After three years away from Nicaragua, I have returned! I always knew that I would come back to this beautiful country one day but could not have possibly guessed that it would be under the circumstances under which I now find myself. (I’m filming a documentary about water, for god’s sake. I suppose that life has a tendency to be unpredictable in often-wonderful ways, though, so here I am.)

What has struck me the most over the past week of traveling through this country are the vivid memories that have been endlessly recalled from forgotten recesses of my brain by the oddest triggers: The smell of burning wood as soon as I stepped out of the airport reminding me of street food purchased on the side of a rural highway in Estelí, the familiar rumbling of the oddly-shaped paving stones that cover this country evoking a humid sunset journey by scooter on the island of Ometepe. It is difficult to believe both the power that such insignificant triggers have in recreating memories and the fact that I ever could have forgotten these memories to the vagaries of time, in the first place.

-Richard Hansen

P.S. Because of time pressures, I will write more about the substantial work that we’ve done during the past week in a bit. Suffice it to say that things are looking up and we have an embarrassment of riches in choosing between compelling stories to film.