I Am Writing This First.

Riding down a two-lane highway towards the Costa Rican border.  It’s 6:30AM.  We got an early start so we could make it the San Jose airport on time.   The sun is enormous, rising above the Concepcion Volcano, off to the left.  Before me it is the trees that are compelling.  They have uninterrupted room in which to grow and they spread out widely where they have been allowed to live, on this rough, scrub savannah.

Beside the road a young girl, my own daughter’s age is sitting, waiting for the school bus.  Three boys with backpacks on their shoulders are peddling along.  I have a Carlos Henriquez album, which is more Newyorican than it is Nicaraguan but it’s working this morning.  It’s working. 

I have to write a syllabus.  I don’t really want to write a syllabus today.  I am writing this first.  This is my warm up.  I’ll get there.  We should be at the border in thirty minutes.   Then we’ll have five more hours of driving on the Costa Rican side.  That should allow for some time. 

We just passed a huge billboard of Daniel Ortega.  I’ve seen it a few times now.  This one however, had gobs of read paint, lobbed at his face.  I followed the story in detail up until the last decade or so.  Precisely how he has led, and if he is even leading a leftist, Sandinista agenda, anymore, I don’t know for sure.  Yesterday my cab driver we took, down to the malicon in Granada and said something, which caught me off guard.  He was of the opinion that the country would have developed far more robustly if Samosa had never been overthrown.  One hears this sort of wistful musing in China when people suggest that China would be further along if the Generalissimo had never been toppled. 

We are passing now, through the city of Rivas.  The traffic guard had a kind face.  He looked intelligent.  Our driver tells us this is the city of mangos.  My wife offers that she doesn’t see any mangos.  “That’s because we’re in the town itself, honey.”  The volcano Madera is now visible off to the right. 

At the border I can’t resist the smell of the carne asada being cooked on a simple open grill.  The patrona cuts open a big slide of avocado and asks if I want it all on a tortilla. “Si.  Claro!”  My wife and younger daughter, meanwhile, are very excited to see cups of instant noodles for sale.