Sunday, December 9, 2007

The Journey to Nicaragua

I left Bloomington at 8AM after sleeping perhaps an hour or two - about average for the past week. My journey to DC (bus, flight, flight, metro, bus) was approximately 9 hours traveling to fly to Washington DC (it woulda been faster to drive). I stayed with two fantastic friends, who wined and dined me. They let me sleep in, my first real opportunity to doze for more than 3 hours in one stretch for over a week.

The next morning, we went to Minerva, in Northern Virginia, for a totally fantastic and belt-destroying south-indian buffet. I got to say goodbye to civilization by eating idli, my favourite breakfast food in the world.. mmmm

That evening, I flew to Florida, hung out at the airport for 3 hours, and then caught a late night flight to Managua, Nicaragua, arriving at 12:30AM.

My flight to Corn Island didn't leave until 6:30AM, and so I had time to kill. A taxi to the town was $10 USD each way, and a hotel would run me at least $20. The five-star holiday inn (hah) at the airport wanted $100 per night.

I'd previously checked out sleepinginairports.com, which gave Managua airport a pretty decent recommendation. It seems as though things have changed since then, as it was made perfectly clear that the security guards keeping the rif raff out also would not less me sleep. I could sit as long as I want, as long as my eyes didn't shut.

In the end, the hours went by, I caught my early morning flight on a 40+ year old propeller airplane (on which I was almost certain I would die), and landed on Corn Island.

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