My assistant waxing my board before I improvise and see who will watch her for my surf session.
When we arrived in San Juan del Sur, in Nicaragua, we went straight to meet a couchsurfing friend who helped us find our accommodation. We ended up staying at a guest house and surf school. We rented a room for US$6.00 with a shared bathroom, wi-fi, and use of the kitchen, although we pretty much ate out all the time. Typical lunch (rice and beans, meat and salad) can be found for US3.00 and so I could keep our trip at a very low budget.
I surfed 17 days out of the 20 we spent there. What a way to celebrate 7 years of surfing! Now, how did I do it? Who took care of Luísa? Every time this was an adventure and had room for improvisation. Out of the 17 surfed days, she stayed with about 10 different people: a babysitter, another mom, a woman working at a hostel, a woman watching a beach shack, dads without their children, a family, a 10-year old girl and new found surfer mates.
Leaving my daughter with random people for me to surf – really
The guest house we stayed was run by a couple with a 2-year old boy. They had a woman coming everyday to help with the house and the boy, so a few days I left Luísa there and gave the woman some money. The children played all the time together.
They have a big TV that´s always on, so I´m pretty sure Luísa watched TV for half of the time she was being taken care there (maybe I´m being too optimist). It made me nervous, it was probably more TV during this vacation than in all the previous year, but I just took it as it was. A good thing is that they put on this Dora the Explorer DVD most of the time, so less inappropriate content and advertising on her mind, I guess. It was good for her Spanish learning at least.
Families on the road taking care of each other
At Madera´s beach, I went for the first time without much intention to surf. I took my board and all, but I also took Luísa, so I had to see if I would meet anyone there who could watch her. We met this mom with a 2-year old boy. Luísa and the boy started playing immediately and the mom offered herself to watch them while I surfed.
The next time I went there, again without knowing if I would have the chance to surf, the same mom was there and I caught the best wave of my trip.
At Remanso beach, I had a family we had met a few days before that had a girl that was playing all the time with Luísa, they were good together, helping each other to eat the healthy snacks and not using their hats…
Making her stay with strangers without wanting it
The third time we went to Madera´s, the new mom-friend wasn´t around. Another friend of mine had been there a few weeks back with her 3-year old daughter and told me about this hostel in front of the beach, where she left her child with the lady who works there and watches a few other kids.
I went there, met the lady and there were 3 girls (2, 5 and 7 years old). Luísa already knew about my plan to leave her and was not keen on the idea. I asked the lady about the possibility to leave Luísa with them, she said yes. Luísa felt really uncomfortable with this, there were the 3 girls and 2 adults watching her, she got very shy.
She didn´t want to stay with those people. She needed more time to relax, but I was too anxious to get in the water (I haven´t found anything more addictive than catching waves yet) and I bribed her with a juice she wanted, left her there and when I came out, one hour later, she was sitting at the same chair, just waiting for me with an upset face (I totally betrayed her for some little waves and lots of jelly fish in the water, but I thought she would start playing with those girls in no time).
Luísa is in the back chair, eating her fingers away, nervous and uncomfortable.
Once I spent time with her and the new people, she was fine, started playing and we had a good time together.
Luísa doesn´t want to be left with people she just met, that´s her rule, unless she starts playing with their children and I´m there for a while. Intuitively, she knows that parents are ok, but alone adults are not her thing, unless she knows them a little. Other times I tried it she wouldn´t do it, no way. I respected that after the episode I just described, because it was pretty obvious she needed me closer.
In Hermosa beach, there was a 10-year old girl, whose mom worked at this restaurant. I went and aksed her if she could watch Luísa for one hour. Luísa said: ¨No, I don´t want to stay with her, you watch me!¨. I said it was fine, no problem, I´d stay with her.
Only that after a while, they started playing together, chasing chickens and putting one to sleep in a hammock. We were hanging out for a coupple of hours and Luísa was out and running with this girl, so the next time she came close to me, I asked her: ¨Is it ok if I go surfing for a little while now and you keep playing with Virginia?¨ She said that sure, it was fine and gave me a goodbye kiss.
Men watched her too
I had just published that post about leaving Luísa walk a bit on her own twice and the comments made me quite paranoid, I still left Luísa with random people anyway, the difference was that I couldn´t relax about it while surfing, thinking about child abuse and all that stuff and looking back to the beach more than out to the waves.
Still, besides other moms and some girls that I surfed together, we had an older man surfing in our group who came out of the water to watch Luísa. He´s a grandpa already and a kind man enough to cut his surf session so that I could have a go.
Another time, Luísa would only accept staying with this surfer dude we´ve been hanging out on the beach with for a couple of days, a dad traveling by himself.
How can I rely on these people? Well, we surfed, we talked, we connected somehow. They could have been full of shit, but I didn´t think so, I trusted them, that´s it.
There´s an imposed fear on parents by the mainstream media or the FBI saying be afraid, be very afraid for your kids with twitched statistics that I keep myself away from.
One of those men helping out was our new friend John. He not only offered himself to take turns with me with surfing and being with Luísa (which wasn´t needed, we had our beach help figured out), but he also watched her in town for me to get waxed and do some paper work. He invited us to his place, where he was paying US$15.00 a night and had this swimming pool for us to hang out when we weren´t at the beach.
Nice hang out escape. On our last 4 nights I decided to splurge and spent US$15.00 a night here.
It´s not only moms helping moms out there, it´s everyone helping everyone. I know we live in a sad sick world, but when you travel alone, you receive help from strangers and you help strangers too, that´s what many of us do on the road, for me it´s inevitable and a wonderful thing to be part of.
This is a two part series. On the second part, I talk about the surf, making friends, being the only guest with a child and watching other moms on the road.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
You know I love your blog and your honesty. You have a trust in people that I don’t, and can never, have.
I think our trust as adults is colored by the experiences we had as children. It sounds as if you were given a lot of freedom and nothing bad happened.
My childhood also had a lot of freedom (I lived in a safe, rural area) and many, many bad things happened. All by men.
When I read that you left Luisa with strange men, I admit, my heart sank.
I have been sexually abused by men my mother left me with while she was off doing something else. No doubt she trusted these men, they had her fooled. Predators are smart. They fool children. And they are strong. And they play head games you have yet to warn Luisa about.
They have access to drugs to knock the child out in case she/he decides to fight or run away.
They can snatch your child in an instant right as you catch that perfect wave.
That wave will cover your head for the rest of your life afterwards.
It’s just too risky. This is my opinion, of course.
You are very brave and trusting. Me, I don’t have this. Not for my boys and 100% not if I had a daughter.
Please, be more than careful.
I´m sorry that you suffered from abuse as a child and thank you for sharing this here. I understand that you want to warn me about these dangers with your personal story.
I think your daughter has more sense than you do. I cringed hearing about some of the people you left her with. She is just a little kid, she has no way to protect herself.
I love how you just trust people and life! That’s why I never read papers and read any media, it only scares people. I think it is amazing that you can just teach that to Luisa!
You’re raising your daughter to trust instead of to view everyone as evil until proven otherwise… I love it. Yes, bad things could happen, bad things could happen no matter how careful you are, you’re giving Luisa a wonderful childhood which, in my opinion, is worth a little risk. (All worth while things in life require a little risk.)
What is the name of the hotel/hostel that cost $15 a night? I hope to travel to Central America for a year and I would love to have some places in mind.
The hotel´s name is Rayito de Luna. Only the simplest room with no AC and no breakfast was at this price. In Nicaragua you can find cheap accommodations, just forget about hot showers and stuff like that.
I can´t deny that the title and the highlight of men watching my daughter was to provoke my readers, to show indeed the trust I have in people, contrary to probably most of the people reading this blog. It doesn´t matter how many details I give about how I interacted with those men prior to them watching my girl for one hour while we were at secluded beaches that took us 30 minutes in a shuttle to get to (like having practically no escape, besides riding the shuttle back with the group), how much they were there for their surf trips and how we had been in the water together sharing waves and not being jerks, some people will always think that´s insane on my part, that you can find child molesters anywhere. I have a friend who doesn´t leave her daughter not even with women, because she fears their boyfriends coming and attacking. Even family members (usually them) are the bad ones. I still think we can judge some people as bad or good and go with our guts. I wouldn´t leave my daughter with anyone, although it looks like it and I could make a bad judgment.
Anything can make sense, depending on how you look at it and the experiences you had to make you think and feel the way you do.
I don’t know the world wide statistics but in the U.S. (where we are all mind numbingly terrified of strangers jumping out of bushes and snatching our kids) the instances of a stranger kidnapping or molesting a child are so few and far beween it’s hard to believe. Almost all the time it’s a close trusted friend of family member and in the case of kidnapping usually a parent.
hi Marilia!!
)
Love, safety, happiness, it’s all there for us if we can believe. So just go on, good girl, I’m proud of you! (as a good friend would say) 
. And again, thanks for the tips and inspiration! I’ll need them in short 
What a great story!! love it
I fully understand the comments that are left in this post, and still, I am totally with you. And thank you so much for leaving it!!! I’ll need it in short, I just canceled my rental, I’m going in 10 weeks!! wooooh it’s scary!! guess you know exactly what I mean
As you already know I too will be travelling alone with my daughter, and I’m already scared of what it will be to be with her 24/7 (oh yes now I do, I just got a glimpse of what it might be during these holidays when my mother and friends were gone!! I had forgotten how it is and I just drove mad
So thanks for the many ideas, I know you are careful and take good care of Luisa, I believe too in gut feelings… I know you know better, and it would be too long to discuss it here, like positive visualisation, manifesting what you want etc. it’s just a different way of looking at life and accepting the many gifts the Universe wants to shed us with
Thank you for the positiveness. Nice to know you are set to go. Where are you going, after all?
I’m going to SE Asia, I haven’t bought the tickets yet, I ought to do it in the following days, most probably I’ll fly to Bangkok. My priority goes now to sorting things out and selling them, it’s so scary
I’m putting everything in boxes, and won’t have any place to go when I come back (Is it true? cfr The Work 
I’m sure the Universe will take care of that 
) All these things we are attached to without even knowing it. It feels like a big splash into the unknown!! It’s weird to take my daughter with me into this “splash into the unknown”, not knowing what to expect, if it’ll be good or bad, or both. Many people ask questions and I have no answers (yet). My mother is asking to be reassured, she wants to know we’ll be all right: I don’t know! I don’t know how it will be, sure we’ll be all right, but how? still I don’t find it to be a reason not to try 
Take care! 
Right on! It´s scary but fun too, and so liberating. Not having a place to go back to might be a good thing, you get to choose a new home later with your new priorities in mind, like probably a smaller place than you were before and maybe at a different neighborhood or town or country
and by the way, so happy to hear that you surfed so much!! great!!
the real sad fact is the overwhelming majority of abuse cases (93% according to canadian centre for justice) are between family members, yet no one would advocate not leaving their child with a family member. i think teaching your child about trust in human kind is an amazing lesson to give her. love reading this blog makes me wanna go travelling too!!
I envy your carefree spirit, I really do. And I want to trust more.
Then, I see stuff like this http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/17/new.mexico.kidnapping/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
and think, ‘shit’.
There are just too many sick (mostly men) people in this world.
I’m trying to be as free range as I can be without making myself crazy!
Horrible stories like the one you sent makes us not want to take our eyes off of our kids for one single moment, but I don´t think that´s even possible. The predators might be at the playground waiting for a moment of distraction of a mom answering the cell phone, or looking for a snack in the bag (forget about reading). Playgrounds are the most dangerous place if you think about it this way. And this story makes it look stupid to let your child run to the neighbor, or walk to school, let´s say at the age of 8, when that´s a normal thing to do, I think. Or it makes it look like that when you do these things, you are very lucky when nothing bad happens, when I think the opposite is true, it´s a lot of bad luck for something like this to happen.
Wow, a lot of passionate people here .. or ummm passionate mommies!! I like the diversity in responses. And I too have something to add.
Marilia, you are an awesome mom for installing trust in your daughter, and in humankind. Trusting you have made the right decision to leave her with the right person, trusting you have spoken to her about the right topics to ward unwanted attention off. I too was a child of abuse, and I too am a mother of a 3 year old girl. I will never stop showing her by example that trust is an amazing thing. I will also never let her forget her body is her temple and she is to demand respect always. Listen, we cant keep are children in a bubble, we can only do what feels right and hope that we have taught our children good lessons, and that they follow our leads and take something with them. After leaving my amazing mother’s care, I was then abused again as an adult. Somethings we have no control over, and they will happen regardless, sadly. So our alternative is to show our children fear and teach them paranoia? To scare the shit out of them, that they don’t even have the confidence to walk down the street alone? I myself, living in the USA will not show my daughter this way. I will show her confidence, trust, and learning to living in an un-perfect world. And hope that she makes the best decisions in her life experiences, and doesn’t end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nice post! Wish I was with you girls for this trip .. next time. Beijos xo
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