Rick and I went to Xiloa (roughly pronounced "hee-low-AH") this past Sunday for a day trip. Xiloa is a little Laguna just northwest of Managua. We read in our guide book not expect crowds or tourism since many of the restaurants and ventas were still closed and in disrepair from Hurricane Mitch (circa 1998). The guidebook read, "There are frequent buses from Managua that will take you right to the water at Xiloa." Unable to find any such bus, or even a single person in the mercado who knew of such a bus, we setteled on riding a bus headed out [View Full Entry]

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I take the bus to and from Spanish class every day. The trip takes about 30 mins in each direction. That's a full hour of intense, presonal Nicaraguense, a kind of daily informal orientation to Managuan life. And so, I bring you the Managuan bus system as I know and love it: The bus lines are run by private entities, usually co-operatives, that own and maintain the buses. The fares are regulated by the government, but that's about it. Buses are generally old US school buses, and some are old European or Russian buses. The companies paint the buses in their [View Full Entry]

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This morning Rick and I went to Casa Ben Linder to hear a presentation by the director of Accion Medica Cristiana or Christian Medical Action. He discussed the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, focusing mainly on the effects of Hurricane Felix, which some of you may know struck Central America on September 4th of this year. After painting a general socio-economic picture of the region before the Hurricane, he addressed the relief work by international aid efforts, the Nicaraguan government, and various NGO's. Primarily, he demonstrated that the portion of the country hit by the hurricane was und [View Full Entry]

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As my plane descended into Managua, I could see them beaming into the night sky, pulsating out from an otherwise sparsely-lit metropolitan area: McDonald's golden arches. Gringos had branded the flight path into Nicaragua with that emblematic nod to mass-produced coronary failure. I began to wonder if McDonald's had actually paid the airport to align the runway so that incoming passengers would pass conveniently overhead. But I digress... I've marked each paragraph's main topic in bold, so you can read selectively, if you like. I arrived in Managua on Monday night. Rick picked me up from [View Full Entry]

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