Paul Carlino
Reading is Fun!

I learned to read a long time ago. But somewhere along the path of life I fell out of the habit of reading for pleasure. Then along came the “LIttle Free Library” . . .

Reading is Fun!
Featured Articles, Mexico, USA
Paul Carlino
Vaccination Day

Follow us on our 72 hour odyssey from Central Mexico to Laredo, Texas to get jabbed with the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine . . . only hours before the Center for Disease Control puts a pause on further administration of the shot . . .

Vaccination Day
Paul Carlino
Road Trip to Summer Vacation

We had already spent ninety days quarantining from Covid, so another seven days in a car driving to the US would be a piece of cake.

Road Trip to Summer Vacation
Featured Articles, Living in SMA, Mexico, Moving
Paul Carlino
Our Mexican Revolution

San Miguel de Allende was significant to the origins of the Mexican Revolution that sought independence from Spain.  Was it just coincidence that our newly transplanted Vanamos family chose to establish residency there . . .

Our Mexican Revolution
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Adventures on the Caribbean Coast - Part II

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Adventures on the Caribbean Coast - Part II

If you look at a map of Panama, you will see that there is one road connecting the northwest corner of the country with the rest of the country, which, as far as we can tell, consists of the Pan-American highway and Panama City. If you actually drive that one road, you will understand why no one bothered to build another - there’s nothing out there except jungle, bananas, and an occasional wooden house. We crossed the border at Guabito-Sixaola into this remote corner of Panama with two U.S. ex-pats we met in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. Ricardo and Miguel live in Boquete, Panama (separately, they went through some effort to explain that they are not a couple), and did a border run to Costa Rica so that Miguel could renew his 90-day visa to Panama when he re-entered (he is not yet a legal resident).

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Adventures on the Caribbean Coast - Part I

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Adventures on the Caribbean Coast - Part I

After leaving the Buena Finca in Saripiqui, R and I decided to cross from Costa Rica to Panama at the Sixaola-Guabito border crossing. We felt that this border crossing had some advantages. First, given its remote location in Costa Rica, far from the Pan-American highway, we hoped it would be quicker than crossing at one of the other two available crossings. Second, it would put us in a corner of Panama that is only accessible by one road, which we likely would not have traveled at all if we entered Panama on the Pan-American which provides a more direct route to Panama City and the Canal Zone. Finally, it would require us to travel to the Caribbean coast, which we’ve not been able to do so far in eight months of driving Mexico and Central America. The trip through the lowlands of Costa Rica took us through banana plantations grown under the Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte flags. Thousands of banana bunches had bags hung around them to keep off the birds and presumably to hasten the process so they can be cut and exported. Bananas are like a delicious but worthless currency and we haven’t purchased one in months because the places we’ve been have had a bunch hanging from the rafters and you can walk by and help yourself.

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La Buena Casa

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La Buena Casa

We were all sad to leave our latest Workaway with Esteban and Tom on the Buena Finca. I think everyone was sad to see us go as well – and not only because I was the one who brought the beer and rum each night.

When we arrived almost two weeks ago we thought we had signed up to provide manual labor on Tom’s farm but it turned out we spent most of our days at the ferreteria (hardware store) run by Tom’s family – brothers, uncles, sisters, and cousins.

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Our Five-Star Toilet Rating System

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Our Five-Star Toilet Rating System

Traveling with kids is hard. This is particularly true when traveling in developing countries that are hot, dusty, and where the population of ants trails only that of the underprivileged. We try to be accepting of certain local cultural habits and, in fact, even embrace those that suit us. For example, it’s okay to stop your car anywhere on or alongside the road for whatever reason so long as you smile and wave at those trying to get around you and it is acceptable to drink a cold beer at any time of day -  it is always beer o’clock.

In order to avoid going completely feral and maintain some semblance of a civilized manner, we try to shower daily and we require certain standards of cleanliness from the places that we stay, and in particular for our hotel room toilets. Public facilities are a crapshoot, however, so to help lighten the mood when one of us is faced with the prospect of a grim restaurant or roadside constitutional, we’ve come up with a five star toilet rating system.

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This Day in Costa Rican History

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This Day in Costa Rican History

The knowledge we have gained from living out of hotels for the better part of the last eight months has come in handy during our latest Workaway experience because we are helping to design rooms for the ecolodge that Esteban and Tom (our hosts) are building. R, Coconut, J and I have spent a lot of time since last August discussing different hotel features and we know what we like. We arrived here in Nazareth, Costa Rica, on Monday, April 4, and on Tuesday morning we spent a few hours on the farm Tom owns raking banana leaves then we went swimming at a nearby river and had a picnic.

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Iguana - It's What's for Dinner

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Iguana - It's What's for Dinner

As we drove through Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, we often saw people standing along the side of the road holding large, spine-backed reptiles bound to a stick. The peoplewould wave these things at us as we drove past as if they were performing some sort of ceremonial blessing. We realized that the people wanted us to buy one or more, but we were not sure what we were supposed to do with the thing once we got it home. One afternoon while I lounged outside Wesley while R and the kids shopped for fruit in the market, I noticed two teen boys with slingshots in their hands gazing intently up into the tree tops.

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Costa Rica is Burning

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Costa Rica is Burning

The Earth here in Costa Rica is on fire. It’s scorched the fields so that horses and cows eat the charred remains of what may have been grass and the trees look like something from a Tim Burton movie - skeletal fingers attached to skeletal arms pushing up from the grave. I literally watched a house burn down to pass time while waiting for the guys to clean up Wesley at the auto lavado. It may have spontaneously combusted. This is surprising, though maybe it should not be. We read that Costa Rica, of all the Central American countries, was the most blessed with political stability and prosperity - where else on the isthmus can you get a $4 hamburger for $8 - and we just assumed that also meant it was ripe with lush, green attractions and Spring-like weather. But it’s hard to find anything attractive in a dry and dusty landscape - it’s like hanging a brown paper bag on your wall and calling it art. I think Cy Twombley has done this.

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Spring Break

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We arrived in Costa Rica on March 11 and left the same day. This was for no reason other than that my sister was pregnant in New Jersey and we wanted to show up on her doorstep and surprise the baby out of her; everyone we had met so far in Costa Rica – the immigration officials who went to lunch while we tried to complete our paperwork to get into the country, the campground owner where we parked Wesley, the woman at the bus stop who told us what bus to board, and the taxi driver who charged us a small fee to take us from the bus station to the airport - was very nice.

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Club Nicaragua

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HulaKai Hotel was the perfect spot to relax after our two-week turn at forced volunteer farm labor on Ometepe Island. The hotel is set on a point overlooking the sublime Playa Maderas, which is on the southwestern coast of Nicaragua. A healthy dose of day-tripping white people come to the beach to take advantage of the break for both experienced surfers and beginners, and a couple of restaurants have sprung up to take advantage of the white people. There's not much else there except peace and quiet.

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Heaven is in our Minds

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This world is big and wild and half-insane and wherever R and I travel we usually leave with the idea that we should move there because it would somehow be better than what we already have and The Kinks are always on the playlist. There have only been a few places where we didn't feel that way. Los Angeles is definitely one. I think the other is Tulsa. Everywhere we have visited in Nicaragua seems like we could die there and is a good place to buy property and start a new phase of our life. When we were in Pochomil we went and looked at a few beachfront properties that were on the market – one apparently owned by a famous Nica because when the caretaker mentioned the name he looked at us expectantly like our jaws would drop in awe and wonder.

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Down on the Farm in Nicaragua

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Farm work at our workaway farm in Nicaragua starts at 6:30 a.m. so by the time that we get there around mid-morning, Maria, Angelo, and the others have already put in a half-day of work consisting of making a fire to warm breakfast - which is likely yesterday’s beans and rice - using the pit toilet, and making sure the fire stays on fire so it can cook lunch.

Our trend has been to get a late start on the day because even though we wake early - around 8:00 - we all have our screen addictions. It would actually serve us better to get out of bed and do stuff early and look at our screens later rather than try to do the reverse because it gets really hot from around mid-morning to sunset and when we finally put down our electronics around mid-morning because they need to recharge, we all agree it is too hot to do anything.

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Ometepe Island Workaway

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We have been on Ometepe Island at a Workaway site since Wednesday, February 17. This brain fart was written in the days after we arrived and relates to the time from arrival to Sunday, February 21. It is only being posted now, on Sunday, February 28, because Internet connection on the island is slow, and as the Emperor says, "Resistance is futile." So I don't even try. La Isla de Omotepe is an island in Lake Nicaragua, also known as Lake Cocibola, which scientists say was formed when lovers from warring tribes committed suicide to find peace together and the heavens cried the valley full as the princess lay back in death. The breasts of the princess are the twin volcano peaks that dominate the island - Concepcion, an active caldera which last erupted in 2009, and long dormant Maderas.

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The History of Rock in Nicaragua

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The History of Rock in Nicaragua

Almost twenty years ago, when everyone could illegally share music through the popular copyright infringement site “Napster” without fear of serious consequences, the iPod was invented. Around this same time, and with knowledge of these two modern tools that made life better for everyone, R and I were able to acquire over 13,000 songs from artists ranging from the Arctic Monkeys to The Doors, from the Mountain Goats to Rob Zombie. With that historical background, I bring you to the present day. Since R’s birthday last Tuesday, when we left the sweltering cauldron of fire and bad pizza that is Leon, Nicaragua, we’ve been parked at a Mediterranean-like resort/spa on the shores of Laguna de Apoyo - a caldera lake formed when Vulcan Apoyo exploded in on itself and sealed its magma pipe to the outside world forever. The rest, as they say, is history, and once the rain filled the now sealed volcanic pit, the lake - which is advertised as Nicaragua’s cleanest swimming hole - was complete.

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In the land of plastic bags and volcanoes

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We crossed the border into Nicaragua on the afternoon of Saturday, January 30, after spending the day driving through Honduras. We chose the border crossing in the mountains near Somoto, Nicaragua, because it was supposedly less chaotic than the border crossing along the coast and we hoped the higher elevation would provide some temperature relief after we just spent a few days baking at the beach in El Salvador.

After a hassle free crossing, we pulled into the comfortable climate of the city of Condega to find a concert stage being set up in the town plaza. We took a room as far from there as we could but it didn’t help much because the band, which turned out to be a Catholic rock band (children of the Eighties, remember Stryper?), played loudly and they sang even louder - variations along the lines of God is King and you better get in line to pay homage.

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Rocking and Rolling Honduras to the Tunes of Lou Reed

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Pretend you are a Honduran male who has come to the United States to make money to send to your family in Tegucigulpa. Your wife and three daughters run a small tienda (store) out of the front room of their house and have been paying $3 a week “tax” to the local drug gang that runs things around there. One week, the “collectors” tell your wife that their service is going up to $4 a week, but she can’t pay that much so only gives them $3. In the meantime, the gang members get beaten and robbed by the police and the next time they visit your wife, it isn’t the collectors, but the hit crew. Your two younger daughters watch their mother beaten, strangled, and murdered before fleeing the house. Your father, who lives next door, and a neighbor were also witnesses and had to flee. Fortunately, your oldest daughter was on a church retreat so did not see anything, but still, she can’t go home because the gang is angry and suspects that your wife cooperated with the police, which is part of why they killed her.