In late 2017 I left my life as a corporate professional behind, and embarked upon a new journey to travel the world, experience new culture, and most importantly push myself outside of my own comfort zone whenever possible. This is the beginning of that story.
You could, of course, watch through how this story unfolds on my YouTube channel, but I want you all who are following along here on steemit to get a bit more than that. I kept a journal on this trip, and I'm actually going to share the raw entries that are aligned with the video's timeline's. To be honest, the videos never quite scratched the surface of the realities in this sort of trip. The only time you can feel comfortable to pull out a camera and document every moment, is when you are, well, quite comfortable with your situation. And that in my opinion, can be the least interesting encounters that you have.
Journal Entry - 12/12/2017 - Zero Day
Today held a range of emotions, from excitement, to nerves, to wondering if this is something that I really had thought through all the way; the answer to which, is probably no, but too late for that, it's pass fail from here on out. The best way that I can describe the brewing feeling inside before getting on my first flight, is similar to the feeling you get before you step in front of a crowd to give an improvised speech. It's not dangling off of a mountain type of adrenaline, but it's still there, and still makes you feel on edge. That particular feeling started to fade as the day went on, and the anxiety started to diminish by the time I was walking to my gate after flight two in Huston, TX. Until we started our final descent into Managua, and the flight attendant began handing out declaration forms for the customs agents. That was when it all started to reappear, and that all familiar feeling began to creep back into my stomach; reality had now set in.
My preconceived idea of what I expected this trip to be, was drastically adjusted the moment I stepped through customs. From the packed glass panes of eager faces in the airport's non-secured area (and I mean packed!), of cabbies, travelers families, and other curious passer-by's, to my first impression of the architecture, city layout, and locale of the Capital's international airport, I started to switch back into a primal 'let's get this done' mentality, flying in at night never helps this mentality either.
My first perception change was the language barrier, it's something that I totally couldn't have prepared for in the little consistent world that I had lived in. I knew that it would exist, I wasn't ignorant to that fact, but many travelers had expressed that sufficient English was common enough with the locals to get by with minimal Spanish for the duration of their trip. Maybe I'm going about this trip a bit differently (I didn't go into this with the idea of being the "typical tourist, doing typical tourist things",) but I met one person today since I've landed that I was able to communicate efficiently with in English; and it unfortunately was at the end of the night. The hotel I was supposed to stay at ended up being full, and with our combination of crude English and Spanish, they were able to give me a few recommendations and 'addresses' (official addresses are measured in blocks and distance of other notable landmarks, they are quite useless if you do not already know an area) and it turns out that the taxi driver I just happened upon outside the hotel also couldn't make sense of it either. After gracefully flopping around both languages like a carp in a kayak, we were able to translate enough of each others phrases to land me in the middle of a neighborhood that my in-flight literature told me to "avoid at all costs." I managed to get my cab driver to understand that I wanted to change course and find a different hotel, even if that meant spending a bit more cash. The thought of "worse case scenario" taxi-hijackings, and robberies that I was warned of, were of course prevalent in my mind throughout this whole thing, but trusted that God was going to get me where I needed to go, I just needed to be ready to go along for the ride. After two or three other suggestions from my taxi driver, he had caught on that I was planning on traveling to Granada tomorrow, to which after 15 minutes of not understanding a word each other were saying we finally came to an understanding by him pointing to himself saying "I drive to Granada" and me saying "¿ahora o mañana?" And I finally realized that he was offering to drive me to Granada to find a hotel there instead. An hour later, through questionable neighborhoods, having to get fuel, questionable driving maneuvers, and a vehicle who's currently quality is best epitomized by pointing out that it did not have a functional speedometer (or windows, but that was actually a plus, oh and I think Juan is going to have to replace his transmission soon, that things on it's way out... but I didn't have the heart, or the capacity in Spanish... to tell him.) Our conversation was incredibly difficult, neither of us knew enough of each others language to really talk about much at all. (Google translate would have helped wonderfully throughout the whole day... but did I fail to mention that my phone was almost in single digit battery percentage?) However we were able to discuss the basic things in life, he had named me Miguel (Travis is apparently to difficult for Latin American pronunciation) that Granada has better Christmas fiestas, but San Juan del Sur has better looking women.
Throughout this my situational awareness was still peaked, there was a part of my mind that just couldn't shake the thought of something could still go terribly wrong, luckily those thoughts were unwarranted, but regardless, it was good to know that my head goes on a swivel when something doesn't feel right. I'll admit though, I checked my GPS map every ten minutes in order to ensure that he was taking me on the right path. Once we got to Granada, we had a heck of a time finding Hotel Dario, but after asking everyone standing on a street corner, Juan politely declining my GPS map that lead to the location, and opted to follow to youngsters driving around on a moped who signaled us directions before speeding off. When I finally saw the hotel, and accompanying mariachi band outside, I told Juan (in spanish impressively for me) that "Usted es un regalo de Dios!" (You are a gift from God!) He smiled and laughed (especially since it was probably the best construction of a Spanish sentence that I'd accomplished the whole drive,) then I believe invited me to smoke cigars with him during the Christmas festival (although with my Spanish ability, he may have just been asking me to give him a cigar as a Christmas present, or as a tip) I gave him the tip, and said "Si, Muchas Gracias!"
The hotel luckily had someone at the desk that spoke English very well (although she said she spoke English 'un poco,' after today, yeah right lady, you're as fluent as they come!) Got a room at a really high rate for Nicaragua, but I did not care at this point, I wanted to be, just done for the day. After a brief negation to save me 10 bucks, I was shown to my room. The room was great, it had a balcony... however, a balcony directly above a mariachi band, and string of pubs, and accompanying loud festivities that goes along with that. I asked how long it usually lasts. She said typically 1:00 at the latest... It's 1:00 am right now, still going strong. Going to be a long night.
Today had its ups and downs, hopefully this will spark my memory in the future if needed. I have to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.
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Thoughts Now
It's actually quite humorous to look back at, once you've gotten a bit of experience under your belt in a new environment, and see the simple realities of things. Being in a completely new place, playing by completely different rules, puts you in a 'high alert' mode until you figure everything out. Most people refer to this as "culture shock," but I see it as something that is experienced even in daily life outside of the specific confines of going to some place foreign. You can experience this same set of emotions trying anything new to you, and the remedy to it is always the same, experience (through increased exposure,) and conscientiousness of what you do and do not understand (so you know what new knowledge you need to attain.) Once you start to add into those two categories, you start to feel more comfortable in the present moment.
All in all, I remember this day very well. I was freaking out. It was just the rush that I was looking for.