In April, 1998, after three intense months of training and cultural learning, I walked up the dusty path from the Condega-Yalí road to meet the Zavala family and begin two years of service teaching agronomy and soil conservation as a Peace Corps Volunteer. The Zavalas would be my family for the next two years, offering me a corner of their home and all their love and support as I lived in their community.

Fifteen years later, it was (mostly) all the same.

The hillsides were dry, but the little shade afforded by the almond and guanacaste trees threw into relief the concrete statues placed by the former owner: he'd reconstructed Nahuatl and Chorotega statues turned up in Ometepe and the Amerrisque mountains bearing tribute to Nicaragua's pre-Columbian history. But he'd done versions of the Buddha and a crucifix or two, as well, so the trail down to the water felt something like a paradeground of historical dignitaries.

When walking the cobbled streets of Jinotega, you can't help but feel you're at the edge of the world, with all kinds of unknowns in the hills to the north and east. In fact, hundreds of kilometers of wild, lush mountain country beckon to the east. East of the city the pavement stops, the roads turn rutted and bumpy, bus service is less frequent, and the accommodations dwindle ... But the immense department of Jinotega is comprised of hundreds of small communities and thousands of farmers who make their livelihood in the hills around them &emdash; including many who have barely ever traveled beyond this land in their lives.

After well over a decade living and traveling in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, these are all names I've been called. Well, to be fair, names my friends – and probably some of you – have been called as well. It seems most cultures have a word that they use to refer to foreigners, and though it isn't necessary it is often offensive. Ted Simon was right: the one characteristic all cultures share is xenophobia.

Rama's not as far out of the way as it used to be in the days before the glistening, paved highway linked it with Managua, in fact before about 2000 Rama was at the end of one of Nicaragua's most spine-crushing roads. Call Rama the town that links the Caribbean, English speaking Atlantic Coast with the Spanish speaking, cattle raising highlands of Nicaragua's interior, and treat it with all the respect of such a frontier town. In fact, a longtime riverine port and trader town, El Rama is a melting pot where Mestizo cattle traders meet Caribbean steamer captains, and dark skinned Creoles meet Nicaraguan "Spaniards" from the Pacific.

Thick with cool mist and rolling countryside, surrounded on all sides by coffee but not itself a coffee town, the little mountain pueblo of San Rafael del Norte is one of my favorite destinations and one of the towns that best evokes for me the spirit of Nicaragua's rugged north. As we wrote in Moon Nicaragua, to know San Rafael del Norte is to know Nicaragua's history. General Cesar Augusto Sandino made this wild corner his home for a while as he staked out positions against the US Marines and formed his philosophy of rugged determination, nationalism, and independence. That his philosophy and name were later co-opted into the basis of the Sandinista party is another story, one that the locals certainly would not be much interested in hearing.

25 May 1999, El Hato

These days we are at the end of the dry season and there's hardly a cloud in all the sky. At midday the temperature reaches about 105F and the air burns in an inescapable way. By night the temperature drops and that same sky fills with stars and silhouettes of those mountain peaks, and the air fills with the sound of crickets and the groan of frogs. In mid-May when the rainy season begins, heavy dark clouds will pour in from the east, thundering over the massive cliffs of El Fraile and soaking us in fat, wet drops. To get to El Hato you walk in twenty minutes from the highway, which is itself nothing more than another dirt road. From where you step off the bus - possibly a beat up old German truck with benches -you walk over a series of little hills covered in brown grasses and filled with cattle grazing, and in fallow fields. In the next few weeks those fields will be plowed and planted. By June they'll be full of tall corn and sorghum. By December they will be full of dark green bean plants, knee high with little white flowers.

If you pass children walking over to the neighboring town of Santa Rosa for classes in the morning, they'll be in blue and white school uniforms. Some won't have any shoes on. They will all smile and say "adios" to you.

They arrived with everything under the sun. The sun, that piercing sun that boiled their enthusiasm and faded their clothing. Enthusiasm - they stepped onto the runway tarmac with that too, as well as two checked pieces of luggage each and a carry-on of the proper dimensions. It wasn't long before they were sweating: the things they carried weighed a lot.

The things they carried were going to, in turn, carry them-twenty two fresh faced aspirantes called Nica Fifteen-through two years of the toughest job they'd ever love. They had, among other things in those sixty-six bags, exactly what Peace Corps had recommended: three months of shampoo and prescription meds, comfortable shoes, and long sleeved cotton 'nun' dresses. There were cassette players and address books, t-shirts and dozens of pairs of underwear still virgin to be sacrificed to the gods of barbed wire, lavandero, and sol. There were paperbacks and new journals of crisp white pages for recording all the wonder. There were cameras and water bottles and ballcaps and ballpoints. All in all, the things they carried were rather homogenous.

But the new aspirantes were individuals ...

Most Nicaraguans live their entire lives in the shadow of one volcano or another. Particularly striking is the road from Managua to Chinandega via León, which tracks along the bases of the Maribio volcanoes. They are tremendous.

Experience what it's like to live under the shadow of these active volcanoes. From L to R: San Cristobal, La Casita, Telica, Cerro Negro, El Hoyo

Plot for a Not-so-funny Sitcom: Pimpy-Aaaaarrr and Pimpy-Jay band together to write the first and best adventurer's guide to Nicaragua.  Pimpy-Aaaaarrr completes his work with the Corps of Engineers and moves out of his luxury crashpad in the wealthy Las Colinas neighborhood of Managua and packs up his office in the extravagant and colonial Casa Grande. Together he and Pimpy-Jay look for a place to live. They wind up at...

It was sustainable development at its worst. I should have seen it coming as soon as I noticed military vehicles parked in front of the San Diego escuela primaria, their olive drab and tan paint jobs doing remarkably little to camouflage them in arid, treeless San Diego. Inside the classroom, a half dozen American and Nicaraguan military personnel were debriefing a roomful of bewildered Nicaraguan eight-year-olds and their instructor.

Two days away, Hurricane Mitch was already throwing increasingly bigger waves up on Nicaragua’s Pacific shore. The sky had been erupting in half hour intervals and the storm winds made no sign of diminishing. Tumbling down onto the beach, the gang joined a crowd of Nicaraguans gathered around the still form of Lepidochelys olivacea, the Nicaraguan Paslama turtle. At two hundred pounds and nearly four feet long, she was beautiful and inspiring, dull colored but still glistening with sea water.

Dumptruck was getting nauseated by the poaching. "I can’t watch anymore," he said dejectedly. "It’s too damn depressing. Ten billion chicken eggs in this damn country, and they’ve got to eat the turtles’ only hope for survival."

But Spider had gotten an idea.

Operation Paslama Mama: The Actual Account of a Real Environmental Adventure

I first visited Managua in 1998. I was living in a quiet pueblo a half hour’s drive up into the hills above the capital, but traveled to the capital once a week for training and errands. But trips to Managua were exciting because of the chance to see friends again, not because it was an exciting place to spend time. Rather, Managua was dusty, chaotic, expensive by the standards of every other Nicaraguan community I was familiar with, hard to navigate around in and harder to appreciate.

Who’d have guessed I’d eventually make it my home?

Today, as Managua stretches inexorably southwards, its layout reflects its violent history: The ruins of old Managua remain at the water's edge--from there, in all directions, spread hundreds of shapeless, characterless barrios that rose from the rubble after each new natural or manmade disaster. Along Carretera Masaya, pricey shops, clubs, and restaurants continue sprouting up to service new neighborhood developments of the wealthy. The following are some thoughts on Managuan development:

When you've finished the book, the manuscript has been edited, and you're signing copies, it's easy to forget just how much work went into transforming your idea into a finished product.

Here's the calendar and timeline Joshua and I published back in 2002 when we were writing the first edition of Moon Handbooks Nicaragua. Who says being a published author is glamorous?

My wife Ericka and I never miss an opportunity to visit El Transito, the little fishing village on Nicaragua's Pacific shore where her family maintains a beach house. It's a special place to Ericka, rich with childhood memories, and always a place where she feels at peace with the world. Lacking those same memories, I don't tend to see it with the same degree of enthusiasm.