One of my mom's friend's pinged me a couple of weeks ago to let me know, breathlessly, that Rick Steves is visiting Nicaragua and El Salvador right now!!!1! And posting his missives on Facebook! So, I friended him to keep up.
Now, if you don't know who Rick Steves is, he's an enviably prolific, marketably milquetoast, and cartographically challenged travel writer who moistens the panties of the post-menopausal set and sells a cubic fuckton of guidebooks. He mainly covers Europe, has a TV show or something, and never really interested me much since, well, adorable B&B vineyard tours of Tuscany are pretty far off my radar.
You thought Justin Beiber was non-threatening.
But, hey, he's coming to Nicaragua and El Salvador? That's kind of awesome! He can show a whole new set of travelers how fucking awesome Central America is, and maybe show that, despite the poverty and crime issues, both countries are safe for travelers with verdant hillsides, crashing waves, charming villages nestled into the pristine countryside, and whatever other stock travel writing clichés he wanted to ascribe to the place. Hey, that's good for Nicaragua and El Salvador, good for me, and good for his gray-haired groupies.
BUT NO. Oh. My. God. In three weeks, he has not visited a single tourist attraction! Fine, you know, that's fine if you're just traveling, but you're a travel writer, it's kind of your job, if you're covering Spain, to go to Barcelona. But no, instead, he decided to "keep it real" and go to poor and working-class neighborhoods, and stay in the capital cities - Managua and San Salvador - of both.
OK, even though 99% of tourists visiting either country go to the beaches, Spanish colonial towns, mountains, and national parks, the capitals are all right. Managua is kind of a shithole, but there's cool stuff, like Puerto Salvador Allende, or the Sandino Monument, or the Dario Theater. And San Salvador fucking rocks, it's an awesome city, with great nightlife, amazing museums, awesome, safe neighborhoods, and incredible natural and historic attractions within a few minutes of town. Did he go do any of that? NO! Why go check out Lake Managua, or El Boquerón, or MARTE? When you could sit in your hotel room and take photos of the pool? I'm not even kidding.
What did he do? Complain, and complain, and complain, about the poverty and crime rate. I was like DUDE, can we discuss something else? Jesus, the USA is waaaaay more dangerous than Nicaragua, and El Salvador slightly safer, and they're both safer to travel in than Costa Rica (I mean that both statistically, and from major amounts of personal experience). And yes, there are poor people, but bitching and moaning about them isn't going to make it go away! Get over it! Probably some Saudi fucker comes to East Jesus, Arkansas, and thinks they're all scary poor. Get over it.
Oh god, the El Salvador missives were fucking retarded. I mean, in Nicaragua, he made naive, incorrect observations, but nothing malicious. In El Salvador, you might have thought he was in Mad Max Landia.... I mean, his final post was entitled, "Barricaded in the Hotel." He was at the Hilton! In San Benito! There are so many armed guards there that you could walk around in a miniskirt made out of US$100 bills at 2am and nothing would happen. Oh, and then he bitched and moaned about the armed guards. DUDE. Seriously. Grow a pair.
Seriously. And the tard guard backing him up on facebook was like, "Thank you for telling me this, Rick Steves *dreamy sigh*, now I know to never go to El Salvador or Nicaragua, where everything is scary and gross." Seriously? I made some snide comments, but Jesus, there's no cure for stupid. People kept posting things like, "I go to El Salvador fairly often and never have problems, because I don't smuggle cocaine, I surf." To which a frantic mother would reply, "My son is going there on a mission.... should I stop him and save his life?" Yeah, because the churches won't have figured out, after running 57,000 mission groups of teenagers, that they shouldn't smuggle cocaine.
Fuck you Rick Steves. Seriously, fuck you in the ass with a baseball bat. I'm going to bitchslap him someday.
Yeah, more like 25 months left until I find you and do what no Nicaraguan or Salvadoran
would do. Because I'm a USAmerican, and we have a higher crime rate than both of them
put together, so get lubed up bitch.