Midnight in Managua

Enough with the knees.  And the rare blood disease too. The kids leaving home and other symptoms associated with six decades on this spinning rock.

I bore myself. We’ve all got our shit.

Not boring myself is why I’ve created Older & Bolder, a character-driven documentary series profiling extraordinary people over 50 who reject conventional ideas about aging and pursue ambitious, adventurous second acts. I’ve created it because I need help getting out of my own way and getting on with it.

Which is why I’m now talking to a tiny camera in a small hotel room in Managua. 

No bells? As in Nicaragua. Capital city? I understand. Think way back. TV news. Sandinista rebels. Camo garb. Guns firing. Black berets. Damn those berets were badass. I wanted a Che Guevara T-shirt because it looked cool, not because I understood, or cared to understand, global politics. It was the Seventies, and I was trying to incorporate irony to become popular in the halls of Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School. 

I failed at both.

Irony and popularity still elude me. I was born earnest, which has guaranteed obscurity. Forty-some years later, I’ve surrendered to both. I also never got the T-shirt. This was pre-internet, and the East Village, where they sold such cool togs, was out of my orbit.

As it turns out, Che in the beret was not ironic in these parts. An inspiration, he was long dead by the time the Sandinistas chased dictator Anastasio Somoza, whose name always makes me hungry for meat-filled, triangular Indian pastries, from this city. The same dude who led the coup back in 1979, Daniel Ortega, is still in charge of this country.

It’s closing in on midnight by the time I step up to the X-ray machine at customs and am summarily singled out. 

You are a journalist.

The twenty-something customs guard phrases it as a statement. No question mark on the end.

I am not a journalist, I say, meeting his eyes which look as tired as I feel, but there’s also something in his face that says, just humor me, Gringo.

A forty-something supervisor-looking fellow peers over his shoulder, and I understand that the twenty-something could care less if I’m a journalist or not. He’s just putting on a show for his boss. 

You have cameras, he says, holding a Canon single-lens reflex camera that he’s pulled from a backpack with padded dividers meant to cushion the camera.

Yes, I have a camera. To take photos of surfing.

You are a surfer.

I am taking photos of surfers.

Of course, the camera also shoots video, but I’m trying to keep it simple. He doesn’t bother with the little Sony vlogger cam or the wireless mics.

Binoculars?

I do not have binoculars.

You have a drone.

I do not have a drone.

I am speaking like this to make sure I am understood. His English is better than my Spanish, and I do not want any complications. He looks over this shoulder to the supervisor-looking dude, who nods, before stuffing my camera back in the bag backward, forcing it in before yanking the zipper shut. I give him a good-luck glance and move off before anyone has the chance to reconsider anything.

It’s turning tomorrow as I ford the torrent of taxi drivers, shaking my head no, and striding as purposefully as my still-gimpy knee will allow. My hotel is meant to be within a 14-minute walk of baggage claim. My phone said so. But I’m not looking at my phone. I’m plowing through the wall of men who bark simultaneously.

A sudden wall of sound. 

Citing rampant crime, health risks, wrongful detention, and arbitrary enforcement of local laws, the US State Department’s website advises Americans to avoid traveling to Nicaragua. Recently, Nicaragua’s president, the long-serving Daniel Ortega, said the country will hold no further elections. Which is probably not a sign of a safe place.

Well, I wasn’t coming to vote anyway. And I’m not here to debate democracy over dictatorship. I am here to figure out why the maverick sport of surfing and a visit to the northwest coast of Nicaragua dramatically changed one 64-year-old man for the better. And maybe, while I’m at it, to rethink a lot of stories. Ones we’ve been told, and tell ourselves, about our past and more importantly, our future.

My head-down march parts the phalanx of hustlers, and I hoof it through an open-air, dimly lit parking lot. I hope I’m going the right way. Scanning for the sort of scumbag likely to jump a jet-lagged gringo, I see a well-lit, white-walled building across the busy street. It looks like a reasonable facsimile of the photo posted on Expedia, so I bee-line for it.

I reach the busy street at the end of a red light at the crosswalk, misjudge how long it will take to hobble across two lanes of streaming motorbikes and scooters, and am greeted with blaring clarions. Still, they stop before hitting me. Someone is yelling something that I assume is not a cheery Welcome to Managua, but I don’t wait for Google Translate to catch me up.

A uniformed man pulls open the glass door of the Best Western Las Mercedes Airport Hotel and a hush descends. In my room, which is clean and has bright lights and air conditioning once you insert the key card into a slot on the wall, I set up my little vlogger cam and attempt to record an update.

Words stumble, barely tumbling out of my mouth. I’m too tired for this. Just before I fall into a deep sleep, I realize that I am not bored anymore.