Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the people are under-nourished. Obviously, the government has not
found a way to distribute the wealth from exports of fish, tobacco,
sugar, coffee and beef to those who produce them. Maybe the Red
Cross can send some of the money I raise in my run to these poor folk.
Nicaragua has a tragic past. There have been the usual earth-
quakes and erupting volcanoes, along with a bloody revolution in
1979 in which the left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front
rebels violently ousted the oppressive right-wing Somoza regime,
which had been in power since the 1930s. In turn, there was severe
fighting between the right-wing Contras, who were funded by both
the United States and drug barons, and the new government. After
the Sandinista-Contras war, inflation gripped the nation, rising to
a ruinous 13,000 per cent in 1988. Today, Nicaragua is classified as a
recovering economy. The current president, Daniel Ortega, was a pow-
erful and ruthless leader of the Sandinistas.
It broke my heart today to see the malnourished kids who sat
along the road in their rags, hunched and downcast, begging for food
or money. Their parents were begging too, often aggressively and
with the menace that a machete can bring to any negotiation. Skinny
dogs and cats prowled the alleys of the villages looking for scraps.
There were large gangs of unemployed, drunken young men hang-
ing about—some too drunk to even stand—and as I ran past them
they mocked me. I didn't react in any way. I am scared here, and it's
affecting the way I run. As the day wore on and the men became more
drunk, the taunting grew more vicious. They were hoping I would
react so they could attack me. Street crime, as in most poverty-stricken
places, is rife here. People flared at each other in the streets. I was
constantly looking around, my radar on full alert, trying to identify
dangerous people or situations and then avoid them. I am standing
out too much here.
The border towns reminded me of that bar scene in
Star Wars
with all the weird and scary monsters. There were some decidedly
odd-looking customers around, carrying the ubiquitous machetes,
which are used for work in the fields during the day, but as weapons
after-hours. I feel like my life is at risk here, more so than it was in
Mexico, or anywhere else on this run. We'll be locking our vans tightly
at night, and our police escort has told us that running at dusk or in
the dark is forbidden. I haven't argued. I'll set off at four in the morning
