Countdown to B.A.S.E. Jump

(Beatty Attempts Sensational Exit?) These last couple weeks before leaving Pennsylvania for good have been surreal. The final rush to transport my boxes to New Jersey was capped by an unbelievably stressful day. Gabe drove the U-Haul truck and I, the Kia, with Brynn in her crate. Our directions were good, and we pulled into Port Elizabeth around 3 p.m. The port itself is an endless maze of six-lane roads flanked by thousands of flatbed containers, an enormous canyon of giant Lego blocks, interspersed with hundreds of cranes that seem, somehow, like a flock of hundreds of gigantic cranes.

Finding the building would have been helped by adequate street signage, and—oh, right —knowing the name on the building was different than the name of the shipping company! Gabe sensibly parked at the only building on the right road that appeared to be for loading and unloading tractor-trailers, and waited for me while I circled the docks in vain, looking for the right street, and right building... miraculous, really, that we found each other.  By now, it was nearly 4, and I tore around the building in search of an office, finding only locked doors. Eventually, I spied two men emerging from one of the loading bays;  they pointed me to an entrance where I met a man in charge of import shipping. He steered me to the export side, where they had never heard of my shipping company. And then, somebody asked if I had a booking number. "Yes!" I gasped. "It is on every single box!" Aha! This number changed everything. There it was in the computer, with all my information. We unloaded the boxes, which were then stacked on pallets, shrink-wrapped, weighed and measured. I bid them farewell, wondering if I would ever see them again, and we took off to drop the truck and check in at the Ramada Inn.

My arthritic right knee was so aggravated by the seven hours behind the wheel that I was forced to cancel our plan to run into New York City for dinner. We headed for home the next morning. I still had forms to complete for my residence application, more shots and medications for Brynn, along with her international veterinary health certificate. And now, as I am crippled with pain, I had yet another issue to deal with: cortisone shots. Augghhh. Needles in my knees! Reason enough to cancel the whole venture.  Well, at least now I know I really want to make this move. I will even consent to these terrifying injections. Did I mention I'm a big baby?

For this, my final weekend in PA, my sister Mary Mary came down from her home near Scranton, bringing along her beautiful blue Great Dane puppy, Sophie. We had a ball watching little Brynn and massive Sophie play like the puppies they are. Mary Mary and our brother Jack took us out for a good-bye dinner. There are moments that remind me of the finality of what I am doing, and I am not enjoying them any better than those shots that are scheduled for Tuesday. There are prices to pay for everything, aren't there?

Of Cartons and Corgis

We interrupt the frantic packing, labeling, inventorying, and document collecting of my final three weeks in Pennsylvania to weigh in on said crazy-making chores, scotch and water at hand.

My last couple of days in Managua in May were spent tearing across the metro area from Inmigracion to INTUR, the Nicaraguan Institute of Tourism, and back to Inmigracion again. The country wants to attract retirees like me, to spend our pittances in Nicaragua, and hire people to keep house and wash our cars. So they figured that the tourism folks would have the best toolkit for selling norteamericanos on the merits of tropical life.  Yet, those retirees  also need to apply for residence visas, which are the purview of the immigration office. So, in keeping with bureaucratic logic, one must apply for retiree residence at —the tourism office. But the forms are at Inmigracion.

The shipping company I hired to transport my worldly goods—incredibly, after selling all my furniture and giving most of my clothing to Goodwill, I still have 23 boxes of books, tchotchkes, kitchen goods, paintings, fishing gear, CDs, travel souvenirs, bedding, pillows, towels, first aid—requires a complete inventory of all boxes and their contents. So, it was necessary to pack absolutely everything in advance of delivery of the boxes to a port in New Jersey, scheduled in five days. Of course, Gabe and I do have to live here until I leave in July in time to meet my boxes in Managua. I did not pack the coffee maker.

The house is for sale. In two months, one person has asked to see it. In two days, brother Jack and I have a date with our lawyer to arrange power of attorney for Jack, so he can sell the house. I have lowered the price in hopes that somebody will find it irresistible. Yep, that's gonna happen.

And if things were not already chaotic enough, I just bought a corgi puppy! My late lovely corgi Sugarbunny died last year of cancer at just 7 years old. I figured I would adopt a dog in Nicaragua, but that would have made sense. It turns out I simply need a corgi, and when I found a litter for sale near Pittsburgh, I just had to have the female tri-color. Her name is Brynn, and we are both working hard on her house-breaking. I have never traveled with a pet. Why not, I asked myself, enjoy that new experience while I am panicked about my shipment, customs, visa, and selling my house?

















I am fucking brilliant!

White Shirts and Skinny Horses

My first visit to Managua in 1988 was a watershed life event.  My previous travels had thus far comprised developed nations in Europe and the Soviet Union. Even Moscow’s endless blocks of huge apartment buildings crammed full of tiny flats left me unprepared for the living conditions I found in Nicaragua for so many of its citizens. The sight of kids playing baseball using sticks for bats, wads of electrical tape for balls, paint can lids for bases, and fielding around the corpse of a dead dog inspired me to organize a project to send sport equipment to San Isidro, Pittsburgh's sister city. 

Then, a teacher may have earned about $50 per month. She lived in a two- or three-room house of corrugated steel and wood or clay bricks, with earthen floor and unglazed windows. She owned few articles of clothing, yet miraculously managed a spotless white blouse and dark skirt at school each day. She cooked on a fire pit behind the house, and had no indoor plumbing. Or, if she owned a toilet, it had ceased working years ago and could not be repaired due in part to the U.S. embargo in place since 1985, when Ronald Reagan tried to undermine the 1979 leftist revolution that broke the grip of the dictator Anastasio Somoza.

In rural areas, conditions were less sophisticated. Yet daily, thousands of children donned their own clean white shirts and dark pants or skirts and headed off to school. Education was widely regarded to be both a fundamental right and the means to vouchsafing the country’s future.

A quarter-century later, there is ample evidence of progress on many fronts in Nicaragua. Roads that once resembled lunar landscapes are paved, and serve legions of modern trucks, buses, and late model cars. Street lighting and improved electrical service now illuminate nighttime Managua. New construction and multi-story buildings (once rare, due to earthquake fears) are everywhere. Still, those smooth roads also serve rustic carts piled high with firewood, drawn by skeletal horses and ponies. Many people still use firewood for cooking, and those poor beasts never enjoy grain rations.

Students still wear white shirts, and teachers in private schools find better salaries than their public school counterparts, in contrast to the U.S., where the reverse is most often the case. Poverty is still rife, despite a growing middle class. Opponents of the Sandinista party still rail against corruption, and all but two of the available television channels are now government-owned.

Throughout the city, billboards display air-brushed images of President Daniel Ortega exhorting his people to move upward and onward—“Vamos adelante!” His once handsome face is now rendered as unlined as a baby’s. Gone are the oversized glasses and the luxuriant black mustache, which has thinned along with his hairline. His grave countenance has been replaced by an empty grin that seems to plead, “Take the picture, already!”

I met him, once. In 1989, I invited Vera Clemente, widow of the great Pittsburgh right fielder Roberto, to come to Nicaragua. Vera had collected aid for Nicaragua’s victims of Hurricane Joan, much as her husband had done following the 1971 earthquake, losing his life in the effort. Her visit was the first opportunity most Nicaraguans had had to connect with their national hero Roberto, and her presence was treated with the pomp of a state occasion. President Ortega invited us to accompany him to the opening of a hydroelectric plant in Asturias, to the north. We were driven by car, and he flew in via helicopter. After the ceremonies and speeches, we sat with Ortega after lunch, and he asked many questions and listened carefully. I was impressed by his demeanor and warm smile—and no silly grins.

Another billboard around town shows Daniel and his best bud, Hugo. Well, his late best bud. Hugo Chavez is now memorialized as a rotunda behind the Intercontinental Hotel. His portrait, rendered in thousands of tiny colored lights, is a garish reminder that leftist governments gotta stick together in the shadow of the superpower al norte.

Gabe and the Volcano

Nicaragua is a fairly recent addition to the slender link between North and South America, geologically speaking, and remains seismically active. Minor earthquakes (and the occasional devastating tremblor like the 1971 New Year's Eve event that leveled Managua's centro) occur regularly, and volcanoes dot the landscape throughout the western terrain. Some are extinct, most are dormant, and several simmer smokily for years on end, long enough to become tourist attractions. Volcan Masaya is just such an active smolderer, and atop its crater a wall has been constructed behind which a visitor may stand and look over into the white smoky maw that, we are told, glows at night. Nearby, a rocky upwelling of lava is crowned by a makeshift crucifix, with strict prohibition against using the slender boardwalk to approach it. Visitors are welcome to hike up the crater wall in the other direction for a more elevated look at the surrounding evidence of long ago eruptions, with black rocky spillage coursing down the volcano walls.

Gabe and Stefan joined a guided group to make the climb, and his mother Erlinda and I took shelter from the sun in a tiny pavilion where two women had set up their fruit stand. Baskets of coconuts, pineapples, mangoes, and watermelons were stowed beneath the wooden counter upon which they stacked baggies of freshly cut fruit for sale. I asked for a coconut, and the woman deftly carved away its outer husk with a large machete, finishing with a single bold stroke to lop off the top and insert a straw.  Fresh coconut water is incredibly refreshing and delicious, especially in the hot Nicaraguan sun. After I drained the coconut, the lady chopped it in half and scooped out the equally toothsome immature meat. All for about twenty cordobas or $.80.

The volcano tourist complex includes a small museum that explains the geologic history of Central America and how Nicaragua first appeared as a chain of several islands that grew larger as they were lifted above sea level by the tectonic plates beneath the Pacific coastline. Volcanic eruptions filled in much of the present-day acreage, producing year-round bumper crops of sugar cane, tomatoes, pineapple, avocados, and... Oh, somebody stop me before I start drooling! I start imagining all the fresh fruits and vegetables and fish and shrimp that await me there, and it's all over.

The next day, a volcano to the north near the colonial city of Leon erupted, sending smoke and ash high over the cane fields into the rainless sky.

Ten Days in May

We traveled by night to Managua from Ft. Lauderdale, arriving around one a.m., a balmy time of day minus the direct heat of the tropical sun. In fact, due to weather disturbances on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, we enjoyed gusty winds and cool breezes during most of our visit. The wet season should have begun by mid-May, but rain was barely in evidence during our ten days.

After a day of decompression and a happy reunion with my friends and their two grown sons, who were toddlers when I first met them in 1988, the first order of business was a drive to La Boquita. With younger brother Stefan at the wheel, we made good time traveling south to Diriamba, turning right toward the Pacific coast, perhaps 50 miles in all. La Boquita is a tiny village that so far has eluded the tourist traffic that pours into San Juan del Sur, closer to Costa Rica. The beach at La Boquita attracts crowds of Nicaraguans during Holy Week and Christmas vacations, but otherwise sees little action.

My apartment is small, but comfortable, with great air flow—essential to basic sanity in the absence of air conditioning. My landlord and lady are transplanted Kentuckians who settled in La Boquita about five years ago seeking their own corner of paradise. The house is perched just above the sea on a shallow escarpment, with steps leading down to the water, which was at low tide when we visited, exposing several yards of wet sand. I wondered if I could surf cast there.

We three decided to check out La Boquita's cluster of beachside restaurants under thatched pavilions, and were commended to Los Jicaritos, with chef Suzy presiding over a menu of fresh seafood. Make that Mr. Suzy, a diminutive round sort of chap with a ponytail, eyeliner, and an effusive manner, who led us through the restaurant and down into the pavilion to a table set on the sand. There were few customers, but dozens of available tables. I tried to imagine the throngs of Semana Santa (Holy Week), lining up for Suzy's seafood soup. That's what I had for lunch, and it was very good indeed. Gabe had lobster. When I paid the check, Suzy excused himself and ran to neighboring businesses to borrow the change I had coming. Running a restaurant in a sleepy beach town that wakes up for only two or three weeks per year means cutting it close to the bone. I told Suzy I would be back before long and he gave me a big hug. My first friend in La Boquita.