Rob and I were in Nicaragua, where I grew up until my parents, in 1979, sent me north to the United States to escape the civil war. At the time I left, sunset signaled curfew -- going outside, where the National Guard and the leftist Sandinistas were shooting it out, was too dangerous. And among the most troubled regions of the country was the mountainous central district of Jinotega, where [Rob] and I now found ourselves scrambling through a patch of cloud forest 26 years later, climbing over gnarled roots, balancing on wooden planks spanning creek beds.
Nicaragua's beauty, he adds, is that "anything that any other Central American country has, Nicaragua has a little bit of it. People go to Guatemala, for example, for archaeology and history. Costa Rica is rain forest, Belize is beach resorts. Nicaragua has all that, and it's less traveled."
What I wanted, as much as possible, was to show my American boyfriend the Nicaragua I grew up in: wild, deserted Pacific beaches; active volcanoes; colonial cities; coffee plantations; verdant mountains. Engagement. Discovery. Freedom. With a recent U.N. report citing Nicaragua as one of the safest countries in Central America, the time seemed right for a road trip.
