Blogaragua! (Day Dos)

On Christmas morning, the children excitedly awoke and stumbled out of their beds to the first of many free hotel breakfasts. The waitress (who had appeared fairly normal the previous night) was now made up like a clown in a spooky velvet painting. I half-expected her to reappear from the kitchen juggling our rolls. She'd refill our coffee and then moments later we'd catch her carrying laundry -- she seemed to be in two places at once. In fact, she was two people, sisters, both fans of Tammy Faye. It was like David Lynch had written an episode of The Brady Bunch. One of the ladies asked me and Lauren if we were siblings. While we were amused by their resemblance, the clown twins thought our judeo-faces made us brother and sister. I guess we all look the same to you, huh?! Breakfast was toast and jam and fruit. The pineapple juice (jugo de pina) down there is especially delicious.

Next up, a three-and-a-half hour cab ride to San Juan del Sur in the southwest corner of the country, close to the Costa Rican border. 3.5 hours in a cab costs the same as 20 minutes in LA. As we headed down the grand Central American Highway (2 lanes) we could feel the hotter, dryer north give way to the cooler south, wedged between a huge lake and the Pacific. We introduced ourselves to the driver, who repeated our names as Lauren, Tina, and Yerry. Dina and I quickly resigned ourselves to being known as Tina and Yerry for the remainder of the trip, quite possibly for the rest of our lives.

The road from the highway to the beach lies somewhere between Edward James Olmos and Manuel Noriega on the pockmark scale. These aren't just potholes -- it often seems the entire car could fall in. And while the SUVs are all traversing well-paved American cul-de-sacs, this route is conquered by Korean and Russian subcompacts. It's like an amusement park ride, as the driver swerves violently to avoid the holes while maintaining as much speed as possible. Often, the fastest route is to simply go off the road into a rocky (but holeless) ditch.

Our hotel was nestled in the hills high above the beach town. Piedras y Olas (Rocks & Waves) aka Pelican Eyes is one of the nicer resorts in Nicaragua. Everybody gets their own little bungalow with a terrace and view of the beach and harbor below. Ours was called Jasmin.

We quickly stumbled down into town for lunch. As we ate some fresh fish at a beach shack (I got mine slathered in too-rich red sauce) a man sat nearby swigging from a giant bottle of liquor, a gun nestled cozily between his jeans and genitals. We ate rather quickly. At one point he stood up and it became clear that the gun was simply a buckle for a belt of faux ammunition. Oh, Nicaragua!

While this was a bit scary, it was nothing compared to the beasts at our hotel. Piedras y Olas also serves as an animal hospital, and countless dogs and cats roam its paths. Lauren is not exactly a fan of our furry friends, and we constantly had to shoo away some of the cutest things on Earth as if they were savage predators.

The hotel also has a zoo. When we inquired about the sanctuary at the front desk they shrugged it off -- "if you can really call it a zoo". These people are simply used to having a bunch of monkeys wandering about, including one adorable baby Lauren named Pierre...

When Lauren had failed to kidnap Pierre, we drowned our sorrows with drinks at the hotel restaurant atop the hill. Nicaragua has the best rum in the world (Flor de Cana) for about a dollar a drink -- even better with some of that fresh jugo de pina. I regaled the women with stories of my internet dating conquests, including a girl who claimed to only use jdate to recruit men for a charity named ORT (but who made a dating exception for me). When I couldn't tell them what ORT stood for, a terrific game began... un-acronym the acronym. The winner? Orphans Running Things. Yes, the world will be a better place when the urchins take over.

Our evening activity was a trip to La Flor, a nearby beach where turtles come to lay their eggs. We piled into a van with a couple and their two young kids. "Oh good," we thought, "children." And these kids were impressive. Inquisitive. Like the Jerry Maguire kid on crack. The parents were giving them a worldly education. Stamp collections for their birthdays. Christmas trips to Vietnam and Nicaragua. "Can't we just stay home next year?" one of them asked. After that comment they were forever to be known as "home school". Mom asked us how long we'd been out of college. "Eight years?!" home school junior gasped. "That's almost my life!"

And these were the good kids. Upon our arrival at the dark science station at La Flor we met the remainder of our tour, the Blonde Family, whose toddler twins, Mimi & Juju, had clearly left their Ritalin in Minnesota.

We and the wonder twins wobbled up the porch steps to find a bunch of armed militiamen nodding in hammocks. You see, the turtle eggs are a delicacy in Nicaragua. And poachers can make a good living selling them. So the army guards the endangered little guys. But they had no way to stop Mimi & Juju.

Our guide, Berman (yes, Berman), showed us a nest of tiny turtles that had hatched earlier today. The shell-dwellers are meant to hatch in the dark, when they have a better chance of avoiding predators en route to the ocean and freedom. So Berman saved this day-hatched nest in what looked like a pasta colander. It was our job to release them on the beach.

As we tiptoed down a darkened path, using little flashlights but careful not to use so much light as to scare the turtles, Berman stopped us to grab a scorpion and smash the stinger off its tail a few inches from some giggling kids in diapers. A family vacation!

Reaching the eerily moonlit shore, we released the little turtlitos and watched as they struggled their way towards the Pacific. Mimi was kind enough to dig little holes in the sand which prevented them from reaching their goal. The parents were less than responsive. Earlier in the evening I would have preferred to stay at the hotel and drink some more of that rum. Now I was an angry environmentalist, in love with these tiny creatures. I wanted to smack that little kid, maybe find another scorpion. A few of our green friends managed to avoid Mimi and make it to the agua (one in two-thousand actually survive). But this was just the beginning.

Berman, in the darkness, managed to hunt down a series of nests just as they were hatching. One was a healthy nest. And it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. One head popped up through the sand. Then another. And another. In the next five minutes, a hundred little turtles had arrived, clamoring atop one another, scrambling for some sand and a possible stumble to the Pacific. It was beautiful. It felt like something you weren't supposed to see. I loved it.

Back at the guard post, we collapsed onto a bench. The militia's tiny TV was playing MTV Dos, showing videos from the early '80s. After a transformative experience we sang along badly to Bonnie Tyler and Juice Newton as a couple befuddled men with M16s looked on.

Just then, Berman arrived with great news -- a mama turtle was on her way up the beach to lay eggs. Tina and I had visions of Egyptian cotton dancing in our heads, but we stumbled back down the beach. And it was worth it. We saw the giant turtle -- what one of the two thousand little ones we'd seen would grow up to be -- as she dug a hole with her flippers, laid her eggs, and covered them carefully, packing the ground to protect her kids, all the while undistracted by Mimi & Juju and the flashbulbs as she entered a "trance-like-state" and took care of instinctual business.

Home school fell blessedly asleep on the ride home. We got dinner in town. Somehow my quesadilla managed to have the same red sauce from lunch. Sigh. Our first attempt at Nicaraguan nightlife took us to the nearby Casa Iguana. It was not much different from Island Park, only the frat-boy types had better tans. A drunk girl fell off a stool. That was our sign to go.

We climbed the hill to our hotel, narrowly avoided an incredibly cute cat, and tumbled into bed.