Chillin´ at the Rancho Part 3

Road to the Rancho Bar...









So I just have to tell this story while it is fresh in my mind. The reason I thought about this was that I was going through some old photos I had from the Peace Corps that I had left in my dresser in Nicaragua that I hadn’t seen for over 10 years.

Anyways one of my fellow Peace Corps buddies told me about how after training he was dropped off with his Nicaraguan family. Now, living in a third world country can be hard on your stomach until you build up tolerances. Let’s just say diarrhea is a recurring theme in a volunteer’s life. Some of the first conversations you have when meeting up w a fellow volunteer that you haven’t seen in awhile will be to inquire about their bowel movements. Gross? Perhaps… but remember we have a lot of free time on our hands too.

Anyways when “said” Peace Corps volunteer was being dropped off to meet his Nicaraguan family which he would live with for the next 3 months he was experiencing a rather explosive version of this common calamity. He was in such dire straits that he basically skipped the whole conversation portion of the introduction and immediately began making the same type of hand gestures I had made when meeting my host family. Gestures that would let somebody know that he needed a bathroom and fast.



Finally after several minutes of hand gestures the family understood his needs and pointed him in the direction of the bathroom. So the volunteer runs past the family, continues running into the room with the bathroom, begins pulling down his pants as he is running and trips due to the fact that his pants are now twisted around his ankles, he then proceeds to fall and hit his head on the toilet, knocking himself completely unconscious. He then proceeds to shit all over himself!
Oh hello Nicaraguan family… Nice to meet you!

Can you imagine the family walking in and seeing this image? A pathetic white boy Gringo passed out next to the toilet, blood puring out of a gash on his head, pants and underwear pulled down to his ankles and well… you get the picture.

Fortunately, Nicaraguans have seen way worse… trust me! They cleaned him up and got him back in shape. Notice, I was careful not to mention any names because that is such an embarrassing story!

Yeah… poor KENNY!!!!!!!! I would later sit at the bottom of a waterfall, after jumping off a high cliff, for close to an hour trying to coax Kenny to jump because it was even more dangerous to climb back down. To his credit…. He made the jump! I have the pictures to prove it.



During my first 3 months of living with my Peace Corps family my outlook began to change. I began hiking with a passion. I would hike up volcanoes, hike to the bottom of craters, hike all around my town… basically I was exploring and I wanted to absorb everything that Nicaragua had to offer. I was seeing clearly for the first time in many years.



My Nica dad turned out to be an asshole. Even though the Peace Corps gave the family a sizeable sum of money to host me he decided to squirrel all the money away. I got a big heaping of rice and beans for lunch and dinner and bread and coffee for breakfast. One night they put this tiny little fish that looked like bait on my plate. I was so ravenous for meat that I ate that little fish with a passion. I licked the little fish bones and scraped every last little morsel off with my teeth.

When the Peace Corps started giving us our stipend each week I would go to local restaurants and eat every night. I remember the Peace Corps had sent me information on Nicaragua prior to leaving. The diet they stated consisted of bean, rice vegetables, beef, pork and chicken. I pictured Mexican food and was ecstatic. I would later find out that the beans were usually undercooked without any spices or ingredients, the rice was usually crispy and barely edible and the meat was as tough as leather. Anything of any value in the country was quickly exported out!

Random little beer shack on some random road...



My Nica dad would take off each weekend to go stay with his girlfriend. The way I found this out was that I asked his wife where he goes each weekend. She told me he goes to stay with his girlfriend. What? I asked her if this bothered her. She said no, why should it? She is my best friend. What???? I remember trying to explain how in our country that most women would not like that. I don’t think it registered!

Lizard on roof...



One night the two of them were screaming and arguing I couldn’t understand about what. Then I heard him pop her and she started screaming and crying. I couldn’t sit back. I got out of bed and came out of my room. He was going off and he was out of control. I grabbed him and wrestled him against the wall. He got really pissed and started going for his wife and I got in the middle of them waiting for a heavy hand to come down on me. He was a pretty big guy. Luckily he thought twice about it and left the house. My Nica mom had a pretty nice black eye… and I was just thinking… what the fuck is this?

I then remembered one night before this whole fiasco he had showed me this bottle of booze that he had that that he was so proud of owning. I found that bottle that night and I sucked it down! I don’t even remember what type of booze it was…. It didn’t really matter at that point! The dickhead didn’t show his face for a few weeks after that! I always wondered if she finally got fed up with his carousing around. Who knows. Like I said my Spanish was pretty bad back then! Dickhead never did ask about his prized bottle of booze!

I didn’t bother telling the Peace Corps. Pretty much my whole life I have handled my own problems. I didn’t really see a reason to go crying, “Oh why me” to the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps staff and I were already having our own issues by this time so I didn’t want to give them any additional ammunition to kick me out.

I remember when we finished our training we were given papers to fill out on our family experience and whether we would recommend them to another Peace Corps volunteer. Let’s just say I put the record straight. Later, I remember my Peace Corps director pulling me to the side and apologizing and asking me why I never said anything…..

Uh, maybe that would have a little something to do with the time in training when I actually implored the Peace Corps for help…. and was basically told to piss off. Well I should be fair and say that it was not the entire Peace Corps that failed me but rather the Peace Corps nurse. And if I could remember the bitch’s name I would put it down right here! Içm sure my fellow Peace Corps buddies remember her well too.

Giant butterfly that cruised into my internet cafe...



My Nicaraguan family did have the coolest son ever, Luis. Luis was about 12 years old at the time. I began taking little Luis hiking with me all over the place. One day we decided to hike Volcano Masaya. This was one of the few volcanoes that actually has a road that allows you to drive up close to the summit, that is if you are fortunate enough to own a car!

It was a very hot day and my Nicaraguan brother (dickhead’s son) and I were about 1/2 way up when I see another guy hiking and out of the blue he says, “Hey are you American?” Woah….hey wait. Hold the phone! Now I had been in the country for about 2 months at this point and outside of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers, I had not seen one American or even one person that spoke English. “Yes, Yes, Yes, I am American.”

If I had a red white and blue flag I would have started waving it at that point! He was with a Nicaraguan friend and he said something in Spanish and the guy turned around and started walking down the volcano. I didn’t ask why. We started chitchatting and I was sucking down water and sweating profusely. Climbing volcanoes can be tough work let me tell you! So about 10 minutes go by and there is the Nicaraguan guy that left us driving a car up the road… The American guy looks at me and says forget this.... I’m driving up. Come on let’s go.

So remember I am in my new zone. I want to explore. I tell him no. I will hike. So he takes off. I bet my Nica brother was a thinking I was a complete nut! Well he probablAfter about another 45 minutes we reached the top. I was about to pass out when I reached the summit and there was a small shack with a pile of coconuts.

I walked up to the little shack and there was the American guy again. He said something in Spanish and the lady started grabbing coconuts and whacking them with a machete and handing them to us.

I soon realized that you are supposed to suck the water from the coconut. I was so thirsty! I sucked down one and then another and then another and then another….

The Masaya Volcano is an actual live volcano. You can stand on the edge and look down into the crater. Way down at the bottom you can see a small fire glowing. Apparently hundreds of years ago they sacrificed virgins at this very point and threw them in. Fortunately I had lost my virginity before reaching the summit and was therefore spared.

The American guy tells me about some cool caves and asks if I want to go. Oh yeah… that is definitely on my adventure list. I remember him talking to his Nicaraguan friend in Spanish and being so jealous that I did not speak the language. He spoke so fast and clear in Spanish. Wow that’s what I wanted!

So we go over to this giant pile of rocks and climb down. He hands me a flashlight and tells me I will need this. After climbing down the rocks a large cavern entrance was there before me. We started to go in. There was a small stream and we walked farther and farther into the cave. At one point the cave turned and the light started to dim… it began getting darker and darker. We turned another corner and we were in pitch black. Turn on your flashlight he tells me.

So we end up going farther into the cave. At one point it opened up into a huge cavern. He told me to shine the light up. I did and there I saw thousands of bats hanging on the wall. The next thing I know the bats start to move around and all of a sudden there are thousands of bats flying all around me. He tells me to turn off my flashlight and I do. All I feel are the bats… thousands of them flying near my face. I feel the wind and the flapping of their wings all around me . Pitch Black.

We continued to walk farther into the cave which began to smell like sulfur from the volcano. The next thing you know our flashlights dies. We had to go back through the cave in pitch black climbing over piles of rock rubble and walking though streams all the while not being able to see your hand in front of your face. Very frightening! Turns out the guy was an executive working for Pepsi. I would later take my fellow Peace Corps buddies into the cave and give them a little scare too.

He ended up giving me a ride back to my house but along the way we stopped at a local bar. He turned me onto Conchas Negras. Delicious black clams popular down here. I remember we were drinking beers and at one point he looks around and says its going to rain. "What I said... It is sunny you are crazy." Oh yeah it’s going to rain and hard within a half an hour. S

ure enough ½ hour later rain came down hard like I had never seen. I saw cars driving through mini lakes with water ½ way up their door. Holy shit! What is going on? Don’t worry he says it will be sunny in ½ an hour. Once again I say no way! Fuck it’s raining like Noah the Ark type rain!

Yet sure enough ½ hour later it is sunny as can be. ½ after that the streets were completely dry. The mini lakes were gone. The roads weren’t even damp! It was like freaking magic. You could actually see the water mist rising off the ground. Wow!

No matter how many times I come to Nicaragua I see something I have never seen before in my life! Every time I come to Nicaragua I learn something new that I never knew before. Every time I come to Nicaragua I feel something that I have never felt before.

One day My Nica dad (the dickhead) managed to somehow squirrel his way back into the house. I remember one night he began to moan and moan. I remember thinking that he was such a pussy. His moaning was so loud I couldn’t sleep. What a baby I thought. I knew he was sick but come on dude get it together. Man up!

A week later I had Dengue Fever (think Malaria) and holy shit did I start moaning! I moaned louder than I had ever moaned in my life. I put dickhead to shame. My whole Monimbo ghetto would hear me! My nica mom began rubbing saves on my forehead and she massaged my head. Dengue Fever gives you the worst headache of your life along with sweats and body aches. You feel as though your head is in a vice! I felt like I was dying.

Finally my Nica mom gave me a pill… not sure what it was but it allowed me to sleep for a few hours. My Nica family was so worried about me that they called the Peace Corps and told them I needed a doctor. I think maybe even they couldnçt handle my moaning. I was told to go to the capitol of Managua and meet with the Peace Corps nurse.

The following day I ended up somehow making it to the capitol of Managua to meet with the Peace Corps nurse. After waiting several hours in agony she finally arrived 2 hours late. After looking me over… she said I was fine and that I just needed to drink liquids and to go back to my Peace Corps family. I told her I felt like I was dying and I could not keep down water or food. She just told me the same thing. Are you fucking serious I thought. I think at one point she may have even said I was exaggerating. Now this is the same wacko lady that told us how she let her kid play with random snakes he picked up on the back of a hill they live on. Remember Nicaragua has a type of Cobra that kills you instantly. This is an American lady too by the way... Freakin nut...

After several hours wandering aimlessly around Managua searching for my hotel room, I finally located it and proceeded to open the door, lock the door and crawl into bed. I had dry heaves all day. I would literally put one drop of water on my tongue and start heaving. I could not move from my bed. Soon my fellow Peace Corps volunteers began showing up and knocking on my door trying to get me to open it… I couldn’t move.

They started leaving juice and water outside my hotel room door. At some point the owner of the small hotel I was at called the Peace Corps and said that they needed to do something. Apparentlt dead Gringo´s don´t make for good business in the tourist hotel industry. Did I mention the moaning?

My Peace Corps program director ¨Diego¨finally came to my door and after several times asking me to open the door he finally began screaming for me to open the door. Something finally clicked and I fell out of bed and crawled to the door and unlocked it.

He must have realized how pathetic I looked because between him and my other Peace Corpse volunteers they managed to pick me up and throw me in the back of the Peace Corps SUV and they rushed me to the hospital emergency room. I remember dry heaving with the side door open with absolutely nothing coming out the whole ride to the hospital.

When I finally got to the hospital the doctor told my Peace Corps Director that I was in grave condition and that I was extremely dehydrated.

They hooked up an I.V. I remember moaning to the doctor and giving him sign language that my head was exploding. He said something to the nurse and they pumped something into my I.V. I felt a warm sensation start at my toes and work its way up my body but it stopped at my chest. My head continued to throb.

The doctor walked by again and I once again grabbed him by his jacket and tried to express the pain I was feeling. "Cabeza Cabeza…. Ayuda."

He said something to the nurse and once again she injected my I.V. and that warm sensation started hitting my toes and this time it worked its way to my head. Yes… Pain relief.

They would eventually wheel me into an air-conditioned room with cable. I remember taking 15-16 IV’s before I even had to pee. Then when I did have to pee… I felt like I was going to explode but I couldn’t go. They had to give me a catheter… more fun! I peed so much at that point that I overflowed the bucket the nurse had!

I spent the rest of that day in my first air conditioned room in several months with my first cable T.V. in sever4al months. I felt like I was in heaven. The nurses gave me sponge baths to cool my body temperature down. I really didn’t want to ever leave! Eventually they sent me on my way…

To this day I credit Diego with saving my life.

Internet Cafe in Pueblo Nuevo...



The Peace Corps nurse would eventually get fired for ineptitude! Such sweek kharma!

After my 3 months of training, Spanish classes and cultural lessons it was time to learn the locations of where we would be stationed for the next 2 years. I had long given up hope of living on the beach. Most business volunteers lived in bigger cities where they could have a bigger impact. One day they finally told me I would be living in Esteli. They told me that it was a big city in the mountains, cool climate and pretty girls. O.K. well… Not bad!



The cool climate turned out to be between 80-85 year round which was actually a godsend from what I was experiencing. I think the lower humidity was also a major factor! They also warned me that I would be the first volunteer to ever live in the city due to all the political problems and the Sandinista population. Oh great! If it is not one thing it is another!

One day my Peace Corps director loads me up in his truck and takes me 3 hours north into the mountains. We end up going to a local park and he tells me, “Kevin, don’t ever talk politics, stay out of the bars, don’t get too drunk and never walk in the surrounding mountains because they may still have land mines in them from the Sandinista/Contra period.”

I would soon end up breaking all those rules. He drove away and there I was with all my bags… literally everything I owned in the world, in the middle of a big city and I was on my own! WTF? Thanks Peace Corps.



I grabbed my bags and began walking aimlessly around this huge city asking people Se alquila, Se alquila, Do you rent, Do you rent? I was just pathetic. At one point I was so tired of lugging my bags around I just sat down and contemplated crying! I finally went to the next store I saw and asked the lady if I could leave my bags with her. She said yes and also told me that her son was renting a small home a block away. Divine intervention?

He was not around to show it to me but I could look at the outside. I said I would take it on the spot! I went back to Managua and then returned a couple weeks later to my new home and all my possessions were safely stored away at the store.



The house I lived in was actually a larger house divided down the middle by a thin 1/8 inch ply wood. There was a lady with a kid who lived on the other side and I could hear her plain as day. Just like she could hear me just like I was right there!

I lived in a great spot. There was a butcher across the street from me. Caddy corner was a vegetable stand. And across the other street was a lady who sold tortillas. I could get everything I needed by walking 25 feet in any direction. About a ½ block down the road there was a bridge and a river flowing underneath.

Laundry day....



I had a bathroom with an actual toilet a backyard with various fruit trees. It was just basically a living room a bedroom and a bathroom… what else did I need? I found a lady or rather she found me that would wash all my clothes by hand for about $2 plus $.50 for soap. Life was good. Other volunteers began to visit me. I began my job working with a small Savings and Loan Cooperative.

In the late afternoon I began sitting on my porch and watching people walk up and down my street. I would say hi to everybody and basically I was like a circus sideshow. I was the only white boy around and I stuck out like a sore thumb. One day a girl walked by and I said hi and somehow I must have said something interesting enough for her to stop for a second and talk to me.

It turns out that she was a teacher and taught down the road. I would watch her pass each day and eventually I would look forward to her passing each day if for only to have her say hi to me. She would eventually stop for a minute then two…

Neighborhood having fun...



We would talk about her school and she would ask me about the Peace Corps. We worked out a day where both myself and Craig would go up to her school and talk about the Peace Corps. I remember that we decided to bring some candy to endear us to the kids.

So we go the her Elementary school and put on a small presentation talking about the Peace Corps and when we finish up we all go outside and we tell them we are going to pass out candy. This is when a virtual mob scene takes place. Craig and I are surrounded by kids practically jumping on us. We soon began chucking the candy as far away as possible to get the kids off of us and the teacher grabbed us and pulled us out of the mayhem!

I would end up marrying the teacher. Her name is Mari.

Check out this guy taking his bike up some hill to his home...




One night I was kicking back at my house and it started to rain pretty hard. Then harder, then harder! I’m drinking beers and chillin’. Next thing you know water starts rolling in under my door. Uhhh… That’s not good. Then it starts to get higher and higher. I’m freaking out because my refrigerator is plugged in. I had just recently rented the refrigerator and that was a major coup for a Peace Corps volunteer. I think in retrospect I may have been more worried about the actual contents of my fridge... the BEER!

The next thing you know the water is up to my calf. In my house! Now I´m getting worried...

Now I have 2 doors to my house and they each have metal bar type doors in addition to the regular wooden door. I had made a point to lock these doors with a key lock each night. So now I start searching all around for the keys.

There I am running around my house looking for my keys when a couple people from the redcross poke their heads into my gated door. You need to get out of herenow they say. Yeah no shit dude. The water is rising and I am stuck inside... well basically a jail. Remember mosat houses down here are made out of cement block or bricks!

The water is now inching towards my knee. The redcross is screaming and I am running practically swimming around my house looking for the fucking keys to get OUT! You just can´t make this shit up!

I finally find the key and relief overtakes m. I run to my gated hell door and start to fumble around trying to get the freaking lock open when what do you know... I drop the key in the fucking water raging through my house.

I mean really you just can’t make this shit up! Now I am down on my knees frantically searching around for the key. I sobered up quick!

I finally find the key and I managed to open the lock and then open up my metal door and I started walking around the side of my house holding on to the bars and anything I can get my hands on as the river is raging down the street. Next thing you know I see a red cross truck up the road and they are tying a rope to the side of my house and stringing it up the hill. They grab me and I hold onto the rope and we all cross the river that is raging around and through my house and I make it to high ground. There I stayed for about an hour as the water subsided.

Then I went back to the house and my neighbor helped me sweep out all the mud on the floor inside my house and then I went to bed.

About 2 months later the exact same type of flood happened. This time I just stayed inside my house. I had long before stopped locking the metal bar door. The second time the flood came I just put everything up high and then I decided to just kick back and drink beers and watch the river rise inside my house and then subside. No panic. Been there done that.

About a month later I moved from that house to higher ground in the middle of the city. I had had enough!

One night a fellow Peace Corps volunteer decided to have a small party in her little town called Ciudad Dario. We all managed to get there by bus. Now back then we had to talk to the other volunteers by teletype. You would go to the local mail station and they would take down your message and then teletype it to the receiving town. At that point somebody would print out the message and deliver it to the person by hand. Now that’s old school! So a party was a major event for us.

Now there we are all drinking and partying and the next thing you know Jason starts talking some major shit. He did a Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. He just started going off… totally belligerent. He then decided to go outside and begin yelling and singing in the streets of Ciudad Dario!

Jason would end up sleeping in the street that night. The curb would be his pillow. Straight out drunk…. Nica style!

Jason is one of the smartest people I know and he was one of my best friends in Nicaragua. I can see his head expanding now as he reads this...We would end up travelling together throughout most of Central America.

Dog hiding out



We would dive together in the Caribbean waters of Honduras, we would travel to the coasts of El Salvador and Guatemala we would travel the length and width of Nicaragua. Most of these adventures also included Mitch.

Jason was also the best man at my wedding when I ended up marrying Mari upon completion of my Peace Corps service. Mari and I would travel back to the U.S. by land. Well… almost. That’s another story!

Jason would go on to obtain his Masters Degree in Business from Georgetown giving hope to even the most pathetic of humanity… proving that you can go from sleeping in the gutters of Nicaragua to graduating from the most prestigious Universities of the U.S. with an MBA! Te amo Jason!

I just fired up a Churchhill which is a giant freakin’ cigar. Whenever Mitch, Jason and I got together we would smoke these. I would bring them from my town of Esteli which is where they are grown and we would sit around and smoke our giant cigars and drink rum and feel like big shots!

Tonight I smoke a big fatty cigar in honor of you guys.I hope all your dreams are being realized.

At one point the three of us made an epic bike ride along the southern coastline of Nicaragua. We camped out in my small tent and bought fish from the local fisherman. We would cook on an open campfire. We would build a bond fire each night from driftwood spread around the coast that we were tasked to collect each night after biking all day.

We mountain biked along a cow path that ran parallel w the coastline for days and when that trail eventually ran out we rode our bikes on the hard pact sand near the surf. There was nothing around for miles except the occasional small fishing village…

We were hard core explorers living in the moment. In fact If I may take the liberty to say, I think we were living our lives like a candle in the wind… never knowing who to cling to when the rain sets in. OK that was cheesy but it came on the my computer playlist... the Eric Donaldson version...

Yes we were kids, young men. Adventure and freedom were our only guides.We lived life with a passion in those days. I remember at one point on our journey we were camping in an especially nice spot and we were near a small town. In the evening we would go out hunting for turtles that we had heard came onto shore at night to lay their eggs. I remember one night we saw the biggest turtle I had ever seen scooching along the coast.

We returned to the tent that night and we noticed one of our skillets was missing. The next night we decide to use our collective intellect and after returning from drinking in the local town that night we decided to bury our cooking utensils under out tent.

Sure enough the next morning we realized that they had stolen our pots underneath our tent as we slept! That did not deter our adventure.

We continued our adventure south down the southern coastline of Nicaragua minus a pot and a couple pans. We determined on that journey that we should buy as much coastline property as possible while we could!

Well, needless to say the life of a Peace Corps volunteer is not riddled with money. So that was one dream that would soon bypass us. Now that same coastline that we biked down many years ago is quickly being bought up by idiot Americans who have never lived more than a few weeks in Nicaragua.

Fortunately I eventually did end up purchasing a stretch of coastline in the northern coast of Nicaragua that my friends and I came close to viewing back then but was inaccessible. Even today it is one of the most inaccessible coastlines of Nicaragua.




At one point we all made a pact that we would come back and live in Nicaragua and not forget the mindset that we had developed after living in this beautiful country for over 2 years.

I am not sure I would hold them to this pack.. I sometimes wonder if I will ever come back and live down here permanently. However I think the larger aspect of that pact would be to live with the mindset that we had when we made that pact.

I think I will always hold them and all my fellow Nica 6 compatriots to the pact which is the freedom and feelings of such a higher and more meaningful purpose that exists in this world. Yes…. I do hold you to that higher standard and you are obligated to fulfill that pact!

I only hope that all people can subscribe to that philosophy one day.
Bob Marley is piping in, Don’t worry about a thing. Cuz’ everything little thing is gonna be alright. Don’t worry.

How fucking appropriate. Are the stars aligning? All you pessimists… just fuck off!
Doth’ says Kev!