Romanticism vs. Honesty, one month in Nicaragua

"And I kept saying it over to myself, about how I'm going to be free, and then I try to think what's going to be like and all I can see is people. They push me this way, then they push me that- and nothing pleases 'em, and they get madder and madder, on account of nothing makes 'em happy. And they holler at me on account of I ain't made 'em happy, and we all push and pull some more."

- Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

It's been already a month since we arrived in Nicaragua.

Time has passed very fast and that last dark night in the back of a pick-up, admiring the most beautiful electric storm in the sky of Honduras, racing towards the border with Nicaragua and feeling like everything was so perfect, seems to be in a very remote past.

The morning before entering Nicaragua, Ben, Jenny and I woke up in the fire station of Choluteca and I went  out to see the firemen (and one fire woman) raising the flag of Honduras to celebrate the beginning of the patriotic holidays.

We then walked to the Panamerican highway and waited for a ride in front of a food stand, and the women there observed us with curiosity. Most of them were friendly, some were a little hostile.

"You know you're never gonna get a ride here, right?" one of them asked me in Spanish.

"Don't worry about it, we are patient," was my answer.

The traffic was slow and it started to feel like we were indeed never going to find a ride, but when we were getting ready to walk to the next gas station a car stopped and while we rushed to get in (the driver was in a terrible rush) the woman from before looked at me and said, "That's how unfair life is. You come here and people help you out. And when we go to your countries, we are treated like dogs."

Not knowing what to answer, I smiled apologetically and rushed out, thinking about her words.

I then stared to think a lot about romanticism. I feel a little guilty about writing stories in an epic tone and making videos that make everything look like so much fun and adventure.

I recently read a quote that said, "Traveling is glamorous just in retrospect," and I couldn't agree more.

Sunburned, sad, hungry, dirty, thirsty and disenchanted by our progress, we arrived to the border of Nicaragua and Honduras.

The line was long and we found out we had to pay 12 dollars to enter Nicaragua. Borders are so dumb.

We got out of the immigration office and tried to find a little bit of shade, but we had no luck and we again waited on the sun. Very few cars were passing. I had lost my hat and thanks to Ben's phone we realized we had entered through the wrong border.

Finally, a truck driver picked us up and slowly, slowly, slowly made his way across Nicaragua towards the border with Costa Rica.

He dropped us up in Nandaime and we were able to arrive to the tree house hostel where my friend Courtlen works right before sunset.

And I kept thinking and hoping that once we arrived there everything would feel right. We would be safe and happy and comfortable... Always placing happiness somewhere else.
Ben was exhausted. Jenny was worried about renewing her visa. And I just kept thinking again and again... What's the different between optimism and Romanticism? Pessimism and honesty?

We stayed at the treehouse for a couple of nights and I decided to go to the beach. Ben and Jenny had their own plans, but at the end for some reason the three of us ended up once again standing on the side of the road with our thumbs out until we got a ride from a father and a son who took us all the way to Popoyo beach, a quiet and peaceful piece of sand, where we camped under an abandoned palm roof.

There is always something very comforting about the Pacific Ocean with its wide waves, its salt, its vastness. I used to have a lot of emotional resentments towards the ocean, but this year has changed that and I can now enjoy jumping waves again, like when I was a child. A mouthful of salt water and...
At night, we seated the tarp on the sand and laid there, watching the stars. And I felt like that moment belonged to us.

Ben was getting sick. He started to tell me he had been thinking about going back home. "This place is so beautiful and for some reason I can't enjoy it."
I asked him what he expected of this Latin American trip. He wished Spanish could be easier and he wished he had found more people to connect to and... I don't know what else.
I remember the feeling of embarrassment and sadness when I was in college and I had so many people coming down to Mexico with me for shoots or summer trips and they would have big expectations for the country that were crashed by the harsh reality of things. And I also thought of how happy I felt when Jenny smiled at the wind when traveling in the South of Mexico, enjoying the moment so much and making me realize the unnoticed beauty that I had been surrounded of my whole life. I now realize how this feelings are just attachments to MY country, MY culture, MY Latin America. Ego, ego, ego. Fiction, fiction, fiction.

Jenny also had some unmet expectations about this trip. She had hoped it would be only the two of us and all the romanticized memories trapped in our hitchhiking video would repeat each other over and over again.

And I wanted to make them happy. I wanted to make everyone happy. I kept on feeling guilty and incapable and failed when I saw them both upset while the most beautiful sunset was gifted to us. And then again, placing happiness somewhere else, I hoped that once we went to Vipassana, everything would feel right and safe and perfect. Just wait, just wait. Everything will feel better.

There was an earthquake in the beach one morning and we felt it there, in the sand, and I was in awe because this was the first time I experienced this expression of the land without fear. There was nothing around that could fall on us. The Earth was just yawning, stretching, and we were feeling her. Later we heard there was a tsunami alert and we packed our stuff and Courtlen came meet us. No tsunami came and that night the four us camped there, the last night we spent together.

Next morning, Courtlen went back to the treehouse and Ben and I got into an argument with Jenny and we decided it the best thing was to split up for a while. I constantly felt like I had gotten so good at being by myself that I just didn't know how to be with people anymore.

Ben and I headed out to Ometepe, and I couldn't get Jenny out of my mind... Missing her and feeling like I had failed as a friend.
We spent a night in Rivas, at the firemen station, hanging out with an 18 year old firemen who had tons of stories, and next morning headed to Moyogalpa, on the island, to try to find a the Lnuk, who Benjamin Lesage had told me a lot about.

We arrived to their hostel exhausted and confused, and they received us warmly. While we helped them transplant some trees and bushes, Juana explained us the use of the many medicinal plants we were carrying.
Usagui showed us a plant called chaya, which grows wild and can be eaten when cooked on an open pan. It's a delicious green that made me feel stronger and healthier. We also tried ojoche, a seed which can also be foraged wildly and which is believed to had been one of the most important food sources for the ancient Mayan civilizations.

So much to learn! To absorb! To do! When I told Juana and Usagui about going to a meditation course, they told me they meditated with their hands, because to keep their lifestyle close to the Earth and nature, there was always a lot of work to do. So that's what I did for the time I was there, I meditated with my hands. Juicing limes, cleaning around, organizing second hand clothes, moving boxes and mostly sharing and learning from these wonderful people. Their traditions and ideas felt so enriching and so beautiful, and I felt very excited to be there.

But I kept worrying about Ben... He at that point had a fever, and his mind was agitated and disoriented. I went with him to the hospital to see if he could get a dengue test, but they couldn't do the test until the 5th day of fever and by that time we would already be at Vipassana. So he rested and drank a lot of water and we just kept waiting for time to heal...

Our days in Ometepe ended before I felt ready to leave, but I was excited because I kept hoping Vipassana would set everything right, without realizing I had been hoping always for the next moment to be the right moment.
We spent one night in Granada with the rest of the Lnuks. We finally met Indio Viejo and enjoyed a wonderful vegan meal with them. I felt home, I felt I kept on finding family in this trip, but I didn't really stayed long enough to find see the full picture, so I kept on trying to remind myself not to romanticize these things.
I thought a lot about Benjamin Lesage and how much I had learn from him in the past. When Memphis Ben talked about wanting to be comfortable and feel safe, I remembered and shared with him what Benjamin had told me when I started traveling: "This is the reality that most people of the world have to face: being hungry and thirsty and tried." We are so privileged... and even more privileged to get to understand in such a real way the contrasts of our crazy society. I realized it's been already one year since I started traveling.

The morning of the 12th received us in Granada and finally, finally, I thought, everyone would feel alright and we would find what we were looking for.

We met up with Courtlen and unexpectedly also with Jenny, and after breakfast Chad, the owner of the treehouse hostel, dropped us of on the road, a few kilometers away from the course site.

I found a big surprise when we arrived at the course site. All the servers had dropped out last minute, so I was asked to serve the course along with two Spanish girls and two coordinators, being told that this was a wonderful opportunity to grow in Dhamma. We were so few people serving such a big course! And although I really wanted to just sit and take the course, I felt like I had been doing a lot of taking in the last few months, and not enough giving. So even though I didn't feel ready, I spent those ten days working at the course, and re-learning how to give and love without expecting anything in return.

It was hard to see it when I was there, but now that an entire week has passed since we finished the course, two main things keep palpitating with my every breathe.
The first one has to do with ego. I realized all my worrying about others had only to do with my need to feel useful. One of the night discourses speaks about this. I was hurt about Ben not being happy in Latin America because I kept thinking of him as MY friend, in MY land. And those things are both fictional, because no one belongs to anyone and the land also cannot belong to anyone. The land exists, and people exist, and we are all just trying to find our ways... Even MY truths, MY words, which I write right now are nothing but vague ideas that will change and change and change. I realize I want to grow on the path of humbleness, and do realize I still have a lot of work to do on that.

The second thing I started to understand has to do with the questions I kept asking myself about Romanticism. When I couldn't meditate, I would start day-dreaming. I would think that once I got out of the course I would go here and there and travel and explore and meet and walk and I kept on doing the same thing over and over, which was just placing happiness in some other moment. How happy was I when I lived in New York! Or that one night riding on the back of a pick-up at night! And yeah, those moments were happy, but they were also gone. The final day, when everyone could speak, I talked to Jordan, from the States, a very interesting guy who had done Vipassana a bunch of times in the past. When I told him about taking refuge in day-dreaming, he said to me "Yeah, but if you want to be awake, it's no time for dreaming."
I had always seen it as such a harmless activity... and finally I realized I was missing the beauty of so many things, because even when I had been so happy in the past, there would always be a thought in the back of my mind "How beautiful is this! If only my mom were here and I could share it with her!" Things like that. Never satisfied. That guy said something else that stuck strongly with me... "each moment holds the entire potential of making you as happy as you can be, if only you embrace it fully." Something like that...

Ben escaped the course on the third day and by the time we finished he was already back on the States. I hadn't really heard from him. I was a little sad about not being able to talk to him or say goodbye, but now I feel like it's not worth to be sad about things like that, because what I have now is the beautiful opportunity to once again travel alone. I'm really happy about that. And he is doing what he needs to do and living what he needs to live. Jenny went North with Jordan, and I will probably see them again before the world ends. I think many paths will come together again at Rainbow Gathering towards the end of the year.

I feel stronger and infinitely inspired now. I have been meditating every day and practicing, practicing, practicing to savor every second for what it is, without expecting it to be something that it's not.