Searching for why I’m here

I don’t know why I came to Nicaragua. Perhaps one of many reasons, perhaps as a test for myself and for my marriage, perhaps out of boredom, perhaps out of fear or perhaps just because I felt like I needed to do something drastic at that time.
I am sitting at a bar, confused and trying to sort some things out in my head and trying to get a little bit of perspective, but as we all know, perspective is a one-sided event.
A couple of days after I arrived here I remember being in the shower and wondering if we had made a big mistake in coming here. Today, dazed, confused and in search for words, I am sure about one thing: I’m happy I’m here.
Nicaragua wasn’t a long-term plan, like the Camino was, nor was it something that was really though through. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment idea, or, as much as I can make a spur-of-the-moment decision anyway.
My patience has been tried, my body has been beaten and I have been proven wrong or misguided in these past two month more than a lot of times in my life, I guess it’s why I’m happy I’m here. I’m not sure that I would have a future in my marriage or even be able to get to where I want to get on a personal level without the challenges I have been facing of late.
I am learning how to say “I’m sorry”, “I’m wrong” and how to deal with my insecurities in a place that is as far from my comfort zone as I am willing to go right now. It’s not Sub-Saharan Africa, but it’s a start.
I probably should have begun writing about this stuff two months ago, but I have been busy with so much to do that I have had little time for reflection or anything else. At times it’s been about just moving, because sitting still has seemed a concept too difficult and too painful to actually bring myself to do so.
I came to a bit of a halt a few days ago, due to wet feet.
Probably one of the most meaningful episodes in my life has been the Camino de Santiago. All I had to do on that trek was to reflect. To feel exactly what was going on inside of me, to think to beat myself up, to grow and to learn.
I was worried because I hadn’t felt any of those thing on this trip. I was desperately looking for a reason to grow and to change, to improve on some of the big defects I consider I possess and perhaps become a bigger contribution to humanity as a whole, or at least to my marriage.
At QuetzalTrekkers, every volunteer that is fit for hiking does so. It is the policy of the organization that a volunteer will serve as an assistant guide until the bosses feel that they are secure enough with the trail, the procedure and themselves to be able to be in charge of a group of people. Of course, at that point you also have an assistant guide to help you along.
My turn came this past Saturday, when I was supposed to lead my first Telica trek. I wasn’t looking forward to it and really didn’t want to go, I had already done Telica four times in a row and was sort of fed up with it. Friday came and went and no one signed up, I though I was saved.
On Saturday, a whopping four people (our minimum for a trek) showed interest in doing on Sunday, and out of responsibility, but now without a little bit of whining, I started to prepare for what has been my first trek as a lead guide. I was going to had Paul as a second guide. I didn’t know much about Paul, but we shall now and forever refer to him as ZenGuide.
I was a nervous wreck, I mean, who the hell ever though that I would be any good as a guide to begin with? I’m terrified of snakes, terrified of making a mistake, am not the most physically strong of the hikers and certainly far from the most experienced.
All the Telica hikes that I had been on had gone on without a hitch. Well, that’s not true. On my first Telica hike, one of our clients got sick and I had to stay behind with her while she took five steps on a horse and got off due to nausea, held her head when she threw up and had to speak very strongly with her when she began to black out and wanted to go to sleep on the sandy trail.
I was reminded about my troubles on the Camino and remembered that I should have compassion with her, because, if her experience was anything like mine, she was going through one of the most difficult moments in her life. My feet were burning and all I wanted to do was cry and think about myself, but I got through it, she and I did, and the local man that we had hired to take the horse was one of the nicest, most patient people I have ever met, I swear, Ethernet is what makes us have little patience for anything that takes more than a few seconds, he told me not to worry that he had all day and that he would stop as many times as we needed. That man, Jose Rene, should be canonized.
But at the end of the day, it wasn’t my hike, I wasn’t responsible, and if anything blew up, there was someone else to pick up the slack. This last Telica was all on me.
I was almost on the border of a nervous wreck the night before the trek. I was running around, making lists, writing things on my hand, being very nervous and feeling like I was doing everything wrong. Paul did everything he was asked to do and then I had him go pack. Ricard had offered to help but I said I didn’t needed and then when I went to bed (I was so reved up I could have levitated off the bed) I asked him to, even if he didn’t want to, come to bed with me, he was awesome, talked with me for an hour til I calmed down, and help me until I fell asleep. I don’t think he will ever realize how much that meant to me.
The next day started out OK, I had meticulously planned everything out so that it would all be just perfect. The different amounts of money that I would need were divided up into separated piles depending on amount and use (the bus out, the meal we have at the end, the entrance to the park, etc…)
Rebecca, the assistant director, had given me some directions that should explain where I was at all times. And we took off. There were four clients and two guides, four boys and two girls. It all seemed to be going well until about 11am when it started raining. The first thing that I thought was: SHIT! My feet are getting soaked.
For anyone who heard about my troubles on the Camino you will remember that getting my feet wet is probably the worst thing that can happen to me. There was so much water in my shoes, that it squirted out through the pores in the fabric every time that I took a step. I WANTED TO SCREAM!!!!!
I thought I was lost for about an hour and it showed on my face. I had taken the wrong turn last time when I was training and I wasn’t sure of the path as I hadn’t really been paying attention when I had been in the back last time. And of course, at that moment you are kicking yourself with your water-sodden shoes and wondering why the hell you were listening to music, taking pictures or doing whatever the hell else you were doing that last time you walked down this path and weren’t paying attention. IDIOT!
Well I freaked out for nothing and got the clients nervous for no good reason because it turns out I was walking down the right path all along. Did I mention that it was pouring the whole time?
Well, I guess that I should be thankful because we got a 45-minute break from the rain while we had lunch at which point I took the opportunity to squeeze out about 8oz of water from my socks (cringe).
Our lunch was short lived and we had to get on the road right away as it started thundering a lightning heavily and we needed to get up to the volcano. For most of it, we were walking up a river and going against the current, it was really about two to three inches of water on the way up.
After stopping to pick up firewood, I realized that my poncho no longer fit over me, the pack and wood, so I threw it over my pack and tied the sleeved to my shoulders. As my shirt was red and my poncho was blue, I became SUPERGUIDE!!!!!!!! The eight-year old boy in me came out and I began to run around in circles holding my poncho like a cape and making trumpet noises from my mouth, and yes, I have pictures.
So we FINALLY made it up to Telica. But we didn’t get to see the lava. It was so smoky that we had absolutely no visibility. The draw of this whole trek (though it is beautiful) is that after an arduous trek up you get to see the stuff that is at the center of the earth. I had to tell the clients that it wasn’t safe to go up so that kind of sucked.
We went down and tried to set up camp. This usually would have involved setting up three tents, except, one of the tents was missing a ground sheet (the stuff that isolates you from water on the ground) and another was missing poles (THE STUFF THAT HOLDS THE TENTS UP!). We consolidated tents and luckily had enough to build two (usually we like to put two to a tent but ended up having a snug three per tent).
Then came the fire…
One of the clients, Elias, was adamant about making the fire himself. Except that everything was wet, the firewood, the kindling, the paper with which we might start it, even with all the kerosene that poured, NOTHING would catch! Then came SAINT TOBIAS.
Backtracking a few days…
A couple of days earlier, I had received a call at the office from a German guy who said that he was a low-budget traveler who could not afford to trek with us but wanted directions, I told him to come to the office and apparently, the asst director didn’t give him great directions. Somehow, he made it to where we were, and came to our camp, I recognized his voice and told him he had spoken to me on the phone. It turns out, Saint Tobias had been a German boy scout and informed us that in order to get a fire in the rain we should peel off the outer wet part of wood in order for the inner dry part to be able to burn, and then use the shavings as kindling (TAKE THAT SURVIVORMAN!!!!). Well , we went to work with four Swiss Army knives and manages to peel a bunch of wood. Meanwhile, I cooked on the camp stove (something at St Tobias also helped us start). And after dinner, we managed to start a fire, partially dry some of our wet clothing and even burn some of it.
Usually we are in bed by 8:30, but we were so cold that none of us wanted to leave the fireside. Finally, we (well Tobias) made a dome around the embers to dry the wood for breakfast and went to bed, three to a tent.
I was sharing a tent with ZenGuide (who by the way had been totally chill and confident in my ability to succeed as lead guide, he will be cool in my book forever) and Elias, and as at this point I had been wet for a good 12 hours, I was FREEZING, the boys spent half the night fussing over me, which was actually really sweet, ZenGuide put his sleeping bag over both of us and somehow, we survived the night.
The next morning, we woke up at 4:30 and made two attempts to climb up the volcano, but to no avail, we did not get to see lava as there was too much smoke.
After, St Tobias started yet another fire (this time without even trying as the embers caught on fire thanks to the fact that they had been protected by the wood dome) we had breakfast and took off.
The hike down was hard and I fell about 5 times (average for me) but the rain had made everything really slippery. I got us lost three times. Actually, not really, I took one wrong turn once and realized it five minutes later. But twice, I was so nervous that I was not going the right way that I walked back and fourth for 20 minutes and ran back a kilometer to talk to a farmer before I realized that if I would have continued a mere 100 feet I would have recognized the trail. I think that my worst enemy there was my lack of confidence in myself and my inability to bullshit in from of the clients, because the only bad comment I got on the feedback forms was a lack of confidence in myself. I can only do better next time.
So we made it back, through a downpour, a shortage of shelter, difficulty with fire, lack of lava, and wet feet. I didn’t kill anyone, didn’t really get lost, and am probably a little more secure in my guiding abilities.
Yeah, I am going through hard times, physical and emotional, my limits are being pushed every day and maybe I am fucking up enormously, but really, there’s nowhere I would rather be. I am meant to be here, I’m meant to fight, I’m meant to grow, I’m meant to learn and I’m meant to triumph, right here and right now.