Second Thoughts

At the end of my second day in Poneloya, I sat down and did the math. Even though I am living here as a guest, having all of my meals at restaurants will end up costing me almost as much over the month as my Spanish classes and home stay in San Juan, so there is no real economy to be had. Cooking for myself might save a bit, or not, since it would require me to buy cooking equipment, stock staples and buy groceries, all of which I would have to haul from Leon on that awful road.

It turns out that being given my own beach house is one of those things that sounds great in prospect, but in reality has unanticipated drawbacks. It's something like having sex on a beach, which sounds romantic and for many people conjures images of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity. In practice, however, both are awkward, difficult to make work and the sand gets everywhere. The Nicaraguans I asked told me that Poneloya might not be busy, but there would definitely be other tourists and some kind of social scene. Now I find myself living alone in a ghost town prowled after dark by machete wielding muggers, a situation that fills my head with images of Charlton Heston in The Omega Man.

Even as a base of operations Poneloya poses problems. A tour to the Cerro Negro volcano leaves Leon tomorrow at four o'clock in the morning. The consensus here is that riding into the city in the pre-dawn hours would be an extremely bad idea for various reasons, therefore the only real option is to stay in one of Leon's hotels tonight and tomorrow night as well, because the tour returns after dark.

If this place has no real appeal of its own, I am not saving money and staying here does not offer any practical advantages it begs the question; why stay? I could arrange to take a week of Spanish classes in each of Leon, Esteli and Granada, with the opportunity to really know those cities, all at a cost little more than that of sitting here and struggling with the limitations of this location.