Rancho Tranquilo, my favorite beach on this earth

01-09-08 Rancho Tranquilo ........Los Zorros...........Tina, Dennis, and Jairo

If you take a bus an hour and a half north of Chinendega to Jiquilillo you will be just below Los Zorros where Rancho Tranquilo lies near the Padre Rama Estuary. Rancho Tranquilo is the home of Tina the Gringa, who moved there from San Francisco when she discovered paradise.

And it is paradise. The beaches are long and untouched. The sand is soft on your feet and there are abundant shells to search through. The waves roll into the shore in long stretches and are soft enough to play all day long, surfable too. The water stays shallow enough to touch until just beyond the breaking pointing of the waves, and if you swim beyond there you can just float and let the waves wash under you. It is a forty minute walk up the beach to the mouth of the estuary where the fresh water from the river dumps into the ocean mixing with the salty sea. There is a long sandbar that stretches out into the opening and is a hang-out for storks standing on their long legs in the shallow water.

Walking or riding a bike down the long, peaceful beach you encounter cows or running horses as often as you do people. The people you do encounter are small groups of kids combing the sand for little crab-crawfish-like animals they use to make soup.

Swimming in the ocean is the most incredible at night under a thick dome of stars. We would go out to the beach as the sun was setting, as the colors move above and around you and the colors of the beach slowly subdue and turn to black. In the black dark, when the stars peak their way out of the sky, even brighter for lack of electricity in the little town, and the electric lights of little fire animals in the water light up the water underneath you - you are surrounded, entirely, by sparks. They stick to your body and shimmer, twinkle, in your eyes. Then you can just dive, and feel every wave wash over your entire body, emerging every time into the sparkling wonderland of the Los Zorros night.

Rancho Tranquilo itself is a rustic home made of bamboo trunks. The wind blows through the cracks and through the entire house; sometimes a pleasant thing, sometimes not. The floors are all sand. There is generally no electricity, not for lack of wiring, but for the electricity rationing all over the country. There is a well for water, all showers are bucket showers. Water for drinking comes daily on a bus from Chinendega. The toilet, Hotel Chucaracha Verde, is a latrine out the back of the property.

I think next time we go, which we definitely will, we will bring a tent. We will save $1 a day and I think it will actually be more comfortable than their rooms. The charms of the place, the fun of it, are the people. Tina and her boyfriend Dennis are amazing people, and their cook and friend Jairo, is fun as well. Everyday Tina teaches a three hour long English class to a group of people in the community. There are people passing through to say hello all day. Staying there, you feel like part of the community, they invite you to see their homes, to walk with them, talk with them.

Jairo is a Nicaraguan who spent fourteen years in Los Angeles. He speaks Spanish slowly and clearly so I can understand him, and he speaks English with an LA accent. He’s big and fat like a buddha, and has one long dread coming out the back of his shaved head. He cooks fabulous vegetarian food, and makes his own yogurt and cheese curds. The cheese curds are a substitute for eggs in the morning for Tina, who is a strict vegetarian, and they are delicious. His family lives on Omnetepe where they have an organic vegetarian restaurant, he has invited us to go and stay there, an opportunity we will not pass up.

In almost two years of existence, Rancho Tranquilo has had sixty guests (we were numbers 58, 59, and 60). I hope the place stays quiet, though I worry it will not be for long. It sounds as though the man who bought up lots of property in San Juan Del Sur, to turn it into the tourist trap that it is, is doing the same in Jiquilillo. I hope that the transformation that is to pass in the future will be one that is environmentally and community friendly. I hope the locals are employed and paid fair wages, and I hope the beaches are not destroyed or divided. I hope that in the end it will still be tranquilo and totally Nica.