We started off the day with a hearty continental breakfast (who can say no to tamales, rice, and pineapple juice at 7 am in the morning?) and then all ten of us loaded up into the van to head off to church. On the way, we stopped at a national park located on top of a hill right in the heart of Managua. The hill used to contain an underground prison where prisoners were kept out of any light for the entirety of their sentence. Today, the cells remain empty and closed off but the ¨top¨ of the prison has been turned into a national park complete with a small cafe, restrooms without doors, and a zip-line ride across a man-made lake (which was really a sewage dump area leading straight out into Lake Managua).
After about a half hour at the park, we headed over to the western part of the city to attend the Sunday service of our tour guide and translator, Oscar. Here I would like to mention that while this area of the city would be considered extremely impoverished (we saw children defecating right next to the street due to lack of plumbing or even the affordability to buy a bucket), the entire city of Managua contains a mix of upper-class and impoverished people living side-by-side. Many parts of the city that you would consider the business/richer parts had giant walls surrounding the actual buildings to keep the homeless out of sight, as well as out of the property. Our hotel itself has security guarding the entrance not for safety purposes, but to keep homeless people from sneaking inside to sleep in the hotel.
The church service lasted longer than we expected (2 hours!) due in part to an extended introduction of our group to the regular church members. I personally had no idea what was going on most of the time, as everyone was speaking in Spanish, and I tended to nod off while sitting thanks to there being no air conditioning in the building. At the end of the service, we each shook hands with all thirty members of the church, said thank you for their continued prayers of success for our upcoming mission, and headed off to lunch (McDonalds!).
My favorite part has arrived: our journey as official tourists (the only day we would be sight-seeing for the next two weeks) to the outskirts of Managua and beyond. Our first stop was the Parque Nacional de Volcans Masaya - Masaya Volcano National Park. Mind you, this was an active volcano, and we drove straight to the top to look right down into the crater! Over a mile wide and 200 feet deep, this volcano is said to erupt every fifty years (the last time being 1972, so we were okay for now. For safety purposes, though, our instructor was told to park the van facing towards the exit and leave the engine running in case of a need for evacuation. While the smell of sulfur didn´t bother me as much as other people, we were forced to leave after only 15 minutes of walking around as the gases became too much for our lungs to handle.
Next we drove through some beautiful jungle territory to a small fishing village located on the edge of Lake Nicaragua - the third largest freshwater lake in the world. I was told this was also the only location of freshwater sharks in the entire world and was excited to try and see one, but also learned that they had been hunted almost to extinction when the Japanese came thirty years ago to catch and export the sharks back to Japan. Today the conservation efforts to protect the sharks is very minimal, and raw sewage is being dumped into the lake each and every day.
While at Lake Nicaragua we took a quick tour (via boat, of course) around the thirty or so mini-islands in the middle of the lake. Our boat, barely holding all 10 of us and no one wearing life jackets, survived the constant beating of giant waves coming off of larger boats carrying tourists and skiers. Most of the islands were about the size of a half-acre and were the home of rich Nicaraguans, Americans, and others who could afford to build a palace-like structure onto such rocky terrain. Other islands contained the tin-roof homes of fishing families while some islands had no inhabitants at all. We stopped at one island which was home to four wild spider monkeys and fed them Oreo cookies (I did not participate, of course) and then headed back to the mainland.
This evening was by far the best part. We drove to the town of Grenada which was famous for its colonial-style Main Street and for having one of the few five-star restaurants in Nicaragua. It was here that we ate dinner. Another traveler and I shared a ¨traditional Nicaraguan¨dish consisting of fried plantains, beans, shishkebob steak, and some amazing fried cheese. We even convinced another traveler to try the cow tongue dish, which she had never tried before. It eas quite the experience. The highlight of the day was a quick shopping spree for souvenirs where we found dead frogs stuffed and dried into the shape of coin purposes, sold as souvenirs for $5 each.
It is on that lovely note that I leave you tonight. We head north for Somotillo and I can´t guarantee another post for a while. It´s been great so far!
Until the next time,
Margery
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