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Nicaragua

8 Julio 2003
We just arrived on Little Corn Island and we’re staying at a place called Casa Iguana. I am immediately in love with this place. It seems to be exactly what I was looking for. We’ve only been here a few hours and I’m feeling like I could stay a whole month. The best word to describe it is TREASURE. Or maybe, rather, Fantasy Island. I love this cabin with its comfy sofa and fluffy bed and patio that looks out to the turquoise/navy/aqua blue ocean. I love the lodge where you can drink tea/coffee, read and listen to chilled out jazz. Again, a TREASURE. It’s such a cliche, I know, and a horrible way for a writer to describe something, but F it - I’m inspired, I feel happy, I feel like I can rest here for a while.

Snap, crackle pop, the leaves of the palm trees go when raindrops hydrate with each drop blowing in the breeze in the afternoon tehy whisper and twitter sweet nothings and a “Hello, welcome to Casa Iguana where safety doesn’t hide in a holster beneath a blazer or luxury doesn’t mean room service and a concrete swimming pool.”

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What to do during San Juan del Sur’s daily power outages

I was sitting on the toilet. And then the most horrible of horror nightmares occurred…

The power went out. I wouldn’t be able to flush. Argh! So, I filled a bucket of water and tried to manually flush. No luck. My boyfriend was out, but the youngest son (appropriately named “Lastman”) of the family we were staying with was home. He wasn’t that young. Just a few years younger than myself. And if I didn’t have my boyfriend with me, I am sure he would have been trying to holla.

In my mocho Spanish, I told him I couldn’t flush the toilet. The nastiest of smirks stretched his face from ear-to-ear, and I thought I would die of embarrassment.

He took care of the problem, and I stayed in my room the rest of the day reading about PHP programming and Stephen King’s evil car, “Christine.”

The whole experience of the power going out seemed like a good experience for an American kid who grew up in the suburbs, where the lights always turned on at my every command.