I want to start off by saying how beautiful the Jinotega Valley is. This is the major coffee growing region of the country, and it features a lovely climate with cool nights (I wore a sweater for the first time on the trip) and mists rolling across the hillsides every evening. The scenery is gorgeous, and the sunsets are spectacular. (see above photo for evidence)
So why the sudden urge to flee?
There are times on any trip when, even when a place feels like it should be working for you, everything about it says Go Away. That’s what happened to me in Jinotega.
I’m not going to mention the name of the place I stayed, because it was quite lovely and I liked the people I met there a good deal. I’m sure I just hit it at the wrong time. Even so, everything around me set me on edge. And it wasn’t standard fear. There was just a deep sense that I had come to the wrong place at the wrong time and it was best to clear out as soon as possible.
There’s a real tension in that for me. I’m trying to face up to a lot of fears right now, and when I have a sense like this, I have to wonder if it’s just a case of me overreacting or just being scared for no good reason. But sometimes a place just feels wrong for reasons you cannot explain. I don’t think the problem is Jinotega itself. I think I’m just here at the wrong moment. When I’ve felt that way while traveling in the past, I’ve always moved on, and I can’t recall ever regretting it.
So I’m moving on the Rio San Juan.
The strange thing is, I expected the Rio San Juan to be perhaps the most difficult part of the trip. Jinotega, with its scenery, cool breezes, and mellow vibe, was supposed to be a piece of cake. I’d like to visit Jinotega again sometime. But for now, I’m going to the river of freshwater sharks. I’ll take my chances there, and I’ll be glad to do it.
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I know this feeling a little, like going to a gig & feeling the scene is going through something.Or just a miss-match of timing. I had a trip to LA like that once & I thought it was something I’d done, or maybe my host & I were really not as close as I thought. Elements of that trip made signposts to return, that it wasn’t a total wash.Retrospectively, it really was just that—the host & I were at weird places personally & the timing was better from far away than actually being in it.
Funny, too, how in a longer travel those places that look like they’ll be easier turn out to be hard & the ones we think are hard prove easier. Something there about the vision of expectation in planning with the being -there in the moment- having a little laugh.