Please Use Some Common Sense!

This was my plea to a Canadian woman the other day. I am sometimes perceived as a risk taker. I am sometimes thought to be courageous. I can be a space shot from time to time. That being said, I know I actually, when everything is functioning normally, have a lot of common sense. 

The other day I ended up talking to a woman who frustrated me. She was a nice woman from Canada who is here in Nicaragua working on a schools project. We were walking along the lake on a Sunday afternoon. Hundreds of people come to this area to escape the heat of Managua. Huge family groups spend all day chatting, eating, drinking beer and smoothies. It is a lovely scene.On Sundays that is. It is completely deserted the rest of the week. Well, this Canadian woman said proudly that she goes there every morning for her walk. I told her that was a bad idea, especially if she was alone and came at a regular time.

She looked at me as if I were crazy. I mentioned that it was unsafe to do so. She said it was fine. She had done it for five days in a row. I said it was a bad idea. She said a lot of gringos seemed to be paranoid. I didn't take up the challenge. I mean she was shutting me down, shutting me up. I held back from telling her why it was a bad idea. Any idiot could sort that one.

We walked and talked intermittently . It was hard to talk much over the waves of the lake and the blaring of disco music from the bars.Then she asked me where I went swimming up at the Laguna. The Laguna is a spectacular volcano crater filled with heavenly pure warm water. I told her that now that my friends have a house there I go to their place. I used to go to The Monkey Hut where you pay a few bucks and have guards and bathrooms and cold drinks. She said she wouldn't pay money to swim where all the people are on a lake with many miles of easy access and no people. I said that was a bad idea. Really bad. She seemed to think that anyone who would go to the Monkey Hut was an idiot.

OK, so I started to tell her that perhaps there was a very good reason that everyone did that like being a rich gringo (anyone who can afford a plane ticket), a woman, alone, vulnerable and so on might prove a temptation for barefoot, hungry, local thugs. Again with the "You are so paranoid" look. So, my question to myself was, "Should I paint the picture?" My answer to myself was "Start to and take your cue from her."
The cue was that she knew best.

I hope she doesn't become one of the stories I never told her.

Several incidents in my now distant past came to mind. One was the time about 30 years ago when I went to a shack on a quiet beach in Costa Rica to rent boogie boards for my kids. The guy said the boards were 1$ a day, but he needed 100$ deposit on each one. Huh? "Because when they drown, I never get my boards back." We left. My kids thought I was uptight.

Then there was the time when we hired a taxi to take us to a beautiful beach in Mexico. We couldn't believe it was empty and people were swimming at a much inferior beach. Randomly, as we arrived, my son asked the taxi man what the name of the beach was. "Shark beach." We left.

Then there was the time in Guatemala when we were cramming ourselves onto a chicken bus and I told the bus driver where I wanted to be dropped off. This was during the war. He looked down, and then caught my eyes with a nearly imperceptible shake of his head,"No." I asked him where to go and he told me another village. Later we found out that there was a terrible incident (massacre) happening in the direction we were heading and he saved us.

No one is foolproof. I can be too thick or distracted or frazzled to take a warning, but I am not too stubborn  like that Canadian lady. A little bit of common sense goes a long way.