“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
-T.S. Eliot
So there I was, aching and exhausted, leaning out over a one inch porch into the city of Managua, rum in one hand, lighter in the other, a cigarette dangling through a shocked bristle of mustache, foot infected, knife in pocket, aware that in a couple of hours I would have to climb down a ladder I’d made of para-cord and jump a barbed wire fence, run a couple of blocks, and hail a cab before I was stabbed by the homeless man who’d been threatening my life for the last few hours. I couldn't help but smile, thinking back at what had brought me here.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present:
I’d lost my mind. It was just gone. Not torn asunder due to some incredibly tragic event, but from the dull ache that comes from a floundering, grey monotony that speaks death to struggling artists. This drudgery had slowly filled my soul, the wanderlust festering like passive aggression, leaving me nervous, strangely upset, and impotent for solutions.
I’d stopped exercising. Stopped eating well. Stopped caring about getting "Once a Marine" published. Stopped writing in general, to be honest. I’d just stopped.
These are difficult times, but when you realize you’re steeped in them, it’s your responsibility, both to you and those that you love, to dig your way out of this quagmire. Right?!
Get out! Leave!! Travel!!!
But that takes money. I’m a freelance writer. I barely get to feed my dog. Travel was out of the question. But I could plan, y’know, in case I stumble upon a huge bag of money.
Then my grandmother died.
My grandmother was a handful. I’ll leave it at that. But when she passed on, I was given a sum of money, though, given that size is relative, I won’t go into further detail about the amount, suffice it to say that I was afforded a chance to pay off some debt with just enough left over to take a very short, expensive trip or one long, cheap one. To me, there’s no question.
I had originally wanted to take another walk, this time through Machu Picchu, where the ruins of the Incans mock us with their simplicity through wisps of foliage so verdant as to inspire Che Guevara to comment “How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?”
Tie me off, man. Tie me off.
Plus, like so many war veterans, I missed being in a 3rd world country. There’s a precious, gritty purity that comes from the pressure to ensure your own safety. The thrill of not knowing what the next day would bring, where you’d stay, or what you’d eat, filled me with a sense of adventure in its most distilled form.
That’s where life is, after all. In the stories.
And the icing on the cake was that it was right next to a volcano. Exactly what I was looking for.
But the trails of Machu Picchu had been so worn and desecrated by tourists that there was now a limit to the traffic and that limit had been reached.
Sonofabitch.
Still, adapt and overcome, so I kept looking, eventually settling on a land steeped with rich history, slowly scrambling out of a state of violence into a viable, economically and culturally sound member of a constantly changing globalized world. And, of course, the whole volcano thing. I had to take that walk again, to break the tedium of normalcy and reinvigorate a love of life chipped away by a lack of struggle. And what’s more, I had to face the challenge of facing myself, alone in a 3rd world country.
So I bought a ticket to Nicaragua.
And then started preparing.
Con’t. in Nicaragua: A Knuckle Dragger’s Guide Part 2