On The Road

I left Selva Negra with my sights on Guatemala and Mexico. I was unsure how much longer I’d be traveling, but wanted to get through Honduras and El Salvador quickly. Refurbished American school busses are the ubiquitous mode of transport here, and they’re predictably inefficient. Overcrowded and slow, these “chicken busses” cover short distances and depart sporadically. So uncomfortable are they, that I’ve actually caught myself missing the overnighters that plagued me in South America. But sleeper busses are unsafe here; when a large metal box full of sleeping tourists rolls gift-wrapped along drug trafficking routes in the middle of the night, bad things sometimes happen. 

So, speed was always pipe dream, and I had to short-hop my way north. First was Somoto, a charming but ordinary Nicaraguan border town. The next morning I crossed into Honduras, where a quick survey pointed me towards San Lorenzo. After a short ride, the bus driver hurried me onto the gravel shoulder and sped off, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust and confusion. A police officer flagged me down and asked what I was doing, and if I had entered the country legally. The truth was, I had no idea what I was doing, or how afraid to be of a country that most tourists avoid. But I assured the officer I didn’t need help nor warrant suspicion, and walked into town. Navigating the main drag with a large backpack and sun-bleached hair, I stood out, and the incredulous eyes that fixed onto me weren’t always welcoming. I quickened my pace until I reached the far side of town, where I sat on the steps in front of an unhappy looking Chinese restaurant and took stock. An unsightly mix of stray dogs, rundown streets, rectangular buildings, cheap department stores, and grungy but overpriced hotels had left me disappointed.

As I weighed my options, a family passed and invited me to join them on their walk to the beach. I obliged, happy to have an escort, but quickly realized I’d misjudged my company. The woman I’d mistaken for the mother was more haggard than I’d realized, and she was uncomfortably friendly. The daughter, 20 something and cute, suddenly disappeared; a prostitute looking for work. The boy was sweet, but strikingly nonchalant about his mother’s shenanigans, and seemed to be a practiced wingman. He wandered off to swim and skip rocks, and I found myself alone on the beach with a strange and somewhat disgusting woman massaging my shoulders, trying to hand feed me Doritos, and begging for sex. I dismissed myself awkwardly and resolved to catch the first bus out of town.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras’ sprawling capital, was the only place worth going that could be reached in an afternoon, and it was well off the road to El Salvador and Guatemala. It was a hasty and impulsive decision that would likely affect weeks or months of travel. So it goes. The bus ride was slow and I got stranded in a downpour on arrival, but when I settled into a friendly hostel, a plate of home-cooked lasagna, and a cold beer, I immediately felt I’d made the right decision. It had taken me two days to reach a non-destination, but I was happy to be there.

Selva Negra

In Granada I received an unexpected text message. Shane - who followed his older brother (and my college roommate) Kellen’s path through Occidental, the Rainbow Fairy House (my senior year residence; a sort of miniature fraternity house with an anti-fraternity ethos) and eventually my inner circle - wrote, “Are you still in Nicaragua? I’m here.”

So I found myself crashing a weekend retreat with 10 hypochondriac med students and Shane - also a med-student but nothing of a hypochondriac - at a German enclave in the Nicaraguan cloud forest.

Shane’s cameo in this adventure was coincidental, but felt somehow scripted. He and his now wife Kerri were the first of my friends to jump headfirst into adventure travel. His emails from southeast Asia a decade ago planted the first seeds of this trip. Later, Wylie proved it could be done solo, movies like Motorcycle Diaries, 180˚ South, and Into the Wild fueled the fire, and life in LA kicked me out the door. But Shane got the gears turning, so I was especially happy to bounce into him.

It was a quick weekend, highlighted by a couple nights of party games in our rented house, and a beautiful hike. It felt like an escape from my South American itinerary, but was another memorable stop.

Granada and Leon

Granada is the colonial jewel of Nicaragua, a vibrant and noisy town on the shores of Central America’s largest lake. I spent an afternoon wandering it’s historic streets alone, but found company when I settled into a bar stool and a hard-to-find Warriors playoff game. Luke and Renée, an Oakland couple celebrating their first anniversary, made fast friends. She is a graphic designer and he a sports fan, so conversation started easily and quickly evolved. They invited me on a tour of the nearby Santiago Volcano, allegedly the seventh most active in the world (a quick Google search won’t confirm it - I’ve become accustomed to locals being generous with world rankings).

Late the next afternoon, we boarded a white van and drove 45 minutes to the unremarkable park gates, and took our place in a long line of idling cars. An hour later we parked at the rim of a crater. Just below, A cauldron lava lit up the night like a feverishly boiling pot of radioactive paint. No amount of the Nat Geo could have prepared me for my first glimpse of melted earth. I was awestruck.

The next day provided another kind of highlight: a teeth cleaning for about the price of a beer. After a brief wait on a bank of plastic chairs in a musty waiting room, I was ushered into a dusty, green room, seated in a rickety pleather chair, and covered with paper towels. The hygienist then rummaged through a rusty box of tools, found her implement, blasted her spotlight into my eyes and mouth, and set to work raking the backs of my teeth and gums. My comfort didn’t concern her much - my eyeball was her preferred wrist support, and she often spun my head roughly instead of moving her chair - but my teeth were clean in record time. The experience left me with a new appreciation for first-world dentists, but their mechanized chairs, flat screen televisions, fish tanks and party favors suddenly sounded like overkill. 

With clean teeth and dirty everything else, I bussed four hours to León, where I spent a quick 36 hours exploring more volcanoes and colonial architecture. I enjoyed myself and could have spent more time there, but I had an appointment to keep a few hours northeast…

Hulakai

My friend Markus is a fellow Catlin alum, and anyone that graduated within 10 years of us knows his name. My friendship with Markus is among my best claims to fame; second, perhaps, to my relation to one Lauren Basham. Markus connected me with Tyler Tibbs, another Catlin graduate five years my senior, who happens to own and run a beautiful hotel in southwest Nicaragua. At Markus’ suggestion, Tyler and I agreed to a tentative two week work exchange; room and board for design and illustration.

When I arrived at Hulakai I immediately felt the hometown vibes. Never mind that I lettered 10 times (chest bump, high five, shotgun a beer), some of Tyler’s first words to me were: “Your sister was such a great athlete.” Yep.

Tyler himself was a Division One soccer player. He is also a talented artist, and therefore a kindred spirit.  And his story might have been mine - study art in Mexico, travel south, meet Nicaraguan wife, buy property, build hostel, sell small chunk of appreciated land at huge profit, build hotel. He seems like more of an artist than a businessman, and he dreams of filling his hotel with creative people - which is of course where I came in. His proposal to me was: stay as long as you want, go to the beach any time, eat this amazing food, do some work you’re proud of. Hindsight says I should have known I’d be there for over a month. And what a memorable month it was.

As ever, it started with a great mix of people. I enjoyed getting to know Tyler and his fleet of volunteers and employees, and the hotel guests were reliably laid-back and interesting. My days were simple;  a bit of work interrupted by frequent dips in the pool, lunch at a quaint, family-run ceviche shack on an empty beach, sunset with a bit of rum, and “family dinner” with all hotel guests and volunteers. There were also daily encounters with at least one of the following: scorpion, howler monkey, wooly opossum, coral snake, ant eater. Lastly, a pair of weekly events broke the routine, which had the unexpected effect of a metronome - Taco Tuesday, Pizza Friday, Taco Tuesday, Pizza Friday. Time passed to a beat.

My fifth and final Taco Tuesday was the grand finale. I narrowly won an impossibly competitive putting contest by sinking four 25-yard putts, which was far more exciting than writing about it could ever make it sound. My bounty was a two liter bottle of rum and a handful of friendships forged in competitive fire. The former only survived an hour but produced a wild and memorable night, and the latter earned me an invite to sail up the coast the next day.

Come Wednesday morning, we all half regretted what we’d done with my trophy, and I had to dig deep to find the energy to board a boat full of strangers and booze. I was glad I did - looking east and remembering a month on those beautiful shores was a perfect farewell.

Monteverde and Tamarindo

It was a three hour bus ride up hill to the town of Santa Elena, where we spent three days. The Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde is home to one of the most beautiful forests I’ve ever seen - a combination of tropical and temperate rain forests, equally full of mosses and palms. A four hour hike through the park was a definite highlight, even if I didn’t find the one animal I’m most anxious to see - a red eyed tree frog. 

I’d have liked to spend more time exploring the nearby forests and volcanos, but by that time Jason had booked a flight home and we had to hurry back towards the coast. Costa Rica is so expensive that I couldn’t object to a speedier passage to Nicaragua, where there are forests and volcanoes to be discovered for half the price. So we spent a day zip lining through the forest, a few nights at a country fair, and headed to Tamarindo. 

Jason and I had a standout farewell dinner, and a nice time winding down his visit, but Tamarindo was just another surf town, saturated with beer pong, backwards hats, tribal tattoos, and bars called Sharky’s and Longboards.

Generally speaking, Costa Rica was more culturally interesting than Panama, but overly touristy nonetheless.

Oh, the hypocrisy. Don’t travel. It’s ruining the world!

I half believe that, and don’t quite know what to do about it.

#KOBEDAY

I don’t remember exactly how Kobe won my admiration, and i won’t try to convince you that he deserved it. For better or for worse, I was a Kobe fan, and for a long time I was the only one I knew. As if I had anything to do with it, I felt accomplished by his ascent to the top of the basketball world, and embarrassed when he fell off it. He ruptured his achilles in 2013, and watching him play stopped being fun. It was no surprise when he announced his retirement this year, but his final game seemed both overdue and all too soon. 

I was a 13 year old kid when my dad first pointed out the teenager with the fro who’d be an All-Star before starting on his own team. 20 years later, I am at the tail end of a trip that’s given me plenty of cause to be sentimental, and Kobe’s retirement feels apropos. It may be pathetic, but saddling up to a bar one last time to watch him play brought back a flood of nostalgia and adolescent memories: watching the infamous lob to Shaq between matches of the state high school tennis tournament; receiving tickets to a game in LA as a gift from my beaming sister; dragging Jane to a hooters in Puerto Vallarta, or making her drive me to a Blazer game during a snowstorm because the Lakers were in Portland; fighting over the TV in the Occidental dorms; reading about an 81 point game from Italy.

Clapping and shouting to nobody at a nearly empty bar, in a dusty beach town in Costa Rica, I could only shake my head in disbelief as Kobe dropped 60 in his finale. I felt 17 again, holding my breath every time he touched the ball. It was a familiar but forgotten thrill - one I was reminded I’ll miss.

Osa and Nicoya Peninsulas

Jason and I knew only that we’d spend about two weeks together in Costa Rica, but the details were fuzzy. We met in San Jose, the capital, and spent two days hatching a plan and catching up. We also spent two hours in a brothel because it seemed like the best place to watch Champions League soccer. Window shopping only.

At the recommendation of some hippies in San Jose, our next destination was on the Osa Peninsula. After lengthy bus, taxi, and boat rides we arrived at a sandy hostel on the pacific ocean, sandwiched between one of the world’s most biodiverse wildlife reserves and the manta ray and shark filled waters of the pacific. Their reviews were too good to ignore, though I was hesitant to take a travel tips from people I had so little in common with. Sure enough, Jason and I found ourselves on a permaculture commune five hours walk from the nearest town, surrounded by hula hoops, slack lines, and girls that didn’t shave (no judgement!). But the location was incredible, the jungle hikes verdant and wild, and the fauna abundant. If we ever tired of the hippies, there were always the monkeys, toucans, bats, tapirs, snakes, frogs, and coatis to keep us company. For five days, my only stress was the pressure of deciding if I wanted to read in a hammock, walk in the jungle, or swim in the balmy ocean. 

Our next stop was Mal Pais, a surf town in the north, which ended up on our itinerary because we befriended an Austrian with a rental car who offered to give us a ride. It was an easy travel day. After a year of 15 hour bus rides in South America, it is refreshing to be in Central America, where you can cross an entire country in one hour or five, depending on which way you drive. We ferried across the gulf of Nicoya, a trip that cost us $10 instead of $30 because the attendant learned I spoke spanish and sheepishly exchanged my ticket. 

I have nothing against surfers. They’re usually laid back, fun people. But there is a uniformity to them that infects wave-front towns around the world. Apart from the dust, Mal Pais was just like every other surf town I’ve ever visited - chock-full of shops selling billabong board shorts, tank tops with boastful innuendoes, Oakley sunglasses, and surfboard keychains, and bars selling cheap beer and looping the same shot of the same surfer, on the same wave, all day, every day on the TV.

We had a nice time trying our luck on the waves nonetheless.

Jason

Eight years ago, And Company hired Jason and I as Art Directors within a few days of each other. As the newbies, we were drawn to each other immediately. When the company noticed, we were tossed into an office together, and I found myself sharing a small room with Jason for eight hours a day. I spent as much time with him as I ever have with anybody, and we became close friends.

Jason lives in his own world, black and white but full of color; opinion is fact, an over-cooked burger is a personal affront, a beard and a gut are the main ingredients of attraction, farts are never to be withheld, and everything looks like a penis. Jasonworld is full of creativity, quality, unrestrained sexuality, and heavy-set men. If Jason can imagine it, it will one day be, and if you look closely, you’ll find dolphins that play chess, dogs that talk, organic food that’s cheap, and corporations that care. But no one in Jasonworld gives a shit what you think - so feel free to say whatever you want. If you want to test my mom’s sense of humor by admitting that you used to masturbate to Rush Limbaugh, go ahead - Jason has paved the way. 

In the real world, and especially in Latin America, “bears” are hard to come by, music is abrasive, food is tiresome, and flexibility is tantamount. I wasn’t sure how Jason would handle the inconveniences of travel, so I am happy to report that he took the punches without flinching and generally embraced each of the stops in our improvised Itinerary. We spent two weeks together in Costa Rica that passed quickly and easily.

Bocas Del Toro

Bocas Del Toro is a collection of uninspired towns sprinkled over another spectacular Caribbean archipelago. There are dolphin filled bays, sloth and monkey filled forests, recommendable scuba diving, and a lot of drunk backpackers. I spent a week there, and had a great time with people I’d met at Lost and Found Hostel. New friendships were hard to come by, however, and authenticity was rare. Despite enjoying myself, Bocas did nothing to counter a conclusion I first hatched in the shadow of Trump tower in Panama City: with all its natural splendor and strategic location, Panama is a distasteful house on outstanding property. 

Chiquiri

I left Panama city on a Thursday morning, which I failed to realized was the beginning of the celebratory half of Semana Santa. Easter is one of the more important holidays in Latin America, and planning around it is a virtual necessity. I should have learned my lesson a year ago, when I got caught in Mendoza, Argentina without a hostel reservation, and eventually had to settle for a bug infested hotel room. This year, I could only kick myself as I sat in traffic with the rest of the Panama City exodus, but was lucky to have a reservation at an isolated hostel that would carry me through the weekend.

Buried high in the cloud forest of central Panama with a stunning vista of the valley below, Lost and Found hostel was the perfect place for some fully undeserved R and R. There is little to do there other than explore the surrounding wilderness, relax in the peaceful gardens, and read a book - or write a blog, as the case may be. One afternoon, while struggling to distill that incredible week in Cuba, I was asked what I was writing and, eventually, where it could be found. When my answer earned a subtle eye roll, I was reminded of the importance of enunciation - “bradnation.com” is an unflattering blog title. 

After four days in the forest, it was time to return to the stressful grind of island hopping.