Managua, Nicaragua, what a wonderful spot
There’s coffee and bananas and a temperature hot
So take a trip and on a ship go sailing away
Across the agua to Managua, Nicaragua, olé
We visited Corinto and León rather than Managua, but our tour guide Henry did perform a nice rendition of this little ditty as our bus hummed along the Pan-American Highway through the countryside on our way to the ruins of Old León. Nicaragua is a really cool place to visit because the tourism industry is just in its infancy. Visitors get a real taste of Central American life, and our guides regaled us with raw and honest stories about what it was like to grow up in a socialist society in the 1980s. As much fun as all of our ports of call have been, it was refreshing to not be held at bay behind a wall of what our new friend Ricardo refers to as “tourism branding” such as Jamaica’s “No problem, mon” and Costa Rica’s “Pura Vida.” For example, Henry told us about how his mother got interrogated by the police when he was a child because she was having her children learn English, “the language of The Enemy.” Also, he told us how the president of Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega–yes, he is also the current president) was convinced that the U.S. was planning a sudden invasion in 1985 and filled the streets of León with tanks as a preventative measure. We got a good picture of how scary this might have been for Henry, who was only 11 at the time. Henry’s elementary school had 70 students and 40 chairs. If you didn’t get to school early, you’d be standing all day in a scorching hot (only a little over 500 statute miles from the equator) school building. Since he lived quite a long distance from the school and was unlikely to ever arrive early to get a seat, his dad got hold of some wood and carved him a chair which he lugged back and forth every day on the hot and dusty dirt roads to the school house.
There is no doubt that most of Nicaragua is still heartbreakingly poor, but even more than any of the other countries we’ve visited, we found that a strong sense of optimism, pride, and friendliness toward visitors pervades every interaction with the local people. You get a sense from the Nicas (affectionate term they use to describe themselves) that they are on the up. Look out, folks! Nicaragua may be a late starter among its developing Central American neighbors, but it’s learning fast and will be booming quickly.
