Arriving in Nicaragua

We arrived in a fit of language and cultural confusion.  Landing in a foreign airport after very little sleep and far too many hours of travel and immediately having to grab your stuff and shove through customs will do that to you.  After filling out the arrival form, handing over our passports for stamps--delivered with an authoritativeness that rivaled anything else we saw our entire trip--and paying the entry fee, we were spat out into the hot, muggy, tropical day and immediately seized upon by many, many cab drivers, all enthusiastically encouraging us to ride with them to wherever our destination may be.  We had arranged a driver beforehand--I feel so posh even saying that, but really it was just a guy with a old, beat-up Honda that we knew wouldn’t steal our camera or drop us on the side of the road far from our apartment--and in this mass of confusion it was such a small, sweet relief to see my name printed on a torn white piece of paper in the hands of a tall, tan, broadly-smiling man.  Nestor didn’t speak any English and we only had our two pocket dictionaries of South American Spanish to guide us, but somehow we managed to keep up a lively conversation the entire 45-minute ride.  He told us about how Masaya, the volcano we had hoped to hike, was off limits because it was currently spewing ash and poisonous gas.  You haven’t lived until you’ve attempted to describe (and understand) volcanic activity in another language.  Nestor told us about the small towns we were passing, the huge, gated factory that makes clothes to be shipped to and sold in America, and about his wife and two little girls.  We told him about los estados unidos, how we were from Pittsburgh (blank stare) and Chicago (much wild gesticulation), and how we wanted to see and do everything we could in the nine days we’d be in Nicaragua.

There are no street signs or traffic lights but still it seemed that most people manage not to crash into each other.  The cars share the road with horse-drawn carts.  Some of the animals were well fed with glossy coats, some so thin their hipbones protruded sharply from their backs.  Ten minutes out from the airport everything came to a screeching halt so a group of gauchos could move their cows from a paddock on one side of the highway to the other.  Young, deeply tanned men on nimble little horses, waving red scraps of fabric to herd this chaotic mass of confused cows across the road and out of street traffic.  We all watched in silence, no one honked or yelled, and when the last of the animals had made it through and the gate was securely latched behind them, vehicles roared to life again and we sped along toward Granada.  Most of the dwellings we passed were pieced together with patches of corrugated tin, old signs, and brightly colored plastic.  There were donkeys and horses grazing near the side of the highway, staked by long ropes to fenceposts or trees.  Many people rode along on old bicycles fitted with heavy-duty mountain bike tires, or walked, balancing large bundles on top of their heads.

Culture shock is a peculiar, vaguely familiar feeling.  You’re tired and confused and trying to adjust, to reach back into the recesses of your mind for a prior experience on which to ground yourself.  As I travel more frequently I find the adjustment period grows shorter each time, but it’s still there, the sense that I’m looking through an old, warped piece of glass at a foreign landscape that’s fuzzy around the edges.  I’ve also learned that slowly but surely, if I resist the urge to classify, control, and will it into being, the landscape always comes sharply into focus.