We probably could have done a little more research and would have known how hard it would be to sell the Sandhog in this country where, a few years ago, they arbitrarily made a law saying no vehicles older than 10 years could be imported.
We carefully selected an old Toyota with the famous 22R engine because we know how common they are throughout Central America. But, Nicaragua is trying to break the old-Toyotas-run-forever mold.
It's hard enough selling a car in your home country, so just imagine adding foreign laws, strange cities without roadsigns, not having a local telephone number, and, oh yeah, a language barrier.
With surf wax, I scratched a "S/V" (Spanish car code meaning "FOR SALE") on the windshield, and we tried our luck at surf destinations on the coast for a while. When we realized that if we want to leave Nicaragua (and we do), we would have to do less surfing and more selling, we liquidated the surfboard quiver and drove to Granada, the country's nicest city.
With Nicaraguan plates (something we don't have), Sandhog would be worth about US$6000 here. Since it's a 1995, the plates cannot be changed legally, so we start the conversation at $3500. We stop at mechanic shops, figuring these are people that know people that might want cars.
Our first day in Granada, we pulled up next to a group of six guys painting a small car way older than 10 years. On hearing our price, one of them immediately got on the phone. Then he pulled out another phone. He was making calls on both phones, alternating ears. After a few minutes, he climbed in the backseat of Sandhog and said "go."
We drove to his hombre, Roger's, house and negotiated with him for a bit and he said to call back in the afternoon. We drove back to the car paint lot and the guy in the backseat told us to wait. We hung out for 15 minutes and another guy pulled up. More negotiations ensued-- no deal.
We said thanks and drove down the road with Roger's number in our pocket, planning to call him later if we still had the truck.
Ten minutes down the road, we start to hear honking. This noise is as common as breath in Central America, so we hardly notice. More honking, and then a motorcycle pulls alongside us at 50mph. The rider pulls off his helmet and starts yelling. We roll down the window and decipher that he wants us to follow him... back to Roger's house.
It turns out that Roger had heard about our continued negotiations and got nervous we would sell, so he sent the biker to chase us. He claimed he had a buyer. We would just have to wait for him to drive the money down from Managua (about a 45 minute drive away). He told us to come back in an hour. When we returned, he told us to come back in 2 hours. When we returned, he told us that he wasn't sure where his guy was, but when he got there, he would bring him to our hotel-- and since he found us a buyer, we would pay him a commission, right? We agreed.
Just before dark, Roger showed up in front of the hotel with a towel and began polishing the hood of Sandhog. He showed it to a guy wearing a huge gold chain around his neck. They took it for a test drive and the guy left his wife with us as collateral. When they came back, the guy negotiated a price, but then revealed he had no money with him. Maybe tomorrow.
Roger looked at us and said he had another friend. One with money in his pocket. He would be back in one hour. We never saw Roger again.
After a couple days, we decided we needed a bigger city. In Managua, we changed our tactic slightly. We lowered our initial price and said we were just selling it for parts, trying to weed out some of the criminal, chain-wearing element. At the first shop, we found a guy, who called a guy, who had us follow him for 45-minutes through the sweltering city to a lot to meet his cousin, his lawyer, and all their friends. The cousin offered us $2800, we accepted, and then the lawyer said this won't work-- this car is more than 10 years old! This had been advertised from the start. They all jumped in a pick up truck and drove away and left us to figure out where we were, and, more importantly, where was the closest place to get a mango smoothie?
Smoothie fortified, we gave it one last try. We stopped at a corner used car lot and I approached the guys sitting in the shade chatting. A fat guy in a white t-shirt got up and told me to follow him. Forrest pulled Sandhog behind us down the block. At the garage down the way, White Shirt talked to a guy in a purple shirt who called a guy who arrived shortly wearing an orange shirt. They made a plan. We would come back on Monday, and Orange Shirt would ride with us to the Costa Rican border (about 200km away). We would cross into Costa Rica, then orange shirt would buy the car and we were free to go, while he would use fake papers to re-import it back into Nicaragua. They repeated again and again that after we sold them the car in Costa Rica, we were free to go, and this was always accompanied by a hand motion of clapping and then the right hand shooting into the sky like a rocket ship. I translated the plan for Forrest, complete with hand motion, and he looked at me like I was the crazy one. We said thank you, we would think about it, since Monday was a couple days off. White Shirt got into the back of Sandhog and directed us to a parts shop where the owner offered us $800. We declined, dropped White Shirt off at his car lot, and drove back to our hotel defeated, and started talking about donating the car to a charity.
We have considered driving Sandhog back to the States and keeping her. We have considered driving further south and trying to sell her. We have considered just giving it more time in Nica. But, it's 100 degrees, we're short on surfboards, and the prices in Nicaragua are running down the adventure funds. Nicaraguan police stop us twice a day looking for a stupid reason to give us a ticket or get a bribe. On top of all this, Forrest picked up some nasty bedbug bites at a hotel in Managua, and I tore most of the skin off my right calf in a flip-flop induced fall -- we are ready to go home.
In Managua, the closest thing to the USA are malls with air-conditioned movie theaters, which is where we decided to spend our Sunday, since all car shops and mechanics are closed anyway. While waiting in line for tickets, Forrest got a phone call from a friend of a friend that we had contacted through Facebook to try to volunteer for his organization in Popoyo, Nicaragua. We had never ended up meeting, but now, he says, he is interested in our car. We offered to donate it for his kids programs and technical school. No, he says, he wants to use it himself, so he would like to pay a fair price for it. And, he's an American, so he thinks he can just transfer the US plates. Anyway, leave the truck with the keys at a hotel in Managua and he'll Paypal the money. It seems too good to be true, but God is good, and we're headed to the airport tomorrow morning.
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