The hike up the Sentinel Dome in the Yosemite National Park seemed impossible from a distance.

The huge rounded dome of limestone jutted up from the trail like an intimidating monolith, and as we hiked past the conifer trees that smelled like vanilla, we wondered how on earth anyone would be able to scale that giant, round rock face to get to the top.

As we approach the cloud forest area of Volcan Maderas on the Isle Ometepe in Nicaragua, the roars begin. I can’t see the beasts whose deep, ugly and threatening howls fill the morning sunshine at the base of this dormant volcano, but they sound as if they number in the hundreds.

When Ash and I decided to take a romantic trip to Central America, we didn’t initially plan on visiting Nicaragua. I’d visited Costa Rica before, and I thought that Ash would like that country, but the airline prices kept going higher. One day, Ash texted to ask, “What about Managua?” And I thought, “Why not?”

Waking up on my first morning in the small coastal town of Bandon, Ore., I walked out of the tiny ocean-front motel to an alien landscape of crashing waves and thick grayness.

Hidden away in the rolling Osage Hills of northeastern Oklahoma, the shrunken heads seem exotic, out of place and a little bit disturbing.