Everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something. - Author Unknown
Monday, November 4, 2013 (DAYS 609 – 611)
Even though I’m halfway around the world, exactly 13,589km (8,444 miles) from San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, now that I have received a new–while used–laptop, I’ve been meaning to give some of my personal favorites from Central America, primarily the area I called home for close to 10-months. There several great places to grub out at while visiting the most popular tourist destination for both foreigners and Nicaraguans alike along the Pacific Coast, and these are just a few of my favorite places:
Even though I’m halfway around the world, exactly 13,589km (8,444 miles) from San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, now that I have received a new–while used–laptop, I’ve been meaning to give some of my personal favorites from Central America, primarily the area I called home for close to 10-months. There several great places to grub out at while visiting the most popular tourist destination for both foreigners and Nicaraguans alike along the Pacific Coast, and these are just a few of my favorite places:
| |  HOWLER BAR & RESTAURANT – This is a relatively new restaurant that opened in the Spring of 2013, located next door to The Black Whale (another great spot for live music or shooting pool) at the front entrance there is a tiki hut that invites you to pull up a bar stool and have an ocean view with your meal. While this can be a bit more expensive for SJDS, the generous chunks of beef on the kabobs and a side of garlic fries are certainly worth splurging for on a backpackers budget. (Price Range: $3 - $10)  NACHO LIBRE – In my opinion, hands down the best burger joint in town and reminds me of In-N-Out Burger. Located on the main street with other restaurants and surf shops, this is one of the few places that also delivers, which is an excellent service when staying at a hostel in town. Guaranteed after a burger and fries you’re most likely going to be full for the rest of the day. (Price Range: $6-$10)  V.I.P. PIZZA – While many people wait anxiously for the days that this place is open, as the owner is a bit eccentric and lives by his own schedule, there is always a wait for the wood-fired thin crust pizza. Since seating can be limited, for about a $1 more (the additional charge for the to-go box), when you are craving pizza this is a great choice. Located directly across from the Taco Stop and the main tienda in town. (Price $7-$10)  TACO & FRY STOP – The best late night food joint in town as most days it is open until 5am, and with the addition of the Fry Stop that opened also in the Spring of 2013 this makes for a heavenly fatty’s combo. Plus the local Nicas can be a hilarious form of entertainment as you wait for your food or the Naked Tiger shuttle. Located next door to Barrio Restaurant and across from V.I.P. Pizza. (Price Range $2.50 - $5)  THE MERCADO & STREET FOOD – This is by far the best choice for local meals at a very inexpensive price. Whether you are looking for breakfast, lunch, or dinner any small stand either surrounding the Mercado or inside, they all have the same menu and relatively the same prices and food portions. The street food vendors are spread around pockets in town but tend to congregate on the main road that runs between Iguanas and the Black Whale, but typically you won’t see them until 6pm or later. (Price Range $1.60 - $4) |
While this is my collection of my personal top 5 ready-to-eat or prepared food choices, some other notables would be; Bar Republika ($6 - $12), which also offers Tuesday trivia and Wednesday poker nights, El Gato Negro ($2 - $8) for a coffee and sandwich, Super Gyro, which now offers breakfast gyros ($2.50 - $3). If you are looking to cook for yourself and be on a tighter budget or utilize the kitchen at your hostel, check out the fish Mercado on the far end of town by the pier (pound of fresh shrimp for under $5) and for a chunk of meat (beef, chicken, or pork) head to the butcher’s shop (not the one at the Mercado) since there tends to be better quality of meat as well as better prices, which is located on the road heading in or out of town near the gas station before you reach only super market, Pali. While there are other popular places to eat such as Barrio Café, just realize when you receive your bill they will add both the VAT (value added tax) and a 10% service charge, but most of the other places listed you will only pay what is posted on their menu.
MY RTW PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
Since the last 7-days were a non-stop schedule of a jam-packed itinerary, where almost every second of the day and night was planned, not to mention the emotional roller coaster of meeting my birth mother for the first time, I’ve decided to utilize the next few days in an attempt of catching up on all of the missed sleep I’ve missed out on, however, sleep still continues to elude me like finding hot girls at a Star Trek convention. Since I find that my sleeping pattern is all over the board, I use this time to catch up on writing about all of my experiences while the memories are still fresh. I’m also pleasantly surprised that Crystal has moved me into the twins’ old room, Danielle and Kaitlynn from New York, since they left early Monday morning to fly back to the States. I can’t rave enough about Mugunghwa guesthouse. Everything from how spotlessly clean every area of the house is, having a spacious kitchen with all of the luxuries of home (that again is unbelievably clean for a hostel kitchen), an abundance of communal food items, and now that the ESWS Home to Home Program has officially ended, being given a private room to myself.
Since the last 7-days were a non-stop schedule of a jam-packed itinerary, where almost every second of the day and night was planned, not to mention the emotional roller coaster of meeting my birth mother for the first time, I’ve decided to utilize the next few days in an attempt of catching up on all of the missed sleep I’ve missed out on, however, sleep still continues to elude me like finding hot girls at a Star Trek convention. Since I find that my sleeping pattern is all over the board, I use this time to catch up on writing about all of my experiences while the memories are still fresh. I’m also pleasantly surprised that Crystal has moved me into the twins’ old room, Danielle and Kaitlynn from New York, since they left early Monday morning to fly back to the States. I can’t rave enough about Mugunghwa guesthouse. Everything from how spotlessly clean every area of the house is, having a spacious kitchen with all of the luxuries of home (that again is unbelievably clean for a hostel kitchen), an abundance of communal food items, and now that the ESWS Home to Home Program has officially ended, being given a private room to myself.
Tuesday brings another big milestone as it marks exactly 20 months (610 days, and just four months short of exactly 2-years), since I left Colorado on this incredible journey that I had no idea where it may lead. And, I suppose that it is only fitting that I would spend this celebratory mark in the country of my birth. I know that I’ve spoken often of achieving dreams and taking risks, and I still feel the same because you never know exactly how life may turn out–but at the same time if you are unwilling to make changes in your life when you may already be unhappy or even miserable, use that advice of doing something about it. I think one of the saddest things in life is when people wait too long to experience something that they were intended for much earlier in life, but gambled on the fact that they had more time to live out these dreams later, only to realize that the face looking back at them in the mirror is no longer the youthful adventurous soul they thought would always be there, but the years have passed more quickly than ever expected and they may have missed out on their God-given right to a better or more promising life. My friend Liinaa, from Australia, that I met in Malaysia very briefly sitting outside the Petronas Towers had a great quote, “when you do great things you can’t really talk about it as most people don’t like to hear your stories or where you are coming from as it makes them question their own choices. So I am learning to become a wonderful listener.” I think that even though I try to convey to people how life-changing this journey has been, I also want to stop and listen to others along the way–whether that be those back in the States or the stranger I’ve met on the bus next to me. Listening to one another and to your own heart will tell you a lot about what course your life may take and the future that may be waiting for you.
Waking up to an overcast sky and a cold light rain, today appears as though it will maintain the same forecast throughout the day. The feeling of illness in the form of a mild case of cabin fever is beginning to set in slightly, but thankfully my new local friend, Nam, has messaged me to see if I’d like to meet her for coffee later in the day. All I could think was, this is the perfect type of weather for such an occasion. Ok repeat that last sentence but in a very poor British accent. Yes, these are the types of things that often run through my head as I’m writing these blogs, while again, not taking the time, for whatever reason, to go back and proof read and make corrections to the numerous blunders of grammatical mistakes I am sure exist. Several people asked if I would ever write a book about my travels and since I have actually been quite surprised at myself for having continued to try and keep up on writing about my experiences, especially since prior to this I never kept a journal, a diary, or even a pop-up picture book to reminisce about later, I suppose that if someone were ever inclined to offer me a book deal then some other lowly person would get the joy of reading and correcting all of my errors. Sucker! And as I’m swimming around in piles of cash like Uncle Scrooge, I’ll at least take this poor sap to the Olive Garden for unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks, where I’d give my friend Jeremy a nice fat tip in exchange for a drug-deal style exchange of a sack full of those delicious Andes mints. Anyways, returning from my tangent, I met Nam last Wednesday when our group was taken to the Gyeongbokgung Palace (경복궁) and she was one of three or four volunteer translators our group had for the afternoon and is now friends with most of us on Facebook–awe the social media website that changes it’s privacy settings so often I’ve given up trying to figure out who can see what or collect this or that on me. Even most of the people I’m traveling with or met a few days prior have no idea where I am going, including myself, so it’s game on Facebook. Throwing on my jacket, scarf, and hat I head out of the guesthouse just after 3:45pm, when I received a message that Nam is about 15 minutes away on the subway. We had agreed to meet outside of Exit 5 at the Hognik subway station, and for whatever reason this was the most confusing and difficult find I’ve experienced in Seoul as it was tucked behind several 6-foot fencing sections off the main road. After showing up about 20-minutes later than I should have, there is a small café directly across from the station where we go in and find a table.
The conversation begins a bit slow as I still only know a handful of phrases in Korean, and my counterpart’s English, while still light years beyond mine, is often a bit difficult to understand at times. When there is a pause in the conversation as we stare at one another searching for the appropriate elementary word to use, thank God for smartphones with translation apps, as we use this more than a dozen times. I am reminded how much easier Latin America is to travel, since you at least have a common alphabet to use when communicating as well as an enormous region that shares the same language, but we still manage. Knowing that she will read this, I hope she has a good sense of humor, because I still love hearing her accent, along with Miss Swan, when they pronounce words such as; rike, and rearry. I know that Steph, from the group of adoptees, and I had great fun in asking questions in order to receive answers for toilet–awe you mean ravatory. I can only imagine what things they find hilarious (or should I say hirarious) that Westerners learning Korean or another Asian language laugh about in our failed pronunciation attempts. I learn a lot about Nam as she is still in University, but has plans to travel when she graduates and of course after hearing what I’ve been up to for the past 20 months she is enthralled in my stories and photos, but I enjoy hearing more about Korea personally, so it’s a great back and forth, but before we know it the time has flown by and it is almost 6pm and Nam still has a 90-minute commute home by both subway and bus. Before we part ways, I invite her to join my mother and I this weekend if she will be in the city and she tells me that she will message me later in the week once she knows her schedule. Since I feel a bit bad for making her travel the long distance, at least according to travel time, I pay for the two of us, since my commute is walking a short distance and taking a single bus only about 10-minutes in total.
The conversation begins a bit slow as I still only know a handful of phrases in Korean, and my counterpart’s English, while still light years beyond mine, is often a bit difficult to understand at times. When there is a pause in the conversation as we stare at one another searching for the appropriate elementary word to use, thank God for smartphones with translation apps, as we use this more than a dozen times. I am reminded how much easier Latin America is to travel, since you at least have a common alphabet to use when communicating as well as an enormous region that shares the same language, but we still manage. Knowing that she will read this, I hope she has a good sense of humor, because I still love hearing her accent, along with Miss Swan, when they pronounce words such as; rike, and rearry. I know that Steph, from the group of adoptees, and I had great fun in asking questions in order to receive answers for toilet–awe you mean ravatory. I can only imagine what things they find hilarious (or should I say hirarious) that Westerners learning Korean or another Asian language laugh about in our failed pronunciation attempts. I learn a lot about Nam as she is still in University, but has plans to travel when she graduates and of course after hearing what I’ve been up to for the past 20 months she is enthralled in my stories and photos, but I enjoy hearing more about Korea personally, so it’s a great back and forth, but before we know it the time has flown by and it is almost 6pm and Nam still has a 90-minute commute home by both subway and bus. Before we part ways, I invite her to join my mother and I this weekend if she will be in the city and she tells me that she will message me later in the week once she knows her schedule. Since I feel a bit bad for making her travel the long distance, at least according to travel time, I pay for the two of us, since my commute is walking a short distance and taking a single bus only about 10-minutes in total.
When I arrive back at the guesthouse I am feeling a bit famished and since there is cabinet after cabinet of communal food items, the one thing that catches my eye is an opened package of Hello Kitty pasta shapes. Score! Taking the Asian stereotype to a higher level with my dinner. When I posted the photo on Facebook it very quickly received 36 rikes, I mean likes. As I am cooking up my Haro Kiti (ハローキティ) meal, Crystal comes in and tells me that my birth mom called and that she wanted to ask if it would be ok for her to stay both Saturday and Sunday night. This is a welcomed surprise and I tell her that would be fine and inquire about when she will be arriving on Saturday and where I should meet her. Crystal tells me that she is expected to arrive around 10:30am at the Yongsan KTX/subway station, but since this is a massive terminal we have agreed to meet outside of Eastern Social Welfare Services (ESWS) at 11am. After eating my meal with pauses of laughter as I look down at my fork, I feel the onset of a food coma mixed with the lack of sleep and retire to my awesome private room for the evening.
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