Day 58

Odometer  30,318 – 30,328—–  10 Miles (7623 Miles Total)

San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

I 100% woke up in paradise today. I am so happy I’m here so I booked another night to stay until christmas day as soon as I woke up this morning.I got a free breakfast at the hostel which was delicious and met a few people while eating. I found an outdoor gym here at the hostel which looks like it was made from the Flintstones era. Everything was out of wood. Pull up bar, squat rack, rope climb, dip bars, ab workout bench, bench press area. It was hilarious.

I looked into crossing Costa Rica and Panama some more today. A guy I met while eating was telling me how to get good border crossing info. He told me to call up a shuttle company and since they do trips across the border everyday they know what’s going on. I’ll just tell them I want to go on a trip with them and see what information I need regarding covid to get across. Brilliant. I called up a company for a shuttle from Nicaragua to Costa and all i need is a Vax card. Perfect.

I think I’m going to skip Costa completely unless I can really find a sweet deal on a place to sleep there. Everything is so expensive even near the beach. $2-300 for an airbnb and $70 for a bed in a hostel. Ill look around some more and see what I can find.

I laid around at the hostel for a while and re-organized my pannier bags with all my things in it. I sat in front of amazon for an hour thinking of what else i can get shipped to Nick before he flies out on the 28th to Colombia but i think we have everything i need. I met a funny couple here too. The guy is from Lake Tahoe and he works as a firefighter sort of from helicopters and also a girl he’s with from Canada that works in marketing. They’re super fun and laid back. I went out to the town to do laundry and take a Spanish lesson which was perfect since I need to do 2 a week to keep learning. I learned alot from the guy today and i’ll do another tomorrow. After that I went out in the town and got food and drinks on the beach with the couple I met. Such a small world as he found me on IG. I noticed he’s following a few friends of mine. One of them was Kenny, who I work with skydiving. I facetimed Kenny and he remembered him. I couldn’t believe it. Kenny took him skydiving in Sacramento about 3 years ago and they followed each other on IG back then. So funny.

After that I went back to the hostel and laid around some more. Worked on my Spanish a bit while everyone at the hostel was having fun partying. I was happy keeping to myself since I needed some down time. I studied my Spanish, wrote a lot of notes down and then finished watching the documentary Schumacher. It was a pretty cool documentary. My friend Mirko was pretty good friends with him. He came out to Skydive Long Island to finish getting his skydiving license in like 2010 or so I don’t remember. He flew out from Europe in his private jet and landed at our airport. He was doing his 25th jump with us to get his A license. I actually went out on the jump with him to film it. I think we did 1 or 2 jumps and I got some cool shots of him. It was cool watching the documentary knowing I was there for part of his skydiving career.

On my last jump with him that day and for the first and last time ever in my skydiving career something shitty happened. When I opened my parachute and tilted my head back to look at the canopy opening, my lines caught my chinstrap and unbuckled my helmet. The helmet fell off my head at 4,000 feet. This was the first time I ever attached a go pro to my foot to try to get some extra cool shots of Schumacher and that camera on my foot captured the whole process of me losing my helmet. I was devastated. My helmet cost about $4000 and it was gone. When i landed the pilot got back to the building and said “Did someone lose a helmet because it landed dead center in the middle of the runway”. I walked out there to recover my helmet that exploded with my cameras on it. The only thing that was left was my memory cards and MINI DV tape of the footage. The guy never even said thank you or anything. I cried a bit and then got my shit back together in a few days buying more gear so I could keep working. One of the worst and most expensive jumps of my life.

Anyway at the end of the documentary it showed him learning to skydive after he retired from racing and shortly thereafter the skiing accident which put him out of commision. Sad. Very sad. I passed right out after that like a little kid after a long day in the sun.