Got there not really knowing what to expect but I was thinking of lush jungles, tropical beaches and cool shit. I was pretty nervous when I landed, actually I was pretty riddled with anxiety because I was landing late at night and didn't really have anything planned out and I heard Managua was a really dangerous city. During that time ebola was a major crises and the Nicaraguans weren't messing around. Everyone getting off the plane was screened for fevers and I had to fill out a form asking if I've recently or am currently experiencing any symptoms related to ebola. Everyone who worked at the airport was wearing surgical masks and once an alarm even went off and workers all suited up were literally running to quarantine someone who I'm guessing had a fever.
I got out of the airport and was hit by a wall of dense, humid air and I smelled a familiar smell in the air. That smell of a developing country. It smelled like a combination of car exhaust, burning trash and grilled meat. Of course I was swarmed with taxi drivers overwhelming me asking if I needed a ride. From previous experiences in places like this, I of course dodged them all and found some taxi on the side of the road to hopefully get a good price. The dude drove me to my hostel using all these backroads and alyways and all I could think of is when I got robbed from a similar taxi ride in East Africa. I made it to my hostel which was kind of on the outskirts of town and got out and paid the agreed amount and everything was cool. There were no street lights around, and a lot of gangster looking people just watching me as I walked a block down the road to the hostel.
I met the hostel dude, he was cool but accused me of not caring about the culture and only being there to get drunk and fuck the locals. He offered to walk me down the street to where I could get a cheeseburger, but told me to only bring the money that I needed for food and nothing else, in case we get robbed. I ordered a burger from this little cart, and actually it was pretty good. I hadn't got my recommended vaccinations before I left so I was somewhat risking getting sick. I made a point before I left to only eat food that was hot enough or fresh enough to make sure I don't get sick. In Nicaragua you can get hep A or typhoid simply by drinking the tap water, not to mention a lot of other nasty sicknesses that exist in that god forsaken country if you're not careful about what you eat or drink. This cheeseburger was my first meal there and I already was violating that rule that I had set out, but I didn't want to have to inconvenience myself all the time so I was just like "fuck it" and ate it.
The next morning I found a bus to Leon. I stayed at a well known party hostel and drank mojitos all night and was a little overwhelmed by the douchy American and Australian surfers. They like to keep to themselves and seem to think everyone who doesn't surf is someone not worth talking to. Still though, there were a lot of cool people there to hang out with.
The next day, there was a party at the beach and a bunch of people from the hostel got in the back of a pickup truck and they drove us all to the beach and on the way I saw just how fucked up Nicaragua is. People just throw their trash on the ground, not a care in the world. People cook their food over piles of burning trash. Little kids run around the streets huffing glue, and I remember walking down a street filled with trash and a bunch of people were digging through it looking for food. The Australians didn't seem to have a problem with this, in fact they liked wearing bright colored clothes, getting drunk and spending their money like they're all the kings of the world because everything is so fucking cheap there.
At the party I wasn't feeling too hot. I felt really out of place because this was one of the most shallow, stuck up environments I've ever been in and I felt like I was an outcast, like I was in High School again. We drove back and the next morning at 5am I started throwing up violently. In Nicargua you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet so everyone throws their used toilet paper in the trash can next to the toilets. I was basically peeing out my ass while having a trash can full of used toilet paper in my face while I was throwing up into it. In between puking and severe diarrhea sessions I was shivering on a hammock in intensely hot humid weather while having douchey Australians say things like "Ah patty too hard last night, mite??"
This lasted all day until the hostel owner informed me that people were starting to get freaked out by my illness and I'm not longer allowed to be there,but he helped get me to a hospital. I went into the hospital, which was overfilled and the main guy who spoke a little english was able to help me, he did a few tests and got me into a bed and showed me some graph and said I was really sick and I need to stay the night. They gave me who knows what in an IV and seven bags of water. He wanted a poop sample so I went diarrhea into a cup for him, and of course there was no toilet paper or soap or hand sanitizer to help me out.
The IV stuff helped me out and the next day I was feeling pretty weathered but not really sick anymore, and I was taking a bunch of mystery pills for the next two weeks and still peeing out my ass for pretty much a month afterward. I spent the rest of my trip cooking the fuck out of whatever I ate, dealing with hippy and surfer douchebags from Australia and America, heat, humidity, gangs of kids harassing me, crowded buses, people trying to rip me off, prostitutes trying to grab my junk, mosquitoes, rotting animals on the side of the road, burning trash everywhere, sketchy people eyeing me on the street, taking an hour to buy a loaf of bread, constant harassment, chaos, and general third world country shit. I had a few good moments out of it, but honestly if you were to buy me a round trip plane ticket I'd probably turn it down. That's Nicaragua, for ya.
THE END
