As we were brainstorming, a guy sitting in the seat next to Christopher seemed a bit shady and both of our guys had noticed him. Once we spread that message to all on the team via iPhone, we were all on high alert. We then saw the guy gesture to another passenger, who handed him a phone, and proceeded to talk on the phone while pointed to us, so we thought. We all got a bit paranoid at this point, especially because we had just divulged what our plans were and where we were staying, in both English and Spanish.
We decided to change our plans, just in case he was scoping us out. When we got to the bus station, we were still a little scatter brained and ended up standing under a tree for a few minutes to decide what was our next step of action. Since we were all so paranoid at the moment, we made the decision to just grab two taxis and tell them to take us to where we were staying. We weren't sure if we were allowed to drop off our bags and then continue to gather points for the Race, but we needed to get to some place "familiar" and regroup. We split into two cabs, three in each with our respective bags. We put one person with a phone in each car so that we could communicate if necessary. I was in a car with Ed and Kwak.
We started asking our taxi driving how close Lake Managua was. He said it wasn’t far and we asked him if we could stop along the way, for a few extra dollars. He agreed. We told him we wanted to swim in the lake. The first place he took us, we weren't allowed to swim in the lake, so he took us down the road a ways and we jumped in there. He warned us that we should shower very well afterwards, since it was extremely murky waters. As we all drip dried for a few seconds before getting into the taxis, we all danced the "Jessler." We tried to get the taxi drivers to join us, but they didn't. As we continued driving, we asked them where we could buy nacatamales. The driver informed us that they are only sold Friday-Sunday [Race day was a Thursday].
The taxis then drove us to the Bible Institute where we would be staying. They had a bit of trouble finding it, but after stopping a few times in the neighbor hood, they eventually found it. We were greeted by our squad leaders, Seth and KK as we unloaded. They informed us that we were the second team to arrive. It was about 2pm. The squad leaders said that we could definitely go back out into town if we wanted to gather more points before "checking in" to end the Race. We decided to walk around the neighborhood to see if we could do the last few tasks.
As we walked, we stopped to talk to a woman cooking. We asked her if she was making nacatamales, and if so if we could buy one from her. She wasn't at the time, but said she would have some ready at 5pm. So, we decided that we would come back out then to get our nacatamale. We continued venturing into the neighborhood, stopping to talk to people along the way. We stopped to talk to another woman cooking and saw that she had quite a few kids around. We asked if they would like to build a pyramid with us. She let them join us, and a few other kids came running in to join, too. It was like a child magnet! Christopher helped the kids climb up to build the pyramid before snapping the picture.
Afterwards, as we were heading back to the Bible Institute, we took a team jumping picture in the middle of the street with a mountain in the background. We had some time to kill before going to get our Nacatamale, so we greeted the other teams as they came and got settled in. Our other squad leader, Carly, told us that she would double the points for getting a nacatamale if we brought one back for her. We agreed.
Right at 5pm, we walked to the corner to buy the nacatamale and tried to secretly try it around the corner from the gate. I enjoyed it; it was different than anything I had before. And it was steaming hot. After we all had tried a bite of it on camera, we checked in for the Race, officially ending our Race at 5:10pm. All that was left to do was wait. Wait to see when the other teams arrived, wait to see what the other teams accomplished.
We felt good about the Race. After having our doubts and then deciding to go all in, and then almost quitting, we got a lot more points than we had expected to. We learned a lot from the experience, a lot of knowledge that will come in handy for future travel days. It was a lot of fun and gave us something to focus on outside of ourselves while we traveled between countries.
Below are some pictures from the day, some for points and some just for fun. 🙂
