The boat is here, it leaves tonight. I’ve been waiting days for it, but in some way weeks – that is to say, I made a few tactical transport errors and ended up stuck first on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and now on the Corn Islands, two tropical islands off the coast. Here’s a few pictures of the islands.

I know, I’m hardly a sympathetic figure, sitting here on my computer eating fried chicken and watching sunsets whilst rain pours down on the East Coast and the Mississippi overflows, but, honestly, I am terribly bored and wish perhaps I picked a different path. I actually have a TV with American channels in my hotel room and have been watching re-runs of Law & Order and House to while away the hot midday hours (is that a worthy complaint? it is really hot and humid here, and there are mosquitoes too!). So really perhaps you should enjoy your busy day, your work related stress, inclement weather, 24 hour news cycle, and the latest Twitters from the offspring of ex-gubernatorial movie stars (when did CNN become a twitter news channel?). So stuck as I am, with wifi amazingly, here’s an update on my recent travels and propensity for being nowhere doing nothing:

In Colombia, in the town of Baranquilla, Luca, Elisa and I watched the Carnival parade. We couldn’t find any good place to sit or stand, so we ended up climbing a tree and I took photos from there, hence the branches and leaves in the photos.

After Colombia, we set sail to Panama, stopping in the wonderful San Blas Islands along the way.

In Colon Panama, we anchored at probably the ugliest anchorage I have ever been at.

My travels with “Top Secret” were finally over and after saying goodbye to Rob, Luca, and Elisa, I took a bus to Panama City, which didn’t have much to recommend itself other than its colorful buses. A majority of buses in Central America are, in fact, retired American school buses and it is weirdly nostalgic sitting on the same padded bench seats with the same crappy sliding windows that I remember from childhood field trips.

After a few days in Panama City I made my way up to Costa Rica and after a few stops, to its capital, San Jose. I was jonesing to move and get home, and Costa Rica ain’t cheap, so it was a brief visit and shortly I was in Nicaragua, in the city of Granada. That’s when my homeward journey sort of slipped off the rails. Everywhere I’d been in Central America had been very well traveled and not so exciting and I wanted to see at least one less-traveled area. Nicaragua seemed interesting and friendly, so I chose to do a little exploring instead of just heading north to El Salvador on the Gringo Trail back to the states.

I went to Ometepe, a double volcanic island in the huge Lake Nicaragua.

Then I took an overnight ferry to the other side of the lake, stayed on the Solentiname Islands, took a boat down the lovely Rio San Juan to El Castillo and then a 10-hour boat ride further down the river to the Caribbean coast. It’s a humorous ride as the boat (carrying about 50 passengers) often grounds in the shallow river and the male passengers have to hop out , wading in waist deep water, and push the boat off the sand. I lost on entire pack of cigarettes to the river the first time I jumped out.

I headed up the coast on speed boats, and eventually found myself in Pearl Lagoon, a very large lagoon with numerous small communities along its shores and river-ways. The Caribbean coast of Nicaragua is fascinating for its mix of languages and cultures. The main language here is English – no not English like you know it, but Creole English, which consists, as far as I can tell, of a sometimes un-intelligible accent mixed with a huge amount of what I would call “slang” but I’m sure a linguist has another word for. Most of the people can slow down and speak a more standard-style English to me, but when they speak to each other I can seldom understand more than half of what they are saying. This side of Nicaragua is also home to many Miskito people who speak their own indigenous tongue and there is also a settlement of Garifuna people called Orinoco. Garifunas trace their heritage back to a group of slaves who revolted upon arriving in South America on a Spanish slave ship and the Garifunas never lived as slaves. Later, in the town of Karawalla, I met an Ulwa (another indigenous group) man who spoke Spanish, Miskito, Ulwa, and some English. As usual I felt dumb as brick with my one tongue. Karawalla is where the photo on the front page is from and the song is old popular Miskito tune you hear at least twice a day blaring from stereo systems.  Other than Miskito music, one also hears the inevitable reggae and reggaeton, but interestingly one also hears a lot of American country music (songs about broken hearts and working on farms, classic twangy country music).

I was hoping to travel up the coast to Puerto Cabezas and then into Honduras. Normally, people who want to go up there either take an airplane or hop on a cargo boat from Corn Island. But I wanted to be different and go the hard way and take a series of boats up the coaast. I spent a little over a week in the Pearl Lagoon area, but ended up missing one boat that was heading up the coast. Instead I joined a tour of the nearby Pearl Keys. The Keys were beautiful and desolate, but what I liked most was this abandoned hotel we stayed in. We were going to camp on the beach but rain was threatening and our guide thought it was better to hunker down here. I was told it was a hotel that had run into permission problems with the local community, but I couldn’t help imagining it had been a drug-runners lair. There was an old broken harp, upholstered French chairs, chandeliers and other luxury detritus throughout the place, all broken and water damaged.

An old man stayed there to watch over the place and he showed me this picture of the owner amongst a shelf of his surviving dishware.

I finally got a boat to Sandy Bay, the northernmost part of Pearl Lagoon, where I did very little except sample some sea turtle. Yes, they catch, kill and eat those big beautiful sea turtles that everyone loves so much and are most likely endangered. The fins are supposed to be the best part and I saw them being shipped down river a few times to some buyer in a turtleless area. Did I eat some? Of course I did. I had no choice actually, it’s not like there are restaurants there in Sandy Bay and one evening the guy who I had paid to feed me (Jankski was his name) brought me some turtle meat with my rice and yucca. It wasn’t the fins, but part of the body, and it tasted like mutton that had been sprayed with Eau d’Turtle. It was tough and stringy and I kept getting a whiff of that turtle smell as I ate – yes you know the smell, that sort of damp musty smell you smelled when you went and saw them at the zoo or aquarium when you were a kid, usually crawling around behind a small glass fence indoors with a little fake pond and some ferns and there’s that musty smell, sort of like a stagnant lake. I always thought that smell was just the smell of the zoo, not the turtle, but let me tell you it’s the turtle, and it isn’t the most appetizing smell, nor is greasy green (yes green! Turtle green!) pieces of un-chewable fat. I did eat most of my turtle, but the fatty bits got fed to the dog that always sat just outside my porch, politely waiting for any scraps I might donate each time I ate. The dogs in Nicaragua are almost all freakishly quiet and obedient.

The turtle was interesting, but after three days in Sandy Bay I felt rather bored. I had a hard time really clicking with any of the locals and not only felt bored, but weird as I spent my days wandering around the village and up and down the litter strewn beach. I was told there would be a boat going north in 3 or 4 days, but that I could head back down to Bluefields the next day. From Bluefields I could get a boat to Corn and 2 days later a boat north to Cabezas. Sounded like a plan. So I took the boat to Bluefields, waited around until 3am for the boat to Corn and when Sunday came, there was no boat. “Not on Sunday,” an impatient woman told me, “Tersday. De boat to Porto on Tersday, come in Wednesday, go Port on Tersday.” Oh man, I guess I should’ve stayed in Sandy Bay.

So, the boat’s here and in a few days I should be heading into Honduras. Then I really do plan to move fast as I can, up to Belize and then to Mexico and then back in the States. I feel a little foolish with how long it’s taken me to get out of Nicaragua. Maybe part of me is avoiding the inevitable return to “reality” (is it really real?) but also I think I have lost any sense of schedule and any worry about being stuck somewhere – I have come to just accept delays day after day as if it were perfectly normal. One could say I am at peace in some Zen way I suppose, but one could also say I have just lost it completely and need some structure in my life. I guess in another month or two I will find out.