our baggage out on the sidewalk and was getting ready to pull away. He mumbled something along the lines of “You’re all set,” and pulled out, just as my wife was bounding into the driveway warning that she had left her backpack and purse in the backseat.

I hadn’t realized that not all of our baggage was in the trunk and apparently our driver didn’t either but it was too late, he was gone. My wife had her work laptop, our passports, her driver’s license, cash, credit cards and more in the bags he had just driven off with.

Jen was on the verge of tears because only some of her work documents were backed up and the loss of this computer would be catastrophic for her. I recalled the young man’s name and we had an emailed receipt from him in my inbox. My wife wracked her brain and thought she remembered the name of the taxi company – Choice Taxi – but wasn’t 100% sure.

We called Choice and the dispatcher initially seemed less than helpful. She claimed that she had no list of company drivers and, even with the guy’s name and a description of the car, she was unable to confirm if he worked for them. She promised to make an announcement over their radio for him to contact her but said that since it was Friday night and their office was closed, we might have to wait until Monday, when the owner would be available, to track the driver down.

My wife kept calling her back every 30 minutes, pleading with her to make more announcements while I researched the cab situation at O’Hare airport. There are dozens of companies, perhaps more than 100, and without a cab number or license plate, trying to find a specific driver is like looking for a needle in a haystack. We called the police and all they could do was offer to take a report for insurance purposes. We found a website where you can email a complaint about a cab driver but that was it.

By 1 a.m., after we had waited two hours for the driver to respond to his dispatcher or return to our house, we called to cancel all our credit cards. My wife felt certain that the driver or perhaps a subsequent passenger had decided to pocket her stuff. But I felt like we’d get our things back. We knew the guy’s name, after all, so he wouldn’t risk his job to steal a laptop, passports and credit cards. And most people who are getting into a cab are unlikely to turn into thieves just because they see some valuable items on the floor of the cab.

Our prayers were answered at 1:30 a.m. when the dispatcher called us back to say that Yosief had (finally!) responded to her calls over their radio system.

“Please tell him to bring us our things tonight,” I begged. “We’ll give him a reward.”

We were overjoyed but also shattered from exhaustion and worry. Nonetheless, we stayed up until Yosief finally arrived at our home at 2:30 a.m.

All of our belongings were intact and I thanked Yosief, who said he was from Eritrea, profusely. I resisted the urge to ask him why he hadn’t responded to the radio calls sooner and felt I probably knew anyway – he spent most of our ride from the airport on the phone and was probably similarly preoccupied while my wife was crying and fretting over her laptop.

I asked Yosief if I could take his photo but he held the reward envelope up over his face and declined.

“That would not be good for me,” he said.

What did we learn from these incidents? Most taxi drivers, even poor ones, are honest. But it’s still a good idea to jot down a license plate number or cab number and know what company you are patronizing when you get into a taxi. And it’s an even better idea to back up your computer as often as possible.

Note: Camilo put the fear of God into me at Marsella Beach, but he charges very fair prices, speaks fluent English and is an honest, trustworthy person. If you want to hire him to drive you around while in Nicaragua, please contact him at (505) 886-72336.

[Photo credits: Dave Seminara]

Scenes From A Surf Competition In San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

by Dave Seminara on

I’ve never thought of surfing as a hyper-competitive sport. For me, it’s more of a lifestyle. I’m not a surfer but I’ve met scores of people over the years that have rearranged their lives to be in proximity to the big breaks. I can understand why surfers might want to compete so they can measure their skills against others but the surfing culture doesn’t exactly lend itself to competition.

It’s more dude-pass-that-joint than let’s-throw-down-I’m-going-to-whip-you, so when I was invited to attend and write about a surf competition/bacchanal called Pitaya Fest in San Juan del Sur, (SJDS) Nicaragua, I leapt at the chance to see what competitive surfing was all about.On a Saturday morning in February, I piled into a stifling hot van outside a backpacker hostel in SJDS with my wife and two little boys and found myself sitting knee-to-knee across from a host of beautifully idealistic young American do-gooders and a pair of German girls wearing royal blue T-shirts that read “Christian Surfers.”


The do-gooders were a delightful group of young people who were taking a year or more off after college to help people in Costa Rica and Nicaragua and they regaled us with stories, including one about a girl they encountered who gave birth at age 9. I got the feeling that they’d learned more in their brief time in Central America than they did in college.

As we struggled to hold our ground on the bench seats as the van breakdanced across a rutted dirt track toward Hermosa Beach, outside SJDS, I wanted to bottle up the group of idealistic Americans and release them the next time someone anywhere in the world tells me that Americans are greedy, selfish people who don’t lift a finger to help anyone else in the world.




Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, next to Haiti, and it’s impossible for anyone with a conscience to visit the country and not feel motivated to help the legions of poor people who live in improvised, ramshackle dwellings alongside almost every major road in the country. Plenty of tourists come to Nicaragua for the beaches and the prospect of a cheap holiday, but are motivated to stay on as volunteers after they arrive.

Playa Hermosa is a lovely, huge, crescent-shaped beach where some scenes from Survivor Nicaragua were shot in 2010. I was told that the abysmal road leading to the beach was even worse before Jeff Probst and company rolled into town. Before we made it into the event, we passed by a security checkpoint manned by a guy with a bulletproof vest brandishing what looked like an old AK-47. In the last few years, a few tourists have been robbed in around Playa Hermosa, so they now have security to protect what is one of the country’s few privately owned beaches.

“The 2013 Pitaya Festival Is Here!” from david kalani larkins on Vimeo.

The surfing competition was already a few hours into its second day when we arrived and the first competitors we saw must have been part of a beginners’ heat, because they appeared to have no idea what they were doing. In fact, none managed to remain upright on their boards for more than ten seconds at a time.

The event appeared to be co-sponsored by the Christian Surfers group (Quicksilver was the primary sponsor) but the DJ’s choice in music wasn’t very Christian. One of the first songs we heard went something like this:

(Unintelligible) Mumble, mumble, mumble
Shake that ass girl
(Unintelligible) Mumble, mumble, mumble,
Shake that ass girl

Later in the day, my wife saw the Christian Surfer group sitting in a circle on the beach, holding hands, eyes closed in prayer. Perhaps they were praying for everyone’s sins.

The sizable crowd was a fair sampling of the gringos who wash up in SJDS as visitors or expats. Backpackers in need of a shower and some clean laundry. White guys in dreadlocks with their tattooed, wasted-looking girlfriends and poorly groomed dogs. Middle-aged North American snowbirds, missionaries and assorted cheapskates looking for a cut-rate version of Costa Rica. Alcoholics attracted by Nicaragua’s cheap rum. Miscellaneous mid-life crisis and I’m here to change-my-life or maybe catch-something-that-I-might-be-ashamed-of types. The aforementioned do-gooders. Surfers, wannabe surfers and their dogs, some of them with coffee colored skin and incongruous orange-colored hair.

Aspiring North American coffee-shop revolutionaries in Panama hats and Che Guevara T-shirts who like totally aspire to stop the military industrial complex, global warming and the genocide in Darfur and various other places they know nothing about. Unemployable Latin American studies majors who aspire to start NGOs with vague goals involving “sustainability” and “empowerment.” Nicaraguans with substantial coolers sitting on uncomfortable white plastic chairs or lying on hammocks plus assorted riff-raff and ne-er-do-wells like me.

The surfing and the music got better. Much better. And the people mentioned above got more drunk and more stoned. At noon, I smelled my first whiff of ganja and wondered whether the surf announcer, who tried to sound like the beachside equivalent of Andres Cantor, the Latino soccer announcer famous for his GOOOOOOOOOOOAL! calls, would ever shut up.

Surfing isn’t much of a spectator sport but surfers make damn good company and they know how to party. I made a few lame attempts to understand what was going on, but it’s hard to stay engaged with a competition that has 56 different divisions and drags on for hours or days on end. From what I gathered, the surfers had 15 minutes in each heat to ride as many waves as they could, but only their two best rides counted towards their overall score.


Set back from the beach, there was a stage and a lineup of bands, plus a host of booths offering everything from $1.50 rum and cokes, chocolate cookies to pulled pork sandwiches.

I met a 40-something expat volunteering at a BBQ pit who told me that he moved to SJDS in 2009 to “do something different.” He said that that the town’s real estate market mirrored that of the U.S. There was a boom from 2004-7, followed by a bust and a sputter that lingers to this day.

“A piece of land that was 25K in 2007 was going for about 15k by 2009,” he said.

My children made friends with some gringo expat kids whose parents moved to SJDS from Lesotho (seriously!) and I met a host of interesting people as well. I was struck by how open and friendly people were and how easy it is to become part of this community in a place that I would assume is as transient as they come. I met more interesting people in six hours on the beach than I would in six months in Chicago. And I found out that the event was a fundraiser for local charities, which inspired me to have a few more rum and cokes, in order to support the good cause.

At 2 p.m., the surf competition DJ, operating under a tent on the beach, wisely shifted from the angry gansta rap to Bob Marley’s “Legend” compilation. What’s a surf gathering without some Bob Marley, right? Fifteen minutes later, a band took the stage and launched into Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World” as the DJ played “Stir It Up” simultaneously. Competing Bob Marley tunes was still better than the gangsta rap (see video below).




Shortly thereafter, a small Nicaraguan guy in a faded tank top began puking just yards behind my little patch of shade underneath a tree behind the surf tents.

He was serenaded by a group of inebriated hippies who were mashing it up to Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier.”

Fighting on the Rye-ver, Fighting for Survival
Wye-yo-yo, Wye-yo-yo-yo, Wye-yo-yo-yo-yo!

Soon, a succession of drinkers followed, one-by-one, to piss in my general vicinity and I decided to move from what was becoming a de-facto toilet.

By three o’clock, I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone as a “Grease” cover band called Bario La Planeta launched into their set. Only in Nicaragua can you wash up at a beach and find yourself singing “Go Grease Lightning” in the company of of junkies, flunkies, do-gooders and gringos with baffled looking Nicaraguans looking on in puzzlement (see video).




Late in the afternoon, guys and gals who actually knew how to surf – and how to surf well – got into the act but I still had no idea what the hell was going on and I’m pretty sure that most in attendance didn’t gave a damn who won. I’m told the party raged until 3 a.m. and Agusto Chamorro won the men’s open competition. In the world of competitive, but not exactly cutthroat surfing, I’m betting that none of the “losers” left the beach broken hearted.

[Photo credits: Dave Seminara]