{"id":707,"date":"2011-10-09T20:10:23","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T00:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/?p=707"},"modified":"2012-10-31T13:58:36","modified_gmt":"2012-10-31T17:58:36","slug":"nicaraguan-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/?p=707","title":{"rendered":"Nicaraguan Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ometepe<\/p><\/div>\n

Nicaragua is one of those places that made me say: I want to come back and spend more time here. As soon as you cross the border you can see a lot of poverty. Roads were OK, but the infrastructure is really poor. You must be asking, so why do I want to go back? For 3 main reasons: 1. The country is just beautiful with beaches, mountains, volcanos (nothing crazy different than what we saw in Costa Rica although not as lush); 2. Nicaragua has a very interesting history, from the indigenous people who were once there, to the recent politics over the last century that made this country so special; 3. But what made this place so special to me was the people, los Nicas.
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History & Politics<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>The largest country in Central America has a fascinating history. First, many of the indians were killed by diseases that were brought over by the invading spaniards, then the indian survivors were conquered and forced into slavery and in the 19th and 20th century, this country was under intense surveillance from superpowers . I did not know this, but instead of the Panama Canal we could potentially have had the Nicaragua canal. The lake Nicaragua offered a way for boats to sail from the Caribeen to the middle of the continent and it was the shorter way to eventually build a canal to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific.<\/p>\n

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National Liberation Sandinista Front<\/p><\/div>\n

The US, Japan and Europe were really interested in Nicaragua and this created some turmoil in the country. The US lead a military invasion in the country in the 20’s and a national hero organized some guerillas against the marines. Auguto Nicolas Caleron Sandino became a legend evading capture by the US, but was killed eventually by General Somoza who would be responsible for a 40 year US-supported dictatorship in Nicaragua. In 1979 the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) took control of the country. But the turmoils in the country did not end and US Government’s Reagan Administration, concerned about the now Soviet-supported government in Nicaragua, decided to fund the Contras (guerrilla formed in Honduras against the Sandinistas) with money from the illlegal sales of arms to Iran \u00a0– \u00a0A global disaster given what is happening right now in the 21st century with Iran and the US.<\/p>\n

Currently the country is again governed by the Sandinistas who in the 80’s increased literacy from 50% to 87% and offer public health care and education to all citzens, despite the US embargo during that time.
\nEven though there has has been recent funding from other nations, the country continues to be really poor and corruption is widespread. The People, around 5.8 million, are very humble and nice to talk to. About 80% of the population live with less than $2\/day.<\/p>\n

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Flag in a taxi<\/p><\/div>\n

Everyone has strong opinions about politics and all the unrest that happened in the last few decades is still alive in their memories. But despite all this, people seem to be happy and it is somewhat similar to what I used to see in the country-side of Brazil. They are even more patriotics than Ticos and their flag is ubiquitous<\/p>\n

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Ferry Che Guevara<\/p><\/div>\n

The face of Che Guevera is in a lot of places, in boats, statues an shirts. Nicaragua will have presidential elections in November and the current Sandinista president has signs that says: For a Solidary, Socialist and Catholic Nicaragua. Hugo Cesar Chaves, the venezuelan president, strongly supports Nicaragua with oil money and along with a lot of leftist goverments in Latin America is changing the political landscape of this region recently.
\nA curiosity, in Nicaragua one cannot find the street names. When you ask where to go they use a reference point. For exemple: the place is 100 meters south of the Bank, 200 meters west of the Cathedral. For tourists it is a little hard because we don’t know where are the reference points.
\nMoney & Food<\/strong><\/p>\n

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National beer<\/p><\/div>\n

American business presence is way less in Nicaragua. I did not see a McDonalds or Burger King (although our late night trip into Managua, the capital, we did see some international hotel chains) . The Cordoba is their unit of currency and 1 US dollar is worth 22.6 cordobas. But, like in Costa Rica, one can get dollars in ATMs and a lot of the prices are in dollars from food to appliances in stores.
\nPrices here are A LOT cheaper than in Costa Rica. Our daily budget was 50% less than in Costa Rica and a beer in a bar was between $0.90 to 1.30. Food was good and cheap and the national dish is basically rice and beans cooked together and they call Gallo Pinto and you can have this any time of the day. An indigenous drink called Chicha is made with corn, has a pink color and is sold in bags with ice. Actually a lot of the drinks are just put in plastic bags and sold to people with a straw, because plastic bottles and cups are too expensive.
\nTransportation<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Painted school bus<\/p><\/div>\n

The bus system is also very precarious and old school buses run from city to city, they are what americans call chicken-buses and have really cool colors and stop every 500 meters to pick up people on the road. But there are nicer buses that run accross the countries. They cost a lot of money for most of the population.
\nMaybe one day I will come back to stay longer and do some work in this beautiful country, but up next I will describe our first big headache during this trip.<\/p>\n

Marcelo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicaragua is one of those places that made me say: I want to come back and spend more time here. As soon as you cross the border you can see a lot of poverty. Roads were OK, but the infrastructure … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantfling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}