Flew from Charlotte to Atlanta today and caught our flight to Managua, Nicaragua. At the other end of this flight, we are to be “met” in Managua. Really not much more info than that. When they closed the door of the plane and backed from the jet way, I told the boys, “ we have no Plan B”. The flight to Managua took an hour longer than anticipated because we had to “pick” through storms twice, once over Cuba and again over the Gulf of Mexico.
We landed in Managua, went through Immigration and Customs and then out of the airport looking for a sign with our name on it or Quicksilver. Nothing. Then a guy approached us and asked if we were the father and sons there to surf? Turns out it was Tom Eberly, owner of Nica Surf and his wife Erma – they had less information than we did.
We threw the bags in the back of Tom’s truck, piled in the back and began the two hour drive to San Juan del Sur (SJDS). It was dark and you couldn’t see anything. Drove about an hour and encountered our first police check point. Apparently just a routine check, documents checked and waved through. It was the second police stop that got more interesting.
First the heat shield. After the first stop, we hit a rough patch of road and a rattle started under the truck. By the way, the roads in Nicaragua are not bad – much better than Costa Rica. We pulled over, Alan got under the truck with a flashlight and discovered the heat shield over the muffler was lose and was rattling against the muffler. Alan removed the heat shield, put it in the back of the truck and we were back on our way.
We hit the town of Rivas, Tom and Erma pointed out the transvestites that congregate on one corner in particular on Saturday nights (looking to make some money from the passing truckers) when a “Policia” appeared in front of the truck with his lime green reflective vest and orange cone on his flashlight. Tom pulled over, talked in Spanish and said “no problem” to the policeman. We assumed he wanted to check our bags in the back. He climbed in the back and a woman jumped in with him (she wasn’t wearing the green reflective vest). We started off again, Tom said he said something about an accident in SJDS and needed a ride – but that didn’t explain the woman – it didn’t need to. Tom said to look back from time to time and make sure they weren’t going through our bags.
Drove about 30 minutes, dropped the policeman and his friend along the road, no sign of an accident. We arrived at the hotel around midnight, checked in, couple of cervesas from the honor bar and crashed. Tom said he would be by at 7am to take us to the boat for our first day of surfing.
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