All Good Things to Come...

For the last three years, at the first signs of winter, just as all of the holiday madness begins, I have left Ottawa. My family has always insisted on putting up the Christmas tree and roasting a turkey before I go. We eat till we are bloated and sleepy, then we exchange gifts as though it were really Christmas day. I love it. This year the gifts I received in the spirit of St. Nick were especially great – not only because they were light, compact and particularly useful, but because they have actually saved me a great deal of pain and misery… perhaps even saved my life.

It’s a good thing that I am not the kind of person who believes in omens. The very first thing I did in the thick of my New Year's Day hangover was to stumble out of bed and put my hand into a swarm of ants that had discovered some leftover snacks in my day pack. If you have never been bitten by those pernicious, blood thirsty, vile little creatures, let me assure you that sticking your hand into a swarm of TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND of them is a sensation best avoided. So a big thanks to my brother mike Mike – the true boy scout and to my sister in law Christine – a true pathfinder, for the first aid kit that included a (perhaps not large enough) tube of Stop-Itch and a package of Tylenol tablets (extra strength).

And I won’t take it as a sign of things to come. The year has shaped up a lot since then.




We started off the year on Isla Ometepe, maybe the most impressive of all the places we’ve been so far. It’s a volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua, surrounded by lush, productive plantations, small villages and a few suitable tourist retreats. The dirt roads see few vehicles and most people stick to the well-beaten network of footpaths through farmers' fields. Everyone smiles as you pass by and there is a general feeling of well being and contentment on the island. As Kieran quite astutely observed, it’s a perfect tourism experience in the third world – natural unspoiled wilderness, breathtaking views, volcanoes, forest and coastline. It’s all about simple country living – people who are perhaps poor by our standards but no abject poverty or starving kids with bloated bellies – no stray, skinny animals, no homeless people begging in the streets.



The island, however lovely, is not without it’s creepy crawlies. It was on Isla Ometepe that we came face to face with a creature that until then I had thought was likely fictional. A great storyteller once told me of a bug called the Chagas beetle. It is said that the Chagas beetle falls from thatched roofs and kills people. This has become sort of a running joke between us in our travels, since it conjures up an image of a beetle so large that it could crack someone’s skull open on impact. And it’s a good thing that I don’t believe in omens or signs, or self-fulfilling prophesies. That would just be silly. But one fine morning on Isla Ometepe, down from the thatch roof fell the most terrifying insect I have ever seen. It moved slowly and posed no immediate threat, but with each long and leggy measured step the bloodsucking needle-like probe thingy on its face seemed to bring death a little closer.

“Should I kill it?” my Knight in shining armour asked. As if there was any question!

So rather than read about the dangers of such insects in the Moon Handbook, we used it to squish the large and ferocious bug into the table cloth. By the way, thanks to Mom and Dad for the Moon Handbook. Really – it has the most up-to-date information for Nicaragua, and serves as a handy weapon in a pinch.

When our server came out to collect our breakfast plates (which we had a hard time finishing after that awful scene) we told her about the bug. She seemed quite relieved to find out that it was not, in fact, in our food - that it had merely fallen from the thatch with the sole intention of murdering us. She pulled the Nicaragua Moon Handbook away and the beetle was there, still alive with the table cloth in its death grip. As she pulled it away from the table it held on so tight that the table cloth came away with it.

“Is it a Chagas?” we asked her in Spanish.

“No, no, it’s only a chinche” she replied in Spanish.

We looked at each other doubtingly, but hey – she’s local so I guess she knows better than we do.

Later that day while flipping through the Moon Handbook, here is what we came across:
“The Chagas bug (Trypanosoma Cruzi) is a large recognizable insect, also called the kissing bug, assassin bug and cone nose. In Spanish it’s known as chinche…”

Terrifying.

Here’s more:

“The Chagas bug bites its victim (usually on the face, close to the lips), sucks its fill of blood, and, for the coup de grace, defecates on the newly created wound.”

That´s just awful.

And the worst part is that chagas poo carries a disease that lies dormant in your blood and can kill you anywhere from 5 to 30 years later – something about your heart swelling up inside your chest then death. I really wish I didn’t know this.

But the Chagas beetle didn´t bite me and it won’t – partly because the one we encountered has at very least been crippled by a 500 page guide book, and partly because my nephews, Ian and Matthew, gave me piece of mind for Christmas - a mosquito net. So every night we go to sleep knowing that the only things that can get us are bedbugs - thanks again for the Stop-Itch.

The mosquito net does not, however, protect me from arachnaphobia, a condition from which I have suffered my whole life. Good thing I have Kieran close at hand - my fearless protector. And he takes care of business quite thoroughly, first photographing his victim then squishing it and moving the bed to get an after shot of his mark as it lies crumpled on the floor. I would post a picture of the spider I begged him to assassinate but it’s embarrassingly much smaller than I remember it – such are phobias.

I get the sense that Kieran is starting to wonder what I’m made of. He’s now familiar with my spider problem and he knows I´m a picky eater – I think he´s even copped on to my quirky aversion to sitting on toilet seats in public washrooms and in some less than sanitary private ones. I´m not sure if he knows that I hold my breath for the entire time I occupy a latrine, but I guess he will once he reads this blog.


The truth is, I´m starting to wonder too. I guess we will find out soon enough, because what we have planned for the next few weeks should be quite telling. We have spent the past few day in the lovely colonial town of Leon in Nicaragua and in the morning we are heading to Jiquilillo on the North West coast of the country http://www.cctg.org/nate_jiquillo.htm . It’s a beach retreat – no problem – with a moderately challenging volcano climb up Coseguina to heights from which we should be able to see clear across to El Salvador and Honduras.

But the real challenge will come in a week or two when we arrive in Honduras and set out on our journey through the Mosquito Coast. I vaguely recall the 1986 movie of the same name starring Harrison Ford and River Phoenix. In the interest of research, it would be great if you would rent it over the next week and perhaps give me a little advice on this one. If I remember correctly, it all ended very badly...