Morning in Managua

Red-rimmed eyes stare back at me from the little flip screen on the camera. I’m filming myself in a Managua hotel room, the little vlogger cam balancing on a mini tripod, as I sip on an instant espresso made from a packet of dark Italian roast that I brought along from Starbucks because so much Central American drip coffee tastes like dirt to me. I’m sure I should be ashamed by something I said in that last sentence, but c’mon man, sometimes a guy just needs a reliable coffee that’s got his back.

Last night I landed in Managua, Nicaragua, the capital city, I say into the camera. This is where Rob came to get serious about surfing some years ago. He’s flying in about now and being picked up by a van sent from the surf camp. The van will then swing by and pick me up.

I know that this is not a gripping narrative.

Give the caffeine some time to hit the cortex.

I really have no idea what to expect from this place, I tell the camera before I fold the screen shut and turn the little eavesdropper off. I play back my update. The polished concrete floor, painted a deep red to mimic terracotta tiles, gives the room a slight echo. And then there’s that face, which is much too large on the screen. I’ve sat too close to the lens, selfie distance revealing age. Though this is a series about getting older, there’s only so much sagging skin you can ask the viewer to take in.

Standing under a cold shower tightens things up and still shivering slightly, I head to the lobby where I’d spied an espresso machine during check-in the previous evening. The foyer is open and airy with a bar across from the front desk where hangs a large screen television showing tropical beach scenes as a knock-off of Sade’s Smooth Operator plays. The waiter brings a steady stream of espressos in small cups that I savor while I wait for Rob to arrive.

Aside from small clusters of American flight crews, the clientele is nearly all Spanish-speaking, which is soothing and musical to my ear. My mind doesn't need to chase the meaning of the words spoken, because it doesn’t have them in the database. And so, I sit pleasantly absorbing caffeine and hotel lobby culture.

The security guards at the door are unarmed. The sun is already strong outside on the busy street, where motorcycles and scooters outnumber cars. Which I like. People who ride in the air, balancing on two wheels, have a different vibration than those confined by doors.

Four wheels need no balance.

Ten minutes out, reads the text.

Rob Baker is 78, but you would not guess it by the way he bounds through the door of the hotel, driver in tow, his blue eyes flashing, and a smile followed by the bro hug. I like Rob. Later in the trip a yoga instructor will say that he seems like a man who has met himself. That description is so apt that I’ve dragged it out of the future to lay it down here. Muchas gracias, Willow. You’ll meet her in a bit.

Rob introduces Carlos, the driver, as we cross the parking lot to an early-90s Toyota Hi Ace, a double-cab diesel that is sort of a pick-up truck-van combo common all over the developing world.

They brought this so that we could carry my surfboard, explains Rob.

Which I find interesting because there is no surfboard in the bed of the rig.

Which didn’t make it, says Rob. Delta refused it at Salt Lake.

Rob shares a shit-happens shrug as Carlos throws my carry-on in the bed. I keep my camera backpack with me in the back seat of the cab.

This is Fred, Rob says, indicating a smiling sixties man wearing Ray-Bans in the back seat. Fred Gifford is a Texas-born geologic demographer and lifelong surfer whom Rob met in Mexico. He, too, shares Rob’s stoke; both men seem energized to be here.

Carlos pilots the van with casual precision through streets teeming with scooters, bikes, children, and dogs. I film out the window, zooming in on the three-wheeled moto taxis with one wheel in the back and two in the front, supporting a wide, padded bench with a canvas covering. There are many of these, and I make a note to hire one so I can see how they ride when I come back through the city. Beyond the motos, small shops of every stripe pass in a color-strobing blur. And then, for a moment, the chaotic squalor of Managua’s endless roadside commerce breaks as we pass a grand, open piazza.

Plaza de la Revolución, says Carlos from the front seat.

In the middle of the square sits a huge structure of pinkish marble.

That’s the palace where Ortega lives, adds Rob.

Outside of town, we stop for a soda in a roadside parking lot by massive Lake Xolotlán. Flanked by volcanoes and sprawling at an unexpected scale, the surface roils with whitecaps that crash on the pebbled shore. From the Caribbean to the Pacific, the country of Nicaragua is only about 300 miles across, and when you consider the several sizeable freshwater lakes (the largest in Central America) as well as plentiful rivers and estuaries, the name of the place makes a lot more sense: Nicaragua is a contraction of native words that mean surrounded by water.

Wikipedia notwithstanding, these inland lakes and waterways will become more significant for us in the coming days as they provide reliable offshore breezes every morning and make for glassy, nicely shaped waves.