The best surf is not in San Juan Del Sur.
To reach any one of the best surfing spots north and south of SJDS you have to take a shuttle.
For modest dollars, you load into trucks, jeeps, vans, and are driven through back country, down winding dirt paths in four wheel drive, and eventually stop at a beach with only a few conveniences.
The surf in Nicaragua has a good reputation and, on this week, the waves are anywhere from two to five feet. Not being a surfer, the waves don’t seem like much, but for Central America, on the Pacific coast, they aren’t bad, according to insiders riding in the back of this open truck with their surfboards close at hand.
Much of Nicaragua is undeveloped countryside and many citizens live at the end of dirt roads or no roads, pulling water from rivers or wells, transporting with horse drawn carts, watching television courtesy of electricity brought by the government. There is an encroachment on the land by housing developments geared to Norte Americanos and Europeans and signs on barbed wire fences sell fincas that have been in someone’s family for generations.
Surfers roam the world looking for good waves, and, today, they are talking excitedly while we bounce on the wooden benches in the back bed of the old military truck that used to transport revolutionaries..
Riding the waves will be an all day affair.
Baseball is played much the same everywhere it is played.
The rules are the same. The setup of the bases and equipment is much the same. The length of the game can extend in close games, be called off because of weather, or the daylight left in the empty lot or street where kids emulate their heroes.
Some games are played in massive stadiums with thousands of spectators, night lights, press boxes and entertainment. Other games are played on simple fields like this with chain link fences keeping spectators off the field and concession stands selling soft drinks and plantain chips.
This umpire calls the game as he sees it and there is no room for protest, no instant replay, no second guessing.
No one cares about skin color or political philosophies.
What counts on this field, is how well you hit the ball, catch the ball, throw the ball, help your team win the game.
When growing up, baseball was the national sport of the United States.
We had the New York Yankees, a multi World Series winning team with a barn full of horses like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Coach Casey Stengel and many others.
One of the best players on the Pittsburg pirates was Roberto Clemente, an outfielder who was not only a great baseball player, but a great man.. When he was killed in a plane crash, taking food and supplies back to his ravaged Managua after an earthquake, it didn’t register because we didn’t know much about Nicaragua. People traveled less then and we didn’t have internet to bring the world immediately to us.
Baseball doesn’t take a lot of equipment or a lot of space. Most kids can catch a ball and swing a bat, and parents support their kids. On Saturday, Nino leagues start at the Lion’s Park at one end of Calle Calzada, around eight thirty in the morning,
Today, I watch the Sharks play the Academy and the Clementes play the Dissur team.
The game moves in slow motion because it takes longer for kids to throw from first to third, chase down balls in the weeds at the outfield’s edge, try to move under a foul tipped ball in the batter’s cage.
Some of the kid’s scowl at their team mates at a bad play, others kick their helmet on the grass after a strikeout.
One of these players will make it to the major’s, just like Roberto.
In the Nino League, the team that makes the fewest fielding errors, usually wins.
The Vista Mombacho Apartments are in a residential neighborhood in Granada. From the outside, their appearance is unspectacular, but, inside, the architecture, furnishings and decorations are nicely done.
This pool courtyard is shaded and protected on one side by a tall blue wall covered by green ivy and, on the other side, massive walls of the apartment complex. There are no ” Swim at your own Risk ” signs and, as of yet, I have been the only guest using the pool. Sheets and towels drying on an old fashioned clothes line say that someone else is staying here and we are both lost in the 1950’s.
The water is warm with no need for a heater and the pool slopes from three feet in the shallow to seven feet in the deep. It needs a coat of baby blue paint.
In Granada, old is not ashamed.
There is much about ancient history that reminds me of our times as I float on my back in the water. stretch out my arms and legs, fill my lungs with air till I become a balloon, and become a target for passing birds.
Floating in the pool, under clouds, I am only different from ancient man in the things I have been forced to learn that he didn’t even know about.
We return our golf cart.
The cart jockey is a tiny man wearing shorts, tennis shoes with big socks, a blue faded ball cap. There are four carts ahead of ours that he has to clean, toss trash, wipe down seats, check gas, and inspect. We use golf carts because they speed up our play and that, in theory, helps us score better.
At my feet is a small key with a number 3 on it. Barely visible, I pick it up, bend it, watch it spring back to its original position. It isn’t a real golf cart key because they are metal and a different shape.
I ask the little Irishman with blond hair pushing out from under the sides of his ball cap what my found key goes to?
He looks a moment while he wipes down a cart seat.
” That’s the key to the box of Forgotten Dreams. ”
There are many keys in this world. Keys to lock boxes, keys to offices and homes, keys to cars, keys to your heart.
All the dreams in the world aren’t much good if you forget where you put them.
As we head back to the car, I hear him whistling ” Danny Boy. ”
I believe he has a box full of dreams under his bed that he opens frequently.
” Some days you do better in the boat and some days better on the beach, ” the fisherman in coveralls tells us as he opens his cooler and shows us his Pompanos and Whiteys, game fish in this part of the Gulf of Mexico.
The bottom of his cooler has five or six small fish and a small plastic container filled with fresh cut shrimp that baits his hooks.
He and his wife have been here since before sunset.
When surf fishing, you cast your weighted and baited hooks out as far as you can, plant the handle of your pole into the sand and watch till its tip starts to bend like a scoliosis patient. When you see that peculiar bend, you reach for your pole, set your hook, and fight your catch out of the sea.
This fishing spot is towards the north end of South Padre, past tall condos and hotels. The angler’s big white pickup is pulled off the beach thoroughfare made by tire tracks. Its tailgate is down and a tackle box is close at hand.
” How much is a daily license? ”
” Fifteen bucks…. ”
” What’s the limit? ”
” No limit…. ”
We don’t have fishing poles but next time they will be stowed in RV cargo holds with golf clubs, lawn chairs, firewood, and tarps.
Next year, seeing how things are going, we will probably have to have a license to pick up shells. For governments, every day is tax day. I’m having trouble this morning seeing why we need a license to fish in the first place? Last time I looked, the government didn’t stock the ocean. we already paid a fee to drive onto this county property and are renting rv spots for our rigs?
We are, bottom line, squatters on this planet.
If we aren’t fishing, we are biting, and there are costs to do everything, or nothing.
Prospecting is in your blood, or it isn’t.
On a weekday, at the beach, Neal prospects, Joan knits, Scott pulls his hat down and lays back against a dune and watches kite surfers move across the water. The wind is blowing, but it is better here than in a frigid north where a cold front moves down and throws a wet blanket over the Northeast, Midwest, and South.
At the tip of Texas, almost as far south as Florida, we are not immune from restless weather. Palm trees rustle, clouds hang like a boxer’s black eye, fog lounges on street corners like a thug.
Prospecting takes patience.
It isn’t long till our prospector comes back with his find.
He pulls out scrap, beer cans, foil, pop tops and wire. Then, out of his front shirt pocket, he brings the coup de gras – a corroded copper penny.
You know there are gold doubloons and pieces of eight not far from where this penny was found. Newspaper reports of gold doubloons found by farmers from Ohio walking on the beach surface every so many years.
Hope supported by facts is more than enough reason to prospect here.
This Padre Island surf isn’t the best but the wind here is usually strong and steady.
Kite surfers combine kites and surfboards and hitch themselves to the wind for free rides, skimming the top of the surf like stones thrown across the top of a lake’s surface.
Wearing wet suits, their rides today last as long as this wind lasts, and, in South Padre Island, the wind is no hundred pound weakling.
An older surfer with a red kite laments that there ” isn’t enough wind ” as he holds a finger up to test which direction it is coming into the beach.
Regardless of misgivings , he still gets his kite aloft, follows it into the surf, lays back, and lets his kite pull him upright. It appears, as I watch him, that he is moving quick, parallel to the beach, his kite blasted by the breezes
Letting nature pull you for a free ride is hard to beat.
Sharing the water with others who love what you love is also fun. There are several of these kite surfers out there, taking care not to run into each other.
Last time I looked, we live and play in a paradise.
People work out.
Some walk, some run, some drink beer, some play golf. Others go to the weight room or swim. Old men like to play softball under lights at night and dancing is loved by couples who wouldn’t put on a pair of running shorts but will squeeze their body into nice clothes and dance to a big band sound from the forties.
This morning fitness geeks climb stairs from the river to Calle Larga, stop at the top, look down, then carry the distributed weight down the same steps they just ascended.
I watch them pass me going up, as I go down.
For a moment, I want to join , but only for a moment.
This is a three man exercise.
The fourth man on the stairs has his own load to carry and his burden is more about survival than exercise.
After people watching, bird watching is one of the world’s favorite pastimes. Birdwatchers travel the globe, stand in swamps, dress in camouflage, take pictures and write bird sightings in little books, and swear there is nothing better.
In this city the most common birds are pigeons.
These survivors can be seen on top of statues, on ledges of buildings, waddling on paths in parks, holding to high voltage electric lines without a blink, and staying close but not too close to the humans who feed them, chase them, photograph them, clean up after them.
This morning, in San Sebastian Park, a group flocks at my feet.They are of the same family but their parents dressed them differently. Their range of color is from all white to all black with some shades of brown sprinkled like cinnamon on oatmeal. They show genetics at work and would make Charles Darwin dance a jig.
I don’t write morning sightings in a little book, but I take photos.
Their randomness this morning is interesting in the same way as pool balls on an unused table with a game left unfinished.
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