Long before I got to Nicaragua, various members of Carrie’s volunteer group had gone camping on a small island off the coast of Corinto and had the time of their lives. Anxious to be a part of the fun, Carrie and I headed out for the group’s return to the island, a mere ten days after my arrival to Murra.

School busses are the main form of transportation in Nicaragua

Still fresh from my introduction to both Nicaragua and the town I would come to call home, Carrie and I spent ten uneventful hours (as much as that is possible in Nicaragua) on various busses traveling to Carrie S’ house in Chinendega, which is an actual city with full amenities. There we spent the night relaxing and watching a movie at Carrie’s house while I began to get to know all these people I had spent the previous nine months hearing stories about.

The next morning started ominously as Carrie and I got drenched in a thunderstorm while wandering around and exploring Chinendega. However, our suggestions to the group that camping in the rain might not be the best idea were quickly shot down. So, not wanting to be party-poopers, we went out and bought some black tarp and were off. After arriving at Christina’s house in Corinto, a port-town on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, we headed down to the docks to board a boat that she had rented. The boat was essentially a small rowboat with a motor on back and I had my doubts of whether it was even seaworthy.

After a 20 minute ride to the island, I was a bit irritated that my bags were a bit wet from the splash of the water. Still, I was far happier that we had made it in one piece and that, while the skies were not clear, we seemed to have left the rain behind in Chinendega. A little background on the island; it was about the size of a city block and the only people on it were one family that lived in a small shack in the center. Our space for camping was the beach area and Carrie and I found a spot under some trees to lay our tarp and borrowed tent down.

Once everyone was set up, the group basically lounged around and relaxed all afternoon. Some drinks were poured, Frisbees tossed, hammocks laid in and lots of great conversation had. However, while Carrie was catching up with other volunteers she hadn’t seen in a while and I was getting to know a ton of new people, the skies began to darken and the drizzle began. It rained relatively steadily until around midnight, when the real downpour began.

The tent Carrie and I slept in

At first everyone took shelter in the first tent they could find, but after a while people began retreating to the tent they would eventually sleep in that night. When Carrie and I returned to our tent, we found that a river had literally begun flowing through it. Our tarp did nothing and my sleeping back was soaked. However, as there were really no other options and everyone else was having the same problem in their tents, we laid down to try and sleep.

Shivering, soaked and desperately trying to sleep was my condition when a strong wind gust came through and ripped one of the tent stakes out of the ground, essentially collapsing the tent on Carrie and I. So, I went outside to try and put it back in, but the stake was nowhere to be found. Fortunately, Carrie S’ hammock had been tied to the tree next to our tent, so I untied one string of it and basically attached our tent to the hammock to keep it up that night. The whole time, sheets of rain were beating down on me, soaking me even further: if that was even possible.

There were no more tent problems after that and Carrie and I managed to get a little sleep in our own personal wet hell. As soon as the sun came up, everyone quickly awoke and came out of their tents: wet, miserable and ready to go home. I had to chuckle when I looked at my completely soaked bags and remembered the day before when I was worried about a little splash from the boat making them damp. The chuckle would be short-lived as I quickly realized that my brand new digital camera had been in my bag and the river that ran through our tent had gotten through the waterproof case it was in.

The boat stuck in the sand

Now furious and completely ready to leave, I joined the group of guys on the beach who were standing around our boat that was now beached on the sand due to low tide. “No problem,” we all thought. “We’re a bunch of strong dudes, we should be able to push it right into the water and get going.” Little did we know how wrong we were; that boat must have weighed three tons. No matter how many people we had pushing it, the ship would not budge.

Numerous creative ideas also failed to move the boat. One plan included trying to use branches and logs to wedge under the boat and pry it into the air to move it a foot at a time. Another featured digging trenches in the sand under the boat and filling it with water to make it float. All of this creativity helped move the boat at most ten feet, a fact that sounds impressive until you learn that the water receded at least 20 feet that during the same time period.

All of us giving the boat its final push

We continued our efforts alone until around 10 a.m., when the still-drunk boat captain came out of the house he was sleeping in and told us that he knew the secret to getting it out of the sand. His plan: push the boat. However, with the added help of him and the other people in the house (14 in total), we finally managed to get the boat in the water by 10:30. Everyone quickly boarded, no longer caring about the dryness of any clothes or personal items.

After returning to Carrie S’ house, Carrie and I changed into the one dry pair of clothes we had left there and were off for Estelli. All I could think about was how my camera was ruined, my clothes were wet and that the soaked sleeping bag weighed a ton. We had not eaten a bite since the night before and were running around trying to catch the first of three busses we would need that day. Needless to say, Carrie and I were not in the best of moods when we started our trip back.

Once the commute began, things did no get any easier. First we had to take a microbus (essentially a minivan used for public transportation) from Chinendega to Leon. We arrived at the bus terminal just as a microbus was leaving and then had to wait 30 minutes for the next one that was cramped and hot. Next we had to hop on a school bus that had no empty seats for us to sit on.

The destroyed screen of my digital camera

Making matters worse was that we did not catch an “expresso,” which meant that we were on that bus for three hours instead of the normal one and a half. However, we finally caught our first batch of good luck when we were able to hitchhike the last leg of the trip instead of waiting on the side of the highway for our final bus. A 16-wheeler from Panama that was filled with toys, clothes and books picked us up and drove us all the way into Estelli.

We took a cab from where the truck dropped us off to our hotel and literally collapsed on the bed: completely exhausted and still starving. We eventually wandered around the city, carrying around the heavy soaked sleeping bag, looking for anywhere with a drying machine to dry the sleeping bag. Needless to say, there was not a single one to be found in Estelli and we would wind up lugging it back, water and all, to Murra the next day.

Now, being new to the Nicaraguan lifestyle and the fact that absolutely nothing ever goes as planned, I have a feeling that I was a bit unpleasant to be around that day. I still refer to it as the worst day ever. Even Carrie, who had been in the country for nine months at the time, ranks it as her second worst day. And somehow I still stayed another six months after that.

Epilogue:
After asking in every camera shop I could find near us, Carrie and I wound up back in Managua a few weeks later. At this point I went to such well-known places as Radio Shack, where I was informed that there was one man in Nicaragua who could fix digital cameras. However, once we finally got to him it seemed that he needed a part to be sent from the USA to possibly fix the camera. Making matters worse it would take weeks of me being without my camera. As the camera still took photos (albeit without a view screen or any control of the settings), I decided against it. A month later, when another volunteer went home for Thanksgiving I ordered a new one from Amazon.com to her house in Massachusetts and she brought it back down with her later. And that’s how I got my Canon PowerShot A510.