"Kind of...?"

29 June 2012
San Juan del Sur

If I ever surfed, I think I would look like this.

At the end of my last post, it had indeed stopped raining, so we began the discussion of food.  Courtney's stomach was a little unsettled, so it was decided that Sara and I would go in search of food, then return and go with Court to find food for her.  We ended up at a little place a few streets up called Banana Hamacs (took me a second) that had a simple, yet intriguing menu and a very relaxed atmosphere.  It was run by an Austrailian guy who was apparently living the dream.  Sara and I both ordered a Caribbean-style chicken wrap.  Unfortunately I couldn't get it without the vegetables, but I figured I would cross that bridge when I came to it.  The flavors were excellent - spicy and a little sweet.  The chicken was phenomenal.  The wrap was structurally unsound, so eating neatly was not an option.  The only real issue I had with the wrap was the sheer number of vegetables.  I like to think I could have handled a few, but for someone who is rather inexperienced and uncomfortable when it comes to this produce, the overwhelming amount of cabbage shreds, carrots, onions, and other unidentifiable things was extremely disconcerting.  You should, therefore, be proud to know that I did my best to power through and actually ate several bites with vegetables before it 1.) became too overpowering and 2.) disintegrated.  Both required the removal of said veggies.  As I extricated my chicken from the offending vegetables, I popped a piece of what appeared to be potato into my mouth.  It exploded with unexpected sweetness.  I froze, mid-chew.  Potatoes, last I checked, weren't sweet.  This was far more like... pineapple.  For the record, I still don't like pineapple.

San Juan by night

For Courtney's dinner, we walked down the street to the pizza restaurant on the beach.  We sat on the lower edge of their porch, closest to the sand.  There was a beautiful brown dog who kept furtively sneaking onto the porch and wandering around.  She clearly knew she wasn't supposed to be there.  At one point, the owner came out and shooed her away - not unkindly though, considering we'd already seen two people kick dogs earlier that day.  This stood in stark contrast to the leashed German Shepherd who had been brought out to dinner by his owners.

As we enjoyed Courtney's dinner, we were trying to figure out whether the Spanish music in the restaurant was live or recorded.  Since we were on a lower level, we didn't exactly have a great view of what was going on at the main level.  Our curiosity was answered when a young wiry guy with short hair and a single dread where a rat's tail would be (have I mentioned that rat's tails seem to be a trend here?) came around on his break to ask for donations for his performance.   We were running low on cash by that point, but dropped some money in his hat anyway.  He returned to our table on his second break to ask about a coin we recognized as a Sacajawea coin.  He'd never seen one before, so he was pretty happy to hear it was worth a dollar (about 23 cordoba).  Unfortunately, it was useless in Nicaragua but he decided to keep it anyway because it was kind of cool.  He then invited us to some bar down the street that would be playing live reggae and rock music later that night.  I didn't get the name of the bar and I couldn't tell if he said we should go because he was playing or just because he'd be there.  I should probably point out that he spoke mostly Spanish and bits tend to get lost in translation...

Back at the hostel, we became extremely goofy - laughing like hyenas for no apparent reason.  Once we pulled ourselves together, we attempted to concoct a plan for the night.  Courtney felt like it would be better for her if she went to bed early (this was a bummer), so Sara and I decided to wander back to the Black Whale for a little bit.  It was quiet when we got there, but soon heated up and a reggae band started playing.  At one point, we realized the musician from the pizza place was there.  He appeared to be there for social reasons and not because he was in the band, so there was that question answered. Sara and I were having an extremely entertaining time chatting (though it was hard to hear each other over the band) and people-watching.  An American surfer I recognized from the beach earlier in the day came up to us at one point and said, "you're kind of beautiful and you should come to the Iguana because that's the place to be and I'll be there."  Obviously we were blown away by this.  Except, wait, no.

Ah... no.

The musician from the pizza place came up to chat with us after that.  He spoke some English and while it was infinitely better than my Spanish, it was not a strength of his.  Add this to the fact that the band was loud and made it hard to understand even those who were not separated from you by a language barrier (by which I mean Sara) and you can imagine how the conversation went.  Regardless, we learned that he was originally from El Salvador and currently lived in Costa Rica (San Juan del Sur is about 45 minutes from the Costa Rican border).  He was in San Juan for work (music).  He said he'd studied anthropology in school, but there was no work in the field at the moment, which is why he's playing music for tourists in pizza restaurants.  He was amazed to learn that we had neither lighters nor ganja - are those things most Americans have?  Eventually he decided we should dance and after being pushed away from the table by Sara, I agreed.  It was really awkward at first because there was literally no one else on the dance floor.  He just started rocking out though, so I decided I really had nothing to lose and went with it.

Just like that,

Tune in next time for my analysis of my experiences going dancing in foreign countries versus America!