The next day David and Adam flew to their long-awaited destination: Nicaragua. The land of volcanoes and socialist revolutions, that forested paradise kept a secret of romance, derring-do, adventure and friendship in store for our heroes. Adam became Adamo for a brief second in the Floridian airport, sending love and a challenge to David by meeting and posing with two brazilian beauties at a random pizza store. That first connection, however, fizzled badly for Adamo when the brazilian beauties could sense the scholarly Adam hiding behind the facade of heroic romanticism, and started to call him quite incessantly and repeatedly a nerd. Adam shrugged it off, recovering his bruised ego by the glorious selfie-trophy he had won through his wit and charm, and the envy with which he tried to provoke David. Landing in that paradise, for what is paradise but hot weather, a seductive breeze and the rush of carefree tourism in a country where the dollar was so strong that our cash-strapped heroes instantly became upper-middle class patricians with their student budgets.
So our heroes arrived, touched down in their miniature plane whose only American connection came from Florida, and journeyed first to the Pachamama hostel in the capital Managua. The Pachamama hostel was a quant cheap stay whose decorations were an unabashed peon to the revolutionaries of South America: large portraits of Castro, the M-26 Movement, and the Sandinistas plastered the walls of this popular tourist spot. Managua itself was a sleepy, semi-urban semi-rural city whose feeling was much like a drowsy suburb in Connecticut rather than the capital of a country of six million people.
On arrival at Pachamama, the lights at the hostel were turned off. A lone half-sleeping attendant, a short local man, occupied the lobby in the dark, clearly conserving electricity for the small, struggling business in a poor country, waiting for guests like David and Adam to switch momentarily the lights on, and gladly welcoming the unweary travellers into their rooms.
"Dude, smoke up and hit the loungers by the pool?" asked David impatiently
"Hell yeah, but I'm going to get some cigarrettes," responded Adam.
"Dude, since when do you smoke cigarettes?"
"Since I came to Central America"
He did this not out of fantastical whim or complete nonsense, or to deliberately ruin his lungs, but because the machismo aesthetic of Central America demanded he smoke a cigarette while lounging, basking under palm trees thousands of kilometres from home. There was something so picturesque in the traveller clasping a tight cigarette in his cusped lips, puffing without a care in the world. Something so Che Guevara that our hero Adam simply had to ruin his lungs a little to enjoy himself.
"THooo, ah, whoow, kind of tastes like shit but whatever"-choked Adam on his ceremonial cigarette.
Adam and David set themselves up next to the shallow pool in the cramped courtyard. They now finally had time to get to know each other. Too stressful and busy, university life was completely inadequate for sharing the spirit of each man adequately.
"I worry about the future" began David tepidly, smoking his own cigarette expertly.
"What bothers you?- responded Adam, playfully moving his toes through the pristine water.
" The world is increasingly going to be unequal, and we, the elite, could become something more than human in our own lifetimes. This could be a planet of superhuman, ubermenschen and complete animals. And I just don't know, or feel comfortable choosing a side. It's like this: Either I work my ass off now, earn a lot of money and spend that on enhancing myself through all the new technology going to come out, or I settle down somewhere, chill, who knows maybe become a fisherman and revolt against the machines we are going to become. The first option I could gain immortality, the second I could gain happiness."
"Choose both. Life is filled with so much pain and misery. If you are in a position to become that superhuman, take it. But live a life of simplicity and joy commensurate to the human spirit. You are doing the world a favour by being you for as long as possible. The world without David is a poorer one, so choose to be here.
David was soothed by the unexpected synthesis Adam was wont to deliver in times of crisis.
"Let us smoke and enjoy, no more ethics or philosophy."
Smoked and smoked, our heroes bathed in the moonlight as their lungs choked. Two Southern hemisphere boys melting luxuriously in their home-climates, their careless flip-flops (which the South African Adam called slip-slops) thrown several feet away on the cusp of the pool's lip
YOU ARE READING
The Fantastical Adventures of Adamo and David
AdventureHow did Adamo, a brazen tourist and Yale senior, with less wits than the vanishing numbers in his bank account, find himself spread butt-naked on the rocky floor of a half-decent sushi restaurant, his mind spinning faster than a self-conscious white...
