Photo Stories:
Tacheles Artist: Txus Parras
http://www.jou.ufl.edu/people/faculty/jfreeman/Berlin2012/Rachel-J-publish_to_web/index.html
Jason Burrows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FK8h3E567E&feature=youtu.be
James Wesson
http://youtu.be/GBVoHHV4RHU
57th Annual Florida Forest Festival
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seFy9HwzLt4
Cody Carnathan
http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_edit?ns=1&feature=vm&video_id=pzHrokSlPUc
The backs of pick-up trucks aren’t the most comfortable, but they’re fun. And provide an excellent view.
This was the first time I’d ever hitchhiked. The folks who picked us up were probably doing it more out of curiosity than anything else.
Why the hell would two Americans be traveling this way?
My Spanish isn’t super sheik, 
but Mike’s was good enough to get us further along when someone did stop and ask.
We made the mistake of telling someone
our destination was a town on the way to Upala, to break up the distance and make it seem less of a drag. He took us there. We got out and saw him turn right. Right down the road toward Upala.
It was a bit before another driver headed that direction with us.
As the sun set, we rode into Upala.
Una cerveca, por favor.
We made it to shore and took a smaller boat through a rainforest-enshrouded waterway into Costa Rica. The seven of us wandered around the village a bit debating where to wander next, eventually settling on Upala.
Mike and I decided we could get there without spending the córdoba on the bus fare. He took out his phone and took a picture of the map. We started walking.
A few kilometers down that road and another, we learned people won’t stop if you’re still walking. Turn toward them, and you’re more likely to get picked up.
Our backpacks were school-sized, the weight was in the water. The landscape was flat and dry. Sand, brush, heat. Crumbling street beneath our feet, clay-colored. The smell of sunscreen and sweating dripping, foreboding red and peeling skin. Wheels turned hope, but not always rest.
As dangerous as people say Nicaragua is, the real concern was hydration. We didn’t stock up once we decided to take an alternative form of transportation. The uncertainty in the timing of our arrival at the next town paralleled the uncertainly in the next time we’d see bottled water.
The road was deserted for kilometers.
Beans, rice and plantains accompanied every meal, and every meal was good and cheap. Despite the warnings of the travel doctors, we ate the fruit.
We caught another boat ride at night-fall. It was a long journey headed toward Costa Rica, and there were benches inside with two TVs hanging down.
The news in Spanish told us Osama bin Laden was dead. We rolled on across a lake full of sharks.
After a few minutes of instruction in Spanish for those of us who’d never ridden any two-wheeled motorized vehicle before, we were ready to head up a volcano on rented dirt bikes.
We rode as far up as we could and then hiked up to a waterfall. A family of wild horses blocked our trail back. There was no way around them, so I twirled bamboo and encouraged them down the path.
The ride up was steep and sketch, but not nearly as much as the ride down. We almost ate it at the bottom when we hit a mega-patch of sand, but my ballet days swooped into action and balance saved us.
We stayed at a hostel on the side of a volcano and hiked up and down into the crater of it the next morning.
(There might have been a part in there where the two with Marine Corps training left the group at dinner, took a wrong turn at a chain link fence in the dark, and got lost in the jungle a bit before backtracking and eventually finding the hostel…but the night creatures won’t disclose us.)
It was still dark when our flight landed in Managua. Seven of us tetris’d into a cab and ended up on the shore of the expansive Lago de Nicaragua as the black morphed blue above us.
There was a tree of ants and monkeys, and the sun rose across the water.
The beach was a happening place – markets, cars and horses all shared 
the sand. We caught a ferry to volcano island, squeezing in some shut-eye on the bright white deck.
