It was on the lips of every destroyed face. Everyone in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua was talking about it. In tired tones, gringos nodded—yes, they had been there and partied it up at Sunday Funday.

 

Sunday Funday, Nicaragua and it’s Unbridled Debauchery

As Stella and I arrived at the Yazure Surf Hostel in San Juan del Sur, another guest was leaving. Well, he was fleeing—“I can’t do it,” he said shaking his head, “I gotta get out of here before Sunday.”

It was Saturday, but it might well have been the night before a battle. “Three people died at the last Sunday Funday,” an Irish man at the hostel said, circulating a rumor that proved untrue.

One guy, and he was a legend in the backpacker circuit for it, had been to twenty-four consecutive Sunday Fundays. He wore the dark glasses of the perpetual hangover and walked with a limp.

What is Sunday Funday in San Juan Del Sur?

Sunday Funday is a debaucherous party that happens every Sunday in San Juan del Sur Nicaragua. Inspired it seems by fraternity, you have to get your tickets on Sunday morning. One 22-year old New Zealander explained to me, “You have to line up at 9am. They let the girls buy tickets first. Which means there is going to be way more girls than guys.” Sunday Funday in San Juan del Sur is a pool crawl, where participants are bused to three different hostels: The Pelican Eyes Hostel, The Naked Tiger and Pacha Mama.

The stories abound. Sunday Funday is where saturnalian legends (and probably some babies) are made.

Me, I was glad that my travel companion and I were on the same page and planned NOT to go to Sunday Funday. I’d just turned 29, and felt as much a desire to spend a debaucherous day with lads and lassies in their early twenties gone wild as I did eating mud pies on the beach.

I’d thought I’d be headed back to Guatemala by now, but romantic interest can change even the most rigid plans. I’d hoped that this crush was just a passing blip and that eventually I’d be free of the tractor beam of brewing romance.

Two simultaneous impulses governed me—one was to return to my awesome single life where I was working hard on my artistic endeavors of writing and music and the other was to wait this one out in the hopes that something would happen between us. I was not pursuing Stella, but felt I needed to continue to share the air with her as long as I could to see what these feelings were all about.

I was at a point in my life where I’d felt I’d dated enough, loved enough, and was not willing to waste my time on dead-end dating and doomed relationships. Usually, I can tell pretty early on. But with Stella, the future was shrouded in mystery.

Our plans that Sunday were to go for a bike ride and start a detox where we ate only fruit for a while. That’s what the kids are into these days. I had drank enough of the Kool-Aid that if Stella had said that we were going to eat sand for a week, I would have gone for it, so long as it was something we were doing together.

But as we walked to check out bike rentals, Stella started to backpedal on our plans. She saw the swarms of backpackers descending upon Hostel PachaMama to buy their tickets to Sunday Funday. “Maybe we should go to Sunday Funday,” she wondered, “It will be an experience. . . You could write about it. . .”

Game on for Sunday Funday San Juan Del Sur

I regarded her like a former smoker regards someone offering him a Camel Light. Come on my, my face said. I didn’t want to be that guy. That 29-year-old guy at the college party. But I was resigned not to force my will on the situation, but to let Stella work out what she actually wanted to do with her day and join her.

“What about our detox?” I wondered.

“Well, we can start that tomorrow. . .”

Stella vacillated. Then we ran into John, a 30-year-old fireman from Toronto with whom we had hiked the volcano Madera in Ometepe, Nicaragua. He was all about going to Sunday Funday. He had just come out of a breakup back home because he was not ready to commit yet and Sunday Funday was something he was looking forward to with a smiling passion.

It is the space between decisions that is uncomfortable to me. Once a decision is made, you must embrace it with the passion dogs have for treats. So once Stella decided that the detox was off, the bike riding could wait, and that we’d be going to the notorious Sunday Funday of San Juan del Sur, I embraced the impending party with gusto.

I certainly would have gone without hesitation in my early twenties. But in my early twenties, I likely would have gotten obliterated. There was something nice about observing a party as one of the older dudes, keeping things together, watching the unfolding bacchanalian madness as it erupted.

So, Stella, who is a hairstylist, shaved me a beard to fit the occasion, and off went to San Juan del Sur’s Sunday Funday.

And it was fun. And the people were merry. And everywhere we saw people we knew from earlier travelers around Nicaragua. And John and I had a blast. And everyone complained about the price of beer.

 

And John, because he was 30 and had earned the right, walked around talking half drank beers from the wasted. And I became a legend amongst an Australian who every time he saw me would repeat to whoever was nearby what I had told him, “Every night this guy shaves! And every morning he wakes up with a new beard! He’s a legend!” And I liked being the older guy, soberer than the rest, but still part of the merriment.

Mostly I loved my time because of who I was with. There was a moment at the second stop on the pool crawl that encapsulated the evening. Stella and I were seated knee to knee, talking. She got up to get a drink leaving me alone. A German who had made unreciprocated moves on me in Granada walked past me arm and arm with a guy. She leered at me, and her gaze said it all, “See, you turned me down, and now you’re alone and I’m with this guy.” But it didn’t matter, because I was with who I wanted to be with, and she was about to return with a drink that we would share like we had shared the whole week. And tomorrow, I did not know. Stella was still considering coming back to Antigua with me, and I was happy to wait around for a few days until she decided if that’s what she wanted. What I liked most about Stella in this moment is that we were not going to bed together, we were getting to know each other and to enjoy each others company. If something happened, it happened, but it was not what I was worrying about. I just wanted to share our smiles and company at that moment.