We were abducted by a crazed medicinal plant man when we lived on Ometepe Island. This is from my journal.
On Thursday, we were abducted by a crazed medicinal plant man and forced to listen to four incomprehensible pages of spells and incantations from the encyclopedia of the magic of witchcraft. An hour later, after a tour of his dusty altar containing a tooth of a cow, a silver dollar, a holographic picture of the last supper, as well as numerous other creepy things, he proudly showed us his 12 inch dagger and a loaded 45 handgun. Then he smoked our bodies with incense and gave us a goody bag filled with 5 lemons, an aloe plant, and samples of his incense with verbal instructions on to how to use everything. The only words we could decipher during the mad ramblings were police, volcano, yoga, vegetarian, God, mother, and erotica. The strangest thing about the whole event was that Ron and I had absolutely no fear of this New Aged Nica. Maybe, it was because I was concentrating on memorizing the title of his book, since I didn’t know what Brujeria meant. Now that I know it means ‘sorcery or witchcraft’ our only salvation is that he liked us well enough to perform a blessing and not a curse. The only thing we know for sure is that on our next trip into town, we’ll choose a different path, one that takes us far away from his house.
Crazy things happen all over the world. We were naive, but learned quickly. We learned later, that the crazed medicinal plant man took his loaded 45 hand gun and a propane tank strapped on his back to the hospital to retrieve his son. He held the loaded gun to the propane tank and told the doctor to release his son immediately or he would blow up the place.
The moral of this story...is you can't be too trusting with strangers. :-)
