But while Caribbean countries, many facing too many hotels with empty-bedrooms, lick their wounds, developers are setting their eyes on the unspoiled countries.  Nicaragua, which vies with Haiti as the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, stands at a crucial fork in the road.  Jane and I, we’re going to follow both forks in that road.

The path leads us eventually to the beach, which is a wide half-moon.  Juan commands our flashlights off - the beach is a sea turtle breeding beach, and technically, as a very responsible developer, you don't let unnatural light hit that turtle beach. 

The next morning, I am down the cliff, across the drawbridge, and onto the beach.  Pre-dawn awakens the parrots, all of them yakking like northbound on the I-405.  The wind stirs up the sand into the dry forest, where perhaps three different troops of howler monkeys begin their morning howling. The howling, it's a kind of way of shouting 'these trees are mine' against other howler monkey troops, and a way of impressing the ladies.  The whole coast howls with this haunting cry.  I walk far, as far as I can down the beach and up the rocks and along the tropical dry forest to find a place to write. 

A Central American scorpion considers katydid for dinner on the Morgan's Rock property.

This forest runs continuously from Southern Mexico through Costa Rica, along the Pacific.  Dry forests are strikingly different from the rain forests most people associate with Central America; they are bright, sunny places reminiscent of an Australian forest.
  
Early morning is for writing.  Writing for yourself is a way of organizing your thoughts. To make sense of your life and like travel itself, to escape.  The notes I had written on the Bahamian islet of Great Guana Cay had turned from escape into a passion. The contents of that island's story so haunted me that I spent three hours on it every day for seven months straight.  I typed for hours, or, just woke up in the middle of the night, writing a note to myself.  The long hours gave me back problems, and my neck kinked three times. 

I worked from a home office, so I spent 12 hours a day in a chair.  Jane would prop me up, tell me to sit straight: was I listening?  I was worried about going to Nicaragua.  Would my 40-pound backpack hurt my back even more?

But Nicaragua was my escape from Guana Cay.  The backpack, all the walking, sweating- my back felt great.  I couldn't feel the pain in my neck.  Coming back to the dry forest again was a pleasure.  At Morgan's Rock, you have 4,300 acres to share with a handful of people.  It is the escape from yesterday’s writing.

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