The Conscious Traveler: Nicaragua
The longest amount of time I have spent and the longest amount of time I would want to spend continuing this global, years-long trip was spent in Nicaragua. Mostly the time was spent on a little island consisting of two volcanoes called Ometepe. Here is where I struggled to continue my journey. I came to the realization and terms with becoming something I have been against for all this time, a neo colonist. On a positive note this is also the place where I built some of my strongest friendships while traveling, both due to the time I spent there but also in part due to how vulnerable I was while there.
Miraflor
Before I get into my time in Ometepe I first must tell you about my time in Miraflor. I came to the conclusion that I would go there around the end of my stay in El Salvador. I had never heard of the place and I had a feeling many travelers would not go there because it was off of the beaten path of the travelers trail. It also helped that the place was a hundred dollars a month. Miraflor sits in the mountains of Estelli state where it looks as if you have been teleported to the forests of a mystical novel. Wild horses and bulls frolic through the land and waterfalls hide behind hills of green grass.
I stayed there for about two months helping paint the property of where I was staying in exchange for a free month and planning the next leg of my adventure, but I was almost completely broke at this time and little did I know my next step outside of Nicaragua wouldn’t happen for almost a year later. While I was there 2 friends from Australia I had known from Guatemala miraculously had showed up at the Finca I was staying at after me not seeing another traveler since arriving. We hung out for the few days that they were there and as they left I went back to the usual solitude I was in before. It was good to be around all of that nature for my dog Okami, he had gotten into the problem of breaking his nails constantly and the last time he had done it was when we were in El Salvador so he needed a nice place to rest up and heal.
Towards the tail end of my stay a friend of my Australian friends came to the Finca because she had heard how amazing Estelli was. Robin was the first English speaker I had seen in a while and I was still relatively new to speaking Spanish at this point so I was not capable of holding a conversation in any way, although I had the confidence of Peggy Hill to try. I talked her ear off for her entire stay. After she left, my time in Miraflor was coming to an end. She gave me a call from an Island in the middle of Nicaragua where she invited me out. I took my last few dollars and my dog and went out not knowing what the next eight months would have in store for me.
Ometepe
Ometepe is a much more touristy destination than where I was before. The population is flooded with travelers mostly made up of Europeans, a large expat community, mostly made up of Canadians and a class of business owners mostly made up of Israelis and some Europeans. After a few days there, Robin left to go to Colombia. I was left at a place I would call home to the foreseeable future, Finca Magdalena. I had no Idea when I would have a large income to start traveling again and for now I made a deal with manager to pay 3 dollars a day to live there, all to be paid before leaving.
Coaching Muay Thai
The first thing I had to do was look for a way to make money. I saw in passing that there was a gym with mats in it and a heavy bag. The first chance I had, I went to the owner of the gym and asked if it was alright if I can teach Muay Thai here to the travelers and expat community while also teaching the locals for free. I would give him a cut of the profits I made and clean up the gym in return. He agreed and I was off to teaching. I coached everyday to the locals and when the expats and tourists would show up I would teach them too. I became a coach that a lot of the local kids and young adults looked up to. The whole town of Balgue knew who I was by the end of my time there. There are many things that happened during my time as a coach there before it was abruptly ended by one of the colonizing expats. That is a story I plan to take a deep dive into later on in my writings.
Working at Finca Magdalena
When my time as a coach ended I was still stuck and I still needed to find a source of income to get me by. I had been at Finca Magdalena for three month at this time and had gotten to know the staff and they offered me a chance to be a guide around the coffee farm and they taught me about the ancient carvings ,petroglyphs, of the indigenous people who originally inhabited the island. I was able to set my own prices and keep what ever I made. My first dream job as a child was to be a historian and I learned a lot about native cultures here in the Americas through out my time in Alaska the Caribbean and north and Central America.
One day a woman from Texas came by the Finca looking to hike the volcano the next morning. She looked at me and said “you’re bringing me up” and I thought to myself that I have never been one to try and conquer feats of nature like most of the travelers passing through this finca, but I was there for so long why not go up and see what it is like. I had no proper shoes, only a pair of fake crocs that I had to wear because no shoes had fit me on the island, but I made do. I made a lot of memories on that volcan Maderas. A good friend of mine, Claire, a woman in her mid forties and in better shape than practically anyone I have met before inspired me once on Maderas. One day while hanging out at the natural pool with another friend, Clair ascended and decended the volcano in four and a half hours. When me and the girl I was at the pool with ,Bara, came back we could not wrap our heads around the fact that she was able to do the hike that on average takes six to eight hours to do in four and a half. It lit a fire under my ass. I told the other guides that a quicker time is possible and that bringing up other people is what slows our times down. So the next day with nothing better to do or look forward to in the foreseeable future, in my fake crocs with a hole in the bottom of one of the feet made my way up and back down the volcano in four hours definitely hitting some sort of record amongst the other guides. From there I was bringing more and more people up and down the volcano. It became second nature and I learned all the ins and outs of the ascent which came in handy while bringing up a Frenchmen who while in the crater of the volcano fell into qucksand. I had to help him out and while helping him got stuck myself slowly sinking into the fertile soil surrounding the lake atop of the volcano, but because of my previous experience with the soil around the lake I new how to dig myself out of the quicksand and get us both out of there.
Expats and Neo Colonization
The expat community in Ometepe is adjacent to the expat community in Belize the only difference is in Belize the communities are mostly made up of Americans and in Ometepe it was mostly made up of Canadians. You start to realize Colonization with a capital C is the perfect word to use too. People from a certain country go in droves to a different country to specifically set up communities of their past nation in said country. Now people may equate this to migrants or immigrants moving to the U.S. or Europe, but the difference amongst many others is that migrants and immigrants seek out the west to gain a better life or to get some sort of capital to help themselves and maybe loved ones back home. The neo-colonialists take the capital that they have gained from their own home country and use it to move to a cheaper country, oftentimes a country or region in poverty to get “more bang for their buck”. Often times they open up a business and all of the profits they have gained get extracted from the community it would have gone to if not for them being there, similar to a migrant or immigrant who was lucky enough to “follow the American dream” and start a business in the U.S., but it is the difference of the immigrant working his or her way up to obtain this goal and the expat who had all the capital to take over in the first place, often times displacing someone who was already there. What was once a mom and pop restaurant is now some white ladies yoga studio. I’ve said it time and time again that neo-colonialism is the same as gentrification. The only difference is if it happens in your home town or if it happens abroad.
I often ask myself this question. The American goes to a foreign country, often for about two weeks because that is all his job will grant him a year, to sit on a private beach in an American, Chinese, or any other foreigner owned resort. He never steps foot off the resort lands to interact with the local community. On one hand none of his money goes into the community, he helps them in absolutely no way besides tipping the local girls who work at the resort. On the other he never gets a chance to infiltrate the locals and take over the way you see others do. Which brings me to my next part of the question. The European goes back packing for 6 months on a sabbatical or a gap year or any other reason. They live as cheaply as possible in hostels that are locally owned directly giving money back to the community that they are in, but where the American will splurge giving big tips and trying to show off the European will barter and look to get a deal on everything all the while for a few people to “fall in love” with the place they are visiting to one day move there open a business and drain the local economy by being able to have a bigger and better restaurant than the local competitors or open a yoga retreat where people go to but never step foot off the retreat grounds to interact with the local community. Which one is the right way to do it? Which way is better? Of course this does not apply to everyone who travels not every American goes to the resort and to say Europeans only travel to scope out capital prospects would be a stretch, but there are enough people doing this in this way to say something about it.
There is a type of colonization that is specific to Ometepe and other places in the early stages of neocolonialism . Ometepe is lake Atitlan ten or fifteen years ago. Right now all of the people coming and buying up peoples land for dirt cheap and opening up businesses feels and sounds like a new opportunity, a great chance to sell your land or to hop into the tourism industry, but in the future they will realize everything they had has been taken from them and just like in San Pedro la Laguna, you have to travel up two hills just to find an establishment that is still owned by a native.
Here is where I also have to be honest with myself as well. During my time in Nicaragua I was in many ways a colonizer and perpetuating acts of colonization. I took a job as a guide meaning that was less opportunity for local guides to make money from tourists. I on occasion would eat at the foreign owned establishments instead of locally owned places. Even on a minute level every beer I drank, meal I ate, pair of shitty fake crocs I bought could have gone to a local. Now, not everyone is a colonizer who steps foot on foreign soil, but there is a threshold on what you are taking out of the community you are in and how long you are there for. After a few months of being there, the white girl that moved there to build a free spirited community with other young expats and the dirty drifter who has been using people for half his life to fund his time abroad because he doesn’t want to go back to face the realities he has back home, I was different than them because I was aware of what I was doing, but I was still adjacent to them. I was within the realm of them. The town I stayed in accepted me with open arms and I felt and witnessed the deepest forms of kindness that I could never get in the U.S. outside of my family. It would be damn near illegal to show this much kindness, like a church handing out sandwiches in a parking lot to homeless people only to be shut down for not having a permit. Yet still I knew what I was and what I was becoming.
Fight Night
One evening I was having dinner out in town, but I could hear Salsa music coming from the bar down the road. The only thing is, I have been a regular at that bar during my time in Ometepe and never have I heard music from there. So out of curiosity I headed down. This bar was run by a mother and her 4 daughters and apparently there was a party going on for one of them. So that night I danced and drank and sat and clapped. I danced with everyone, sharing a dance with each of the daughters. After some time nature called and I headed to the back to use the bathroom. Where I saw one of the daughters arguing with a man. Nothing of violence or escalation so I said hi and went to the bathroom. On my way out the man who was in the argument turns to me and says “tu, fight?” He knew who I was, by that time I was known by most of the locals in town for teaching muay thai to the community but also there were boxing matches I competed in where I fought probably the only other fighter on the island, a guy from Canada.I look at the girl wondering why he wants to fight me. He rushes towards me and I give a jab, cross down the pipe. He fell back but he was still angry. The lady gets in between us and holds the man back. Me, completely confused, made my first mistake. I went back to the party and sat down watching the people dance. I was smiling and clapping and drinking as if nothing happened. I honestly should have left after the incident. Then, my next mistake was seeing him rush towards me ten minutes later to punch me in the face. He could have had a blade and sliced me from chin to ear. At first I was confused, but now I am angry. So as the crowd tries to separate us I walk him down and proceed to throw as many punches and elbows as I could on him knocking him down into a stack of chairs. This is when his two friends come over and as I beat him they proceed to start punching me. This is when the most important part of being a fighter comes in. Knowing how to take a punch and not be startled. So with one hand I’m jabbing the guys one at a time and they fall back and keep coming like something out of a cartoon and on the other hand I'm splitting the eyebrow of the guy who attacked me with elbows. The crowd proceeds to tear us apart, ripping my shirt. My favorite pants had ripped in the crotch and my hat was gone. Now with the three of them standing in a triangle formation. I decided with nothing to lose because my pants were already ripped to teep the guy in front into his buddies. I put my foot in his chest knocking them all down like bowling pins. Now, satisfied, I left never really understanding why he wanted to attack me in the first place.
After a month or two I was told by one of the guys at the finca that he had attacked me because the woman he had been arguing with beforehand, a lady I had danced with that night, was his fiancé and he was furious by her doing so.
Future of Finca Magdalena
Of course through my great time there, things had to come to an end. I wish things could have ended in a better way, but it ended with a change of power, many people quitting and me leaving with a bitter taste in my mouth. The finca was going through an election during my time there to elect a new president and the nice guy who was running seemed like the clearest choice to win and make the changes that if you ask the other workers, they would say were dearly needed. When this clear favorite won the election though things did not get better. This nice man turned almost sinister. There was also a new partner who emerged as well who seemed to be holding his hand and calling the shots as well. The entire kitchen staff left for mistreatment and these women who work that kitchen, clean every room and clean all of the linens, all of the bathrooms and all of the floors. They get there at six and sometimes don’t leave till after ten. They are some of the hardest workers I have met, including the fisherman I worked with out on the Bering sea. By this time I had freshly left and was either in Miami getting supplies or in Costa Rica. Hearing this news, and knowing that the new management was gearing towards also selling off pieces of land to foreigners I wasn’t shocked, I was only disappointed. This was only two months ago and to be clear Finca Magdalena still stands and I wish them all the best. I hope things can become better there.
Conclusion
I spent almost a year in Nicaragua. I can’t put everything into this one issue, so I am planning to revisit my time there in later issues, diving into why I was unable to continue teaching Muay Thai, the issues with the self proclaimed “free spirited” person, a traveler who uses an mooches off of everyone, but secretly I admire them for it and a conversation with a nihilistic German man in a restaurant. I will still be releasing issues of the Conscious Traveler and these stories will most likely be issued under a different name.
