The Rio Coco Adventure--Part 1--Sheila

One day back from the states, and I'm packing our bags to go on "the river trip". My excitement was beginning to be tinged with apprehension as each person who'd been before responded "You're going? Really? Are you ready?" As we loaded the canoes in the growing dawn I couldn't help but wonder if I was ready...

You know how, when you go somewhere big--the ocean, a mountain, the pictures just can't convey that sense of...presence? That was the day on the canoe for me. My eyes were completely filled with the bigness, the remoteness, the silence of the place. Was I ready for this trip? for this place? Certainly not. My imagination couldn't prepare me for naked kids bouncing a hello from the banks, or old men poling rafts diligently against the current. I never imagined dozing off to be startled awake by howler monkeys screaming from an overhead branch. I couldn't have visualized the sun rising behind palm thatched huts surrounded by bananas and coconuts. It was a day of, "Is this real?" These post card, national geographic scenes sliding by are not romantic tourist shots. This, all of this, is someone's real life.

In the village of San Andres de Bocay, I felt much the same. On day one, as we were checking out the bathing shed they'd prepared for us, the kitchen our crew had taken over, the path to the creek that provides water--I kept being struck with the thought that all of this "adventure" is someone's normal routine. Most surprising to me was how soon it all felt routine to me as well. Perhaps it's the way time compacts when you're on a trip with people, or at summer camp...by the second night I was confidently arranging my mosquito nets, expertly shooing bats from the latrine, and feeling comforted by the familiarity of the view of stars through the slats in the wall of our stilted cabin.