Corn Island, Nicaragua
June, 1978

By June, Rainy and I were quickly running out of money. At this point we had been traveling for over 5 years with many adventures, but we had done very little earning. Our dream was almost a reality. We had the beach-front land. We had one house almost finished, and enough materials for 3 more. We had it all. The dream was so close, but we just couldn’t convince ourselves to be happy — together.

So, being a “modern” couple, we divided up the remaining travelers checks. I stayed on in Corn Island, and she walked off down the beach heading out to build a new life in Guatemala. To say that there was “depression” on my part, would be an understatement. I spent days swinging in the hammock, listening to Stevie Nicks on the portable music player, while just staring at all the unfinished work. With my friend and partner now gone, and funds down to about $800, I needed another PLAN. What was I going to do?

Looking back on that time, drugs played a large part in my decision to take my remaining funds, get on a fishing boat, to cross the Caribbean channel to the port city of Bluefields on the Nicaraguan coast where I would buy a horse! Somehow I imagined that if I only had a horse, I could start making money again. Believe me when I say that it was indeed a better PLAN than any of the others. I buried everything that was valuable to me, deep in the sand. My diaries, photos, diving gear, mandolin, etc. I left Nevada, my other best friend and dog (mind you, for the first time in my life) with a 12 year old boy who had done some work for me. After all I would be back in a few days–wouldn’t I?
As soon as I got off of the boat in Bluefields, a Corn Island friend came running up to me and said, “Hey mon, dey started a war and dey got military guys everywhere. I tink from Cuba. From all ober da place. If’n dey see you, dey gonna shoot you, mon!”

“So, the best laid PLANS of mice and men……!”

Footnote from Wikipedia:
The initial overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1978–79 was a bloody affair, and the Contra War of the 1980s took the lives of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans and was the subject of fierce international debate. During the 1980s, both the FSLN (a leftist collection of political parties) and the Contras (a rightist collection of counter-revolutionary groups) received large amounts of aid from the Cold War superpowers (respectively, the Soviet Union and the United States).