El Eskimo, Then Buen Viaje!

Today was our last full day in Nicaragua, and it was made completely free of any sort of productivity. We ate lunch at Restaurante El Eskimo, of Eskimo brand ice cream fame. The food was honestly pretty bad, but we were really there for the ice cream. Lydia ordered a giant banana split, and I had to fight to get even one tiny bite of it.

We had to stop our bus in Nejapa and wait for a procession to pass. I assume it had to do with the Santo Domingo festival. We had been hearing fireworks and loud music pretty much every single night while at our compound.

Our last official group outing was to the market. It wasn't as scary as the one we visited earlier thankfully. This one had a section devoted to tourist trinkets as well as food and lots more. I didn't end up buying anything, but the people watching and the scenery made the visit well worth it. It was here that I think I was the most threatened I'd been during my whole visit. There was a group of teenagers in fake looking "security" uniforms that approached me and demanded a donation. It was pretty clear what they wanted but I stuck to my "I don't speak Spanish" routine and kept walking, and thankfully the little Hitler Youth eventually gave up.

The next morning we flew from Augusto Sandino International to George Bush Intercontinental. That felt pretty funny.

The Secret Tour of Managua

The first half of the day was mostly a repeat. We went to the children’s hospital and passed out more toys and took Polaroids of mothers with their new babies. I heard that the reason we don’t go to the hospital’s second floor is that the building isn't structurally sound. That prompted a discussion on which floor you’d rather be on if the building collapsed.

The process of our group exchanging currency consisted of whistling at a guy on the side of the road. He would hop on the bus, do the conversions with a small calculator, and hand out the bills.

Some of our group went out to the houses in the town to pass out the toys that were remaining from the hospital visits. They predictably had several kids following them all over. They said that one kid even changed his shirt in order to try to get two toys.

After lunch we had made previous arrangements to go on a secret tour of the city. We only told our group leader, mostly because all of the seats in our taxi were already reserved and we didn't want anyone else to feel sour about it. The part of the plan that I was most proud of was that the husband of the principal at the school we’d been toiling at was a cab driver. I thought that pretty much guaranteed protection against any sort of taxi shadiness that can arise when in a foreign land.

My trusty guidebook really shined at this point. I had already read about several places that I wanted to go and check out. Emilio, a local Managuan who works with our group, was also kind enough to come with us and help guide us around.

Our first stop was the Museo Las Huellas(footprints) de Acahualinca. As our beat up taxi arrived at the museum, we weren't completely sure that we were at the right place. The front of the building was entirely caged in and the guard behind the closed gate didn't move a muscle as we approached. He finally lost the staring contest and mumbled something as he swung open the gate. Our treatment by the ticket-takers was similarly strange. They acted like they had never performed this transaction before. One funny thing: I believe it was 4 dollars to get in and 5 if we wanted to take pictures. Since our pal Emilio was Nicaraguan he got in free. Lucky dog, that guy. (I figured that since just about everyone in Nicaragua accepted US dollars that there wasn't any point in going through the hassle of currency exchange, so dollars means dollars kids.)

Well once we got in I thought that the site itself was pretty interesting but the attached museum’s production values were pretty weak. I didn't see much explaining the excavation site either. Not a single brochure was to be had.

The footprints were made 6000 years ago by people walking across volcanic mud. This has got to be the oldest evidence of humanity that I have ever seen.

We drove by the US Embassy. It was like a fortress city, very similar to the one I saw in Colombia.

Next we checked out the national square area. One side had some sort of presidential palace but Emilio said the president doesn't live there. It sounded like a pretty strange situation.

On a different side of the square stood the Catedral de Santiago. It was about as close to ruins as a building can be while still standing. That gave it a definite vampires-live-here sort of spooky quality. It was not open for visitors.

Also on the square was the National Palace of Culture. It was funny because we initially said we wanted to go to the “national palace” and the cab dropped us off in front of the same post office building that we had been at a couple days prior. You’d think there’d only be one national palace per country. Who knows. The first floor of the real national palace held the national museum. This operation was thankfully running much more smoothly than the footprint place. It was cheap, and the guy that took our money at the door then gave us a guided tour of the entire museum. Emilio was kind enough to translate. The museum boasted a good overview of the country’s natural history with volcanoes, rivers, and dinosaurs.

The cultural stuff was probably the most interesting. 

They had an entire room devoted to the costumes used during productions of El Gueguense, a satirical drama performed during the feast of San Sebastián. 

Outside we stumbled on a student parade of some sort.

We left the little square and then Emilio took over in giving the cab driver directions. We went to a nice lookout area that provided a great view of the city below. There was even a gigantic Augusto Sandino silhouette up there standing watch.

The little tank was a gift from Mussolini.

This is the rear of Managua's Crowne Plaza Hotel. According to the guide book a very crazy sounding Howard Hughes lived on the top floor until the large earthquake of 1972. He "spent most of his days sitting naked on his favourite high-backed leather chair engrossed in films". His daily diet while at the hotel consisted of Campbell's soup and Hershey's chocolate bars. 

We then headed over to Puerto Salvador Allende which was a really nice little waterfront area. There were lots of different restaurants and shops lined up along Lake Managua. I appreciated the help choosing the place because it wasn't very well described in my guidebook, and I would have missed it!

Lastly we went to one of the big malls in town, Metrocentro. I thought it would be a nice change of pace in case the girls were sick of doing all the stuff I wanted to do. We did a little shopping, hit the food court, and then headed home. I’d say our double secret trip was a success.

Keeping with the style in Nicaragua, the mall was only sort of halfway contained. There were lots of spaces that opened directly to the outside. Because of this many of the stores in the mall had their glass doors closed with their own air-conditioners humming within.

Stamps, Tree Frogs, and Coco Beans

I woke up with barely enough energy to drag myself off of the top bunk. If I had felt any worse I may have just stayed in bed. That would have been a tragedy because this was definitely the most interesting day so far. I was sweating profusely on the bus, and I was shivering all night before. I went to the bathroom pretty regularly through the night as well. Lydia’s friend Ryan had very similar symptoms at pretty much the exact same time so that made me feel like less of a sickling. We must have eaten something bad. Anyway after another bumpy dirt road bus ride I rushed off of the bus. Any more of that treatment and I would have heaved for sure.

We were now at the Carolyn de Sirker School again but this time it was for entertainment rather than manual labor. The school children put on a little show for us. My favorite part was the dancing. The girls had colorful dresses and props like fans and handkerchiefs that they waved around. When it came time to shake all the kids’ hands and so forth, I ditched and went and laid down on a park bench. I was feeling pretty terrible. 

I missed the group measuring the kids and giving them clothes.

There was cake.

Then it was back to the bus. I went to sleep pretty quickly. I was tired but it also provided the additional benefit of not being awake for more bumpy driving. When I woke up we were at the post office. We were there doing a chore on the way to our next destination, but I took the opportunity to look around. Once upon a time I was a stamp collector, plus government buildings are pretty interesting under the control of such an entertaining government. I was not disappointed. There were the requisite hot pink posters everywhere, sure. But the building’s interior had hot pink trim. Even the postal employee’s polos were hot pink. On top of that there were large idealized pictures of the martyr of the Sandinista Revolution on the walls. A picture of a young Augusto Sandino dressed like a cowboy is especially popular in the country. There were 3 of them just in the post office lobby. I later learned that the reason for all of the atrocious pink is that President Daniel Ortega’s wife likes that color. Story checks out.

One problem I've always had with St. Louis is that there are not nearly enough giant light-up Chavez billboards in public spaces. My letters to the mayor all go unanswered.

Our next stop was to a coffee plantation operated by Cafe Las Flores. We had a choice between a canopy zip line tour or a plantation tour. I was still not feeling 100% so I chose the latter. It was pretty interesting. We learned all sorts of fun facts about Nicaragua in general and the coffee in particular. They hand pick the coffee berries and then hand sort the beans for quality later on. It’s pretty amazing to me that anything is still handpicked these days. It ended up raining super hard while we were safely inside one of the production buildings. The other group meanwhile was probably stuck up in a tree somewhere getting owned. Probably because of this they ended up taking forever which took precious time away from the lovely city of Granada.

Our very cool tour guide went out and found a Red-Eyed Tree Frog for us to examine.

The frog has a really bright under belly with blue, black, and white streaks. You can see the little guy trying to tuck all that under his green body to try to hide from us.

Our guide gave us fresh coffee berries to try too. What a guy!

My first impression of the city was “wow, this looks a lot like New Orleans!” That actually makes sense because both places were Spanish colonial port cities. Unfortunately the time spent at the post office combined with the extra time spent at the plantation meant that we arrived in Granada very much behind schedule. It was already after dark and we only had 20 minutes of free time before our group dinner reservations. We made the best of the situation by making a bee line to the central park square area. We hopped on a quick horse drawn carriage tour of the older parts of town. Our young driver was friendly to an amusing degree. He spoke Spanish really really slowly and clearly while explaining the sites which we appreciated. There were still lots of words that we didn't understand but we got the general gist of it.

Even when there are grand sights to be seen, I like to keep an eye on the details. Anyway I thought the fire hydrants in the city were unique.

One name that came up a few times during the tour was William Walker. Walker took over Nicaragua, named himself president, and proceeded to try to turn the country into a US slave state. It’s interesting because he is the bogeyman that every Nicaraguan school child learns about but no one in the US has ever heard of him. Fun fact: William Walker is described as a "filibuster" by Wikipedia, which defines the word as "irregular soldiers who act without authority from their own government, and are generally motivated by financial gain, political ideology, or the thrill of adventure." The word for brazenly taking control of something later became the word used to describe politicians yapping for long periods of time in order to destroy any sort of productivity in Congress. Learning is fun.

We had a nice dinner as a group at a steak restaurant where I finally got a drink I had been searching for. It’s just called cacao and its ingredients are really simple: ground coco bean, milk, and sugar, but it tasted amazing. I don’t think I've had fresh coco beans before. Our time in Granada was short but sweet.