One last, hurried dip in the cool lake. Howler monkeys groan, to each other, across the jungle. I put my hands on my ears to try to stop their uncomfortable, grating sound as I hike up the hill to my hostel bed. I throw sun clothes and laptop back into my pack, and off we go.

The taxi putters up the steep walls of the old crater, then tumbles downhill, winding it’s way through tiny towns until we stumble into the bus station.

Exhaust and ranchera music blow from the behemoth machines, coming and going, and all painted like a garish rainbow. Exuberant calls of bus staff, announcing departures and arrivals and who-knows-what rise above the steady hum of everyday conversations of people lounging in the hot shade of the station. Everywhere is someone sitting, selling, moving.  We stand, waiting with our bags, saying nothing yet grabbing more attention than the drivers calling out routes. I’m tall and Seattle-winter-pale. Martina is typical-adorable. No man in sight and we couldn’t attract more attention.

Martina looks around nervously, then pulls out her microphone as I dig out my massive camera. We’d talked about how wonderful the atmosphere and background noises of the station would be for a radio program, but in front of the staring masses, it’s not so easy calling more attention to yourself.

“Look,” she says, her hands are shaking. She looks at me, dark eyes unusually serious and full of worry.

I’ve never known Martina to scared. (I’ve heard her tell stories of it, but never seen it.) I try to laugh it off, I try to use my height to create a human-screen, anything to put her at ease. But it’s pretty hopeless, as Martina records, but eventually, a line of vendors swing to my right to crowd around us. Forget business as usual, we’ve become the attention vortex of the small bus station.

We board a disappointingly traditional yellow bus (I’d secretly hoped for one of the buses with the crazy colors and a Spanish name). But it’s not to be. Instead, our bags are tossed in a Tetris-style pile, that reaches the bus ceiling, against the emergency door at the back. We fall into the stiff school bus seats with #34 and #33 have been spray painted on the green, faux-leather seats.

The bus rattles through busy Managua, baking in the sun. We’re lugged uphill and race through Nicaraguan countryside, small towns and clusters of shacks lining the road. Ragged dogs and children run through the sunshine. Men in dirt-covered shoes peddle flats of fruit and juice on rusted bikes. Towns give way to fields of green grass, then dry grass that’s burning in slow procession (compared to our Nicaraguan-bus-race-against-time that I swear is better and cheaper than any rollercoaster ride).  Where the deep black earth and flicker of fire ends, herds of sleek cows graze along the road. And the bus lurches on, speed past slower-moving cars and buses, around corners and uphills — wherever it finds them — escaping imminent death, time and again, like it were nothing.

Martina and I pull out headphones and pretend to dose, in an effort to block out the endless questions from our all male counterparts.

The bus slows to a stop. Martina shakes her head — No, we’re not there yet.

Instead the ticket collector hops off the bus, picks up a couple watermelon (sandia! I remember). Grocery shopping completed, we’re off, again. Withered trees create skeleton-silhouettes against the orange-red sun, sinking lower in the sky. Steep mountains rise from the valley floor. Plastic shopping bags, pink, green, blue, white, striped, swirl in the afternoon light, collecting in droves around the occasional fence post. An uncomfortable rainbow of consumer color as we speed towards the jungle.

We never actually sleep, despite the early morning, and stumble off the bus in the dusty parking lot of a gas station in Esteli. A cabbie navigates through a series of roads, and low, concrete slab houses, painted gorgeous turquoise, yellow, and red and bright blue, and set nearly on top of each other. We arrive at Carmen Maria’s (after a stop for the cabbie to chat with a friend and pick up another fare) and black, iron doors open to a soft pink interior of a nearly open air house where only the rented rooms have doors.

Martina hugs and kisses Francis, the teenage caretaker with cherubic round face and careful smile who seems to simultaneously watch us and ignore us. At least me. I can’t help but feel completely embarrassed when she frowns at my rough Spanish, mixed with bits of inadvertent (but strangely habitual) Amharic and Turkish. Can’t I at least do one language justice in this lifetime? And I resolve to do better.