The Fix is in

Not really, but sort of.

Yesterday morning we awoke at our swanky hotel in downtown Managua. A breakfast of fried plantains, beans, eggs, and corn cake was waiting for us in the dinning room. We crushed the first plates we were served, but then disappointed to learn that seconds were not included nor even an option! We gathered up our belonging, enjoyed several fleeting moments of air conditioning and hopped into the car to find the house 30 kilometers out of town in Masaya.

The car did not start.

Luckily, I was ready for exactly this situation. We had been carrying an extra battery ever since we left the nation's capital. We popped in a new one using some of our own tools and a rachet provided by the garage attendant and we were back in action. While we were fixing the battery, I noticed that one of the belts was straight up missing. Immediately, I correlated this to either the A/C outage or the sticky gears. If we were lucky maybe it could be both.

We stopped at a mechanic about 3 miles into the drive and through a series of complex hand gestures, expert replication of car noises, and a breif human pyramid we conveyed the need for a new belt. Although the new belt failed to fix our gears, A/C (and a good amount of sanity) was restored.