(All my Nicaragua pics are here)
It was really great getting to meet up with someone I knew. Nallely came to find me in the part of town "she never goes to", so I felt thankful & fortunate the moment she picked me up with Alberto! Masaya is just south of the capital & basically just a workingman's town.
Their house is in a more peaceful area outside of Masaya in its own little neighborhood. One night there, we had a 4 hour recording session with a bunch of their friends for my pragmatics research. I bought chinese food, bread, rum & beer as we all just ate, dran & listened to music on the patio. They all really didn't know what to expect when I gave them different role plays to perform, but with all that food & liquor, I don't think many participants could have been any happier :-)
Of course, we went to Lago Nicaragua, the biggest lake in Central America & 19th biggest in the world. It was... muddy with flies, but a nice walk thru the park, nonetheless.
The next day, Nallely & I visited León together, a 1.5hr bus ride to the north, and I have never seen so many churches in one city in my life.
It was the former (leftist) capital of the country, and you can see the socialist ideas, "liberal" thinking & basically just different stuff through all the graffiti covering the city. The streets were much cleaner than I expected & the sun bounced so beautifully of the bright colors.
Alberto's cousin Tagni came with us to Granada, south of Masaya, as I was able to see the other former (rightist) capital. Some of the colors were just as bright as in León, although I would say it wasn't quite as clean. Some of the town was much more run down, which I liked; it gave it a more ancient feel.
Going to Laguna de Apoyo brought us to an argument about the difference between a lagoon & a lake. It's hard to constructively converse with a know-it-all (there was just one of them, lol), but after some googleless debate, I discovered the word estero in Spanish is actually "lagoon" in English, and laguna, lagillo and lago are used in a lot of different ways. The google results didn't really help, but if anyone knows, contact me!! In any case, the lake & volcano were gorgeous. There are so many volcanos in the area, most of them creating their own lagoons (or whatever) at the base. It actually reminded me of the NW.
I really started to take it easy in Nicaragua, just kind of waking up & doing whatever without a real plan. It was nice. Nallely & Albertito were down for whatever, making things that much easier. I only explored the pacific side of the country, but as I heard the Caribbean coast is pretty shady & not too developed yet, I am happy what I saw. I headed north thru Honduras to El Salvador next...
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