First Day In Nicaragua

Wow it has been a jam packed trip it is so hard to believe we have only been here one day. I had a great time swimming and hanging out at the Karaoke bar last night then this morning I went down to breakfast at around 7:00 so I would have time to read the Bible and drink a couple of cups of coffee. We left around 8:00 and had a tour of Granada by horse drawn carriage. We saw the old hospital, the old train station and the old cathedral. Then we went by a place where they made cigars, some people rolled some and we all shared a sample cigar. It wasn’t as strong as I would have liked it to be so I ended up not buying any cigars. At the cigar shop they had a parrot and a poster ofArnold Schwarzenegger. Then we went by this cemetery that had a bunch of mausoleums and statues to mark the graves. They also had mango trees there and we found out that Granada is a city with a lot of Mango trees. Then after the cemetery we went on a tour of a Nicaraguan Cultural Center. The cultural center had used to be a very large house and then part of it was turned into the cultural center. It had a lot of contemporary Nicaraguan art. There was also a radio station and an artist working on new pieces and selling some of his art from a work room.
After we left the cultural center we started talking to some kids who were playing around barefoot in the street. Claudia asked them why they were not in school and one of the boys replied because he didn’t have shoes. One of the most eye opening things about the trips so far has been the poverty. Like the kid, Michael, last night who ate the half eaten hamburger we gave him and the kids that claim they can’t go to school because they can’t afford shoes it is very heartbreaking. It also reveals how truly wealthy we are in the US. Never has my mom, even when I thought we were really poor and my family homeless, been unable to provide me with shoes. Also very rarely did I go without eating and even when I did it wasn’t long enough to cause me to feel like I needed to eat a stranger’s half eaten food. I was told that the average income is $100 per month for a Nicaraguan and while things are cheaper in Nicaragua then in the US things are not 20 or thirty times cheaper. There is definitely an economy based on begging in Granada. If the average income is $100 all a kid would have to do is get a couple dollars a day and they would greatly increase the living conditions of their family if they earned $3 or $4 they would be making the income of an adult.
In the afternoon we went to Lake Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua is a fresh water lake and is the only place with fresh water sharks. The sharks in Lake Nicaragua are Bull Sharks, they used to swim up the rivers but were trapped by a volcanic eruption. Lake Nicaragua was very beautiful and after Renee, who was my guide on the boat said, a small island could be purchased for as little as $100,000 I wanted to buy one. Though Renee followed that up with the cheaper Islands are usually pretty close to diapering. A medium sized Island would sell with a house would sell for $400,000 which seems pretty cheap by LA standards. Lake Nicaragua had been part of a transit system to get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and also made Nicaragua an appealing place to build a canal before Panama Canal was built. Someone brought white faced monkeys and spider monkeys to one of the Islands. I think Josh was allowed to feed the monkeys.
After the tour of the Lake we were set free on the town of Granada. I ended up going with Evan, Christine and Keith to a typical Nicaraguan restaurant. I had wanted to go with Josh to eat some crazy food and we were told that Centralito, the restaurant I ate at, was the place to go but they only had the regular Nicaraguan food. I ended up getting a steak which cost around $8 and a 2 mojitos for a dollar. Then a vendor had come by with a 25 pack of Romeo Y Julieta cigars and I talked him down to $20 then I ended up leaving them at the restaurant and someone took them by the time I got back. There were about ten kids going around begging and then street performers trying to get donations and a guy who was making friendship bracelets sitting right next to our table so anyone of a dozen people could have stole them. Losing the cigars was a good wake up call to be more conservative with my money. So I just went back to the hotel to upload some of my pictures to facebook and and work on my journal. I ended up having a good conversation about the trip and the poverty in Nicaragua with Kevin, Nell and Eileen.
The thing I have been most impressed by on the trip other than the poverty has been Roberto’s skill as a tour guide. His English is great and he is very intelligent and caring. I was standing up because someone was in the restroom and had wandered back toward the bar to wait and Roberto was very quick to make sure everything was alright and if I need anything or felt sick. It was also amazing how patient he was with all of us. It seem like so many times today he was surrounded by people each with their own request or demands and he took it all in stride and didn’t seem to get bugged. Also a group of us lead by Josh wanted to eat weird exotic food plus some guys wanted to go surfing and he promised to help make it all happen. He was amazingly diplomatic and reassuring which seemed to be essentials for a really good tour guide. Because it seems like the tourist experience of being in Nicaragua is being in slightly wild and exotic country but also people can easily get feed up of things being too different.