To my American readers and family, I want to wish you a Happy American Thanksgiving! I hope you eat pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes until you are content with life. Because I have an American in my midst today we did our best to celebrate Thanksgiving. This included trying to make banana pancakes in our humble abode for breakfast, or rather Sara made them. I just enjoyed them. They were a good way to start the morning.
Another way to start the morning was learning a bit more about how this farm runs during the dry season. In particular one of the new tasks will be to water the plants. This task isn’t particularly a pain, considering most of the garden operates on a drip tape system. However it’s the parts not attached to this which are finicky, especially with warrior ants wandering around.
For reasons unknownst to me, the combination of what feels like lack of sleep, random food, and work made me incredibly tired. Once Pablo told us we were done, I could not help but crawl into the hammock and pray to the sleep gods to bless me. And off into a two hour sleep I fell. Although it wasn’t a solid two hours, it was just enough that we missed Tobias, the ice man, come around. Tobias was so concerned about us that I could hear him gingerly walk around the kitchen in order to avoid waking us up.
When I did finally haul myself out of the hammock Pablo and I shared a look and we both burst out laughing. I think we both knew how ridiculously tired I was and the sight of me bleary eyed finally waking up while he toiled away this afternoon was somehow intensely amusing. To celebrate my general laziness and two hour nap, I ended up heading to the pool to cool off and clean off. Today however we were blessed with a near perfect view of Volcan Concepcion. The clouds had cleared and you could see the top and we had fantastic vistas of the surrounding Lago Nicaragua as well. We stayed up there until sunset fell and that sunset was absolutely beautiful. We enjoyed the sunset with some guests from the Hotel who were from Toronto.
To finish off the Thanksgiving festivities we opted to head to Finca Zepilote for pizza. Last night Francisco, a local guide, had opted to take us and we decided not to use his services to find our way. However when we arrived we found him sitting at reception! I felt terrible when he mentioned he came to Totoco for us and then headed to Zepilote to wait for us there. However I really wasn’t in the mood to be surrounded by people and I found myself having many moments of quiet contemplation rather than partaking in the conversations around me.
In part my lack of sociality this evening was due to my tiredness but it was also due in part by my need to go out and explore alone. Sometimes the problem with being around someone 24/7 is that you end up doing everything together. And that wasn’t what I set out for on this trip. I wanted to enjoy meeting new people without feeling like I was bound to sit next to a certain person or talk to those I came with. Tonight I didn’t want to talk to the people I see all the time at Totoco. Tonight I wanted to talk to people with some privacy. A conversation between me and them and was not influenced by additional parties.
In the end I did get my wish in part, I ended up reuniting with two women I had met my first trip to Zepilote, Tani and Acha. Tani even had a dream about me where apparently on her way back to Australia there were a group of people who wanted to parachute out of the plane to get home. I apparently was one of the people in that group who opted to jump out of the plane (which is probably true). We also talked about San Marcos La Laguna, Guatemala, a place both of us had spent some time in.
However the best part of Thanksgiving for me was talking to Acha. While we probably differ on certain aspects of how to live, I will say that I was really inspired by her belief to live out your emotions. If you are angry then be angry, if you are happy be happy, even if it means you go from one to the next perhaps at a scary pace. I suppose it demonstrates more than anything the power of living in the moment and not hiding your displeasure or anger. How many times do we wish we had spoken up or said something? I know it happens to me often and typically it happens with the most important topics. I keep promising myself that perhaps one day I’ll be bold enough to really just say what is on my mind in the moment. And one day I will. It is merely a question of when and following through.
I was really grateful for that conversation with Acha. While perhaps we had led very different lives to reach this point, I think we both had a lot to learn from each other and at the end of the night it made all of it somehow seem worth it.
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