::Green Pineapple:: Nicaragua Part II

The Green/White Pineapple--B&B Disaster

I saw a couple real-life ladies carrying baskets on their head. One had a basket of fruit on her head. She had one of those mini-laced aprons that the women at the border had. I wish I could say I got her picture, but I didn't have the chance when we were driving by. Basically, one of the coolest things for me in this trip.

Our "bed and breakfast" was a nightmare. I think for the second time in my life I almost got heat stroke. Oh shoot, I haven't written about the Tarzan swing! That was an experience... I'll write about that after this Nicaragua post... Anyways, the bed and breakfast was not so bueno. The only thing I liked about it was that the cooks made you breakfast: rice with beans, eggs, with fruit and toast. That seems to be the typical Central American breakfast. We also had white (not yellow) pineapple--my parents said they thought it was a green pineapple on the outside, and white on the inside, but we don't know if it was a different kind of pineapple or not because they said it tasted better than the green pineapples we have in Costa Rica. It was more sour, and I REALLY REALLY liked it!

As for the rest of the B&B experience... There were these trashcans in the showers--we never found out why. I was like, ok, that's retarded, and tried to move one and it was HEAVY. It was full of SOMETHING, and I never looked inside because I didn't wanna know what the something was, and my imagination says: dead body, weapons of mass destruction... I will never know now. I leaned on the sink once too--and learned that wasn't such a good plan. It almost gave way and clattered when I stopped leaning on it. Uh... I think you guys may wanna upgrade... it looks the cement from 1900 has worn out a little...

Then... there was the night. In another hotel we stayed in while we were here, I didn't know how to use the air conditioning, and I fell asleep. About two in the morning my dad came to check on us and my back was covered in sweat, my skin was hot, and I was REALLY thirsty. Dad showed me how to use the air conditioning (I would die without my daddy, I need someone to teach me technology or just get a boyfriend or a husband to do it for me or something... or a servant of some sort... that might be good too). So, in the Nicaraguan bed and breakfast, me and Matt got the non-air-conditioned room. I put on both fans, and fell asleep. Matt sleeps like a rock, so he had no trouble, but I woke up at some wee hour of the morning and had to get into my swim shorts and a loose shirt.

It was really hot. And then I heard the fan make a dangerous clanking sound. It'd been clicking the whole time, but it sounded like it was gonna fall on the bed, so I turned it off. Later in the night, while turning around so that different areas of my body could take turns sweating against the blankets--I decided that the fan couldn't hurt us so bad if it fell on us. That'd be better than heat stroke. A while later we noticed that the fan had fallen significantly lower and that it was hanging by its wires and not the cieling. We switched rooms, and slept happily (more or less) the next night.

It was run by these crazy gringos: Donna and Ray. They looked kinda like the actors in "Yours, Mine, and Ours." Ray for some reason looks like a typical seaman--I don't know why I would say that, because I think he's the only person I ever knew with a sailboat--but he's tan with short white hair and dark eyebrows and square-ish features.

Sailboat

Ray, if I remember right, has sailed from Guatemala to Nicaragua. Yie. That's far. Elly, Matt, my dad, and I all went with him and Cissy, a mid-twenties Gringa who lives being a hired help on sailboats until she runs out of money, on his sailboat: the Donna-Lin. We got some good pictures I put up later. Matt and Elly were both given a chance to steer the boat, and I was too, but I was too seasick to focus on anything other than getting back to shore and land and mother earth. (Matt's driving didn't really help, but I didn't say anything about that). I got angry too because Ray was buddying up with Matt right away... and not Elly. I sent Elly back by the wheel so that she would get a turn too. Honestly, she's probably more interested in boats than Matt, and I wonder if Ray would have invited her to steer if I hadn't told her to go sit back there while Matt was driving. Geez. Why do people assume what a girl does and doesn't wanna do? I would've asked for him to let her drive if he hadn't asked her. Maybe he would have asked even if I hadn't told her to go sit there, too, you can't really know.