I spent the most time in SJDS because I was awaiting the delivery of an “emergency” credit card. They originally estimated it at three days, but it actually took Bank of America two weeks to deliver the card.
So I learned some basic Spanish.
I loved this place. I stayed in the most laid back hostel on the planet (La Casa Feliz) and enjoyed just about every minute of my stay. I intrinsically understood this already, but it reflected in practice that the more settled I was in the town, the easier it was to succeed with girls. I wasn’t able to convert any locals (edit: yet), but not for lack of trying. My Spanish was getting to the point where I could hold simple conversations in the present tense. “Yo gusta usted. Vamos a la casa.” In the infamous words of Christopher Wallace, there ain’t no more to it.
Hey you! You, yes, the one with the mouse in your hand – actually, it looks like you might have your finger on a trackpad . . . Did you know you could click the pictures and they pop up in the same window so you don’t have to leave the page while browsing? Pretty neat, huh?
 If you can see the line down the leftish side of the picture, you might guess that I was taking this from inside a bus. Obviously that irritated me since I had resigned myself to leaving the bike at the border until I got back to Costa Rica on March 4th. (edit: you’ll see what happens here)
The wind turbines had just started up and were on line, but not yet distibuting power to San Juan Del Sur (my destination). It was a great location for these babies since the winds coming off Lake Nicaragua/Ometepe were simply insane. |
 I took this after arriving in SJDS and spending three hours on the phone with Bank of America and requesting an emergency credit card.
I also reserved 40 hours of Spanish classes for the next week since if I was going to be here for a while, I might as well do something productive. I took classes from Fernando at Nica Spanish school (www.nicaspanish.com) all week long. Classes are usually twenty hours per week, but I wanted to really accomplish something, so I took 40 hours (for only $170!). I don’t know if the 40 hours were harder on me or him. |
 Stephanie was from Germany and was on the bus sitting behind me on the way to SJDS. We asked her if there were any good pickup lines that we could learn in German. She taught us how to say “hop in my sleeping bag” (Hopf in mein schlafsack). I didnt think that it was going to work too well, but she said that it was clever and funny when he said it to her, so I guess it’s worth a shot. It’s more German than I knew before.
Jesse (or Senator J) is from New Hampshire and was down in SJDS for a few days before I got there and left a few days before I left. He was learning how to surf and learning the language as well. He gave me this book, Three Cups of Tea (I highly recommend it), and I read it cover to cover in a week. |
 So Brain, what are we going to do tonight?
Same thing we do every night in SJDS, Pinky. Drink lots of Flor de Caña at La Casa Feliz, go down to the Iguana for a few Toñas, maybe hit the Crazy Crab for late night disco, and get a $1 hot dog loaded with cabbage and mayonnaise on the way home. |
 From the left – John, Stephanie, Jo, Karl, and Jennie.
These guys were fantastic fun to hang out with for the three days our time overlapped at La Casa and influential in spreading the La Casa Feliz love to a few some other travelers that made my time there quite amazing. So Garth and Calvin, who you’ll meet later, were staying with them at a hostel in Leon, and they insisted that John was banging both of the sisters (Jo and Jennie). I knew he was at least dating Jennie, but he did have his face in Jo’s boobs a bunch from what I saw. I had a picture of that, but I deleted it for continuity’s sake. |
 This one is for Lez Dogg. Thanks for letting me learn how to drive stick in the troop back in Y-Town. You would have never let me learn on the roads out here – they were something else entirely.
After a day of trying to get up on the waves, I brought my rented board back to shore, not having achieved any sort of uprightness for any amount of time. Even though this was a fairly unsuccessful venture, it was a great time and cheap enough so I didn’t feel bad about not being able to pick up surfing in a day like I had snowboarding. |
 I’m seeing a lot of sunsets these days, but this one has cars in it after a day of surfing like I could put a REEF logo in the bottom corner and sell a few sandals in a magazine.
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I´m kind of stealing this entertainment from the place next door. A few nights a week, they had some fire jugglers on the beach in front of this nice restaurant. If you have a nice restaurant, a sure draw is to put some fire jugglers out in front when the sun goes down. Why the heck not, right? |
 Is this an Australian titty twister? I don’t know, it looks like he’s enjoying it.
I handed them the camera after I took this picture and they immediately started looking for the delete button. There were seven guys all travelling Central America together and leaving back for Australia after they left San Juan Del Sur. We were went to the beach a few times with these guys and they were heaps of fun (that’s one of the words they use a lot). |
 That’s me imitating a bottle of Toña (with the label from the neck of the Toña . . . nevermind).
That’s the first time I have needed to type that letter since I’ve been here, and it’s surprisingly easy because it is actually a letter in Spanish – I didn’t know that until just now. I just wanted to let you all know that German girls can drink. We were going until 3:30AM non-stop. The German pickup line I was taught gets a laugh, but I was flying solo in mein schlafsack. |
 Just a guy walking around sharpening knives. I don’t think he was that good because all of the knives he was sharpening looked like bananas. I took a video but then I deleted it to save you the 30 seconds of monotony, and I apologize for the last 10 seconds and the next 3 if you read the next sentence.
It’s the little differences that are amusing. |
 It was a complete underdog crowd. I don’t think anyone particularly cared about either of the teams. People seemed to like the Cards because they weren’t supposed to win, but most of the people that are down here don’t follow football enough to know the stories behind the players.
And the old guy pictured in white was a barrel of laughs. He had no one to talk to, so he camped out around our table and drank about 500 ml of Flor de Caña before being asked to leave after he grabbed a waitress’ ass. He told me he would be allowed to do it with a local girl (the ass grabee was American), but I doubt that would be acceptable this decade. |
 These are cow statues. Seriously. Watch the video below
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I see a lot of sad animals shacked to stuff around here, but these boys were by far the saddest. |
 That’s me gettin’ some pussy. I wanted to document that.
Pelican Eyes Resort in SJDS. A nice place, but a bit pricey, and they require you to tip. More than one person commented on the number of stray animals down here. I think it would be a great public service if they spayed and neutered for free, or someone offered to do this in these countries. |
 At La Casa Feliz, there were some Irish musicians, some Argentinian musicians, and some Canadian chicks that did a Flight of the Conchords song at an open mic night.
This was easily the best time I have had down here so far, sitting around until 11 every night, singing songs in the dark (the power went out every night for a week). All of the pictures and videos up to and including the cockfight (there are some good captions before the cock-on-cock action, so keep reading this post before you jump ahead) are of this crew. |
 Colette and Teresa did two songs I didn’t know and (one was this one) “If You’re Into It,” by FOTC. Teresa did this really awesome version of The White Stripes’ “I can tell that we are going to be friends,” and we all thought that they should end with that one when we left La Casa, but she forgot and did the carrot juice song. Everyone in the place was confused.
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 From left to right – Me, Todd, Calvin, Johnny, Diarmid, and Garth. Todd works on oil rigs in Mexico and is by far the most insane, high-energy person I have ever met. Calvin and Garth are Pilots in Canada. Johnny and Dermo are in a Celtic band and are touring the US starting in a couple of weeks and will be in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day.
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 There is really only one bar with any sort of scene in SJDS before 2AM and its name is Iguana. If anyone ie reading this from RPI, the way they run their music here is pretty much the same way Elda’s did it from 97 to 99 – same playlist, different day. So at 2, the bar closed, and you would then go to the Crazy Crab until whenever you felt like going home, because I guess they were open until four or five (I think I made it to three thirty one night).
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 Just chilling on the street at four in the morning. Pretty awesome to see one of these guys. The biologists said that if you dropped one of these from six feet off the ground, it would die. I didn´t find that in my brief search, but from wikipedia:
“They have quite good eyesight, so it is unlikely that a human could approach them unseen, and it is relatively difficult to capture them because they keep moving and can run very fast. So it is unlikely that humans could come in unintentional contact with them.” I knew it . . . I’m a ninja. |
 Again, I can’t say enough about the wildlife down here. Makes you wonder what kind of animals were prevalent in America before all of the urban and suburban-ization.
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It was here that I came to the realization that I need to download some more stuff from the Gypsy Kings. This video was taken minutes after I finally received my credit card in the mail, so I was more than ready to rock out. The bands were great and the DJ played until 2. |
 From left to right: Andrea, Star, and Leelee ;-)
These chicks were certifiable. I don’t know what got into them one day at the pool, but Leelee, who thought that looking like Leelee Sobieski (holy crap, she must have gotten some implants) wasn’t a compliment, decided to stick her ass in Diarmid’s face for about half an hour. Forget about subtlety. I earned a nickname that I could be proud of at the time but could never share it with anyone without coming across as a huge dick. |
 I had a video of the victorious guy going absolutely insane dancing on the beach, but it wasn’t really blogworthy. Like I said, the most high-energy guy I had ever met, but this time, on coke.
As if he needed it. Tune in next for the cockfight! I have most of the captions written now, but I haven’t been able to upload the videos yet, so you’re going to have to wait. |
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