“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
There is a very specific kind of happiness that only happens when you finally arrive home after an unnecessarily long journey, and I felt it almost immediately after landing in Manila. I had just returned from Nicaragua, which still feels slightly improbable to write, and somewhere between finding the new Grab pickup area at NAIA, getting into the car, telling the driver to take Skyway, and realizing I would be back in my condo in just a few minutes, I felt overwhelmingly happy to be home.
Getting to Managua had been ridiculous. My itinerary had two layovers of more than ten hours each, which meant I spent a surprising amount of time trying to figure out where and how to sleep in airports. During one layover I found an empty gate and slept there. During another, I paid more than $200 for a designated sleeping area, which still feels like a ridiculous amount of money for a few hours of sleep. I also ended up sleeping in a United lounge, which was actually quite good. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I probably would have enjoyed sitting there with a drink, people-watching, and maybe even talking to people. Instead, I mostly appreciated having somewhere comfortable to close my eyes.
I also left Manila carrying a little more stress than I would have liked, but I don’t want the unpleasant part of that trip to be what I remember years from now. What I do want to remember is the lesson: not everything needs a reaction. Sometimes the best thing to do is give people the same space they give you, keep your dignity, move on, and remind yourself not to be petty.
Once I was actually in Nicaragua, one of the things that struck me most was how familiar parts of it felt. By now I’ve visited Colombia, Peru, and Nicaragua, and there are similarities between countries shaped by Spain that I keep noticing more and more: the food, the architecture, the rhythm of daily life, the way some streets and buildings look, and of course the language. I don’t speak Spanish well enough to claim that I do, but I was surprised by how often I could catch pieces of conversations around me and understand the general idea of what someone was saying. I have been saying for years that I should study Spanish, and this trip made me think that again. Future me, if you still haven’t done it by the time you read this, please finally learn Spanish.
One of the places we visited was Aqua Oceanfront Resort in Tola, Rivas, on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast. I only found out about the trip while we were already in transit to Nicaragua, so I hadn’t packed for a beach day at all. Even if I had known earlier, I probably wouldn’t have brought a swimsuit, but I definitely would have packed shorts. What I remember most about Aqua was how surrounded by nature it felt. There were trees everywhere, monkeys in the distance, and these beautiful blue birds that were very interested in our food. The monkeys seemed curious too, although thankfully they kept their distance.
We walked down toward the beach and ate at Palm Beach Restaurant & Bar, the resort’s open-air restaurant by the water. I liked how relaxed it felt, with the ocean right there and the sound of the waves always in the background. I remember thinking it must be especially nice at night. There were real waves that day, not just calm water lapping against the shore, and I ordered the fresh catch of the day. I didn’t take a photo of the food, which is unusual for me, but maybe that is exactly why I want to write it down here. I want to remember sitting there, eating by the beach, with birds watching our plates and the waves in the background.
We also went to Masaya Volcano, which was one of the places I had been curious to see. Masaya is famous for the lava lake inside Santiago Crater, but by the time we visited, the crater had changed and the lava was no longer openly visible the way it had been in older photos. There was a lot of gas or sulfurous haze over the crater, but we could still see a reddish glow underneath it in places. I had imagined seeing bright exposed lava, so it wasn’t quite the view I expected, but it was still memorable to stand there and know that underneath all that haze and rock, the volcano was very much active.
Food was another big part of the trip, and I think El Chante was my favorite. We had traditional Nicaraguan food with a lot of meat, chicharrón, gallopinto, fried things, and probably enough sodium to last me a week. It felt like home-cooked food, generous and uncomplicated, and I really enjoyed it. We also ate at an Italian place one evening and, predictably, I ordered vongole because that is my go-to pasta whenever I see it on a menu. It tasted different from the versions I’m used to, but I liked that even in Nicaragua I somehow ended up ordering the same pasta I always do.
The trip home became its own little adventure because I changed my original itinerary. The first option would have left me in San Francisco for almost fourteen hours, so I paid to switch to a much better routing: Managua to Houston, Houston to San Francisco, and then San Francisco to Manila. The catch was that my Houston connection was only one hour and fifty-three minutes, and because I was arriving internationally with checked luggage, I knew I would have to clear immigration, collect my bag, go through customs, recheck the bag, go through TSA again, and then get to my next gate. I worried about that connection so much before the trip that I had the entire sequence memorized.
In the end, it went much better than I feared. The flight from Managua arrived early, my arrival and departure gates in Houston happened to be very close to each other, and I managed to get through immigration, collect and recheck my bag, clear TSA, and make the San Francisco flight in time. By the time I reached SFO, the stressful part was over. We were delayed leaving San Francisco, but that was the last leg and there were no more connections to miss, so I didn’t mind nearly as much. Somehow, even after departing late, we still arrived in Manila on time.
Coming home felt especially good after all of that. I had forgotten that Grab pickups at NAIA had moved to a different, much better location, so that was a nice little surprise when I arrived. Once I was in the car, I told the driver to take Skyway and within a few minutes I was back in familiar territory, heading toward home. After spending so many hours in airports and airplanes, it felt almost absurd how quickly I could go from NAIA to my condo once I was finally in Manila.
And that is probably the thing I most want future me to remember about this trip: I love where I live. I love my life in Manila. That doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated by the Philippines, because I absolutely do, especially by the things our government does or fails to do. But those frustrations can exist alongside the fact that this is still home, and I genuinely love coming back to it. Traveling reminds me how much of the world there is to see, but every now and then it also reminds me how much I like the life I return to.
it begins with a step 