Ooooops! We’ve been pretty slow at updating Earthoria recently, and it’s about time we updated you on our whereabouts. Since the last post from Nicaragua (below), we have hot-footed it through Panama to Columbia, through Venezuela and into Managua, Brazil from where I’m writing this. During our travels we’ve recorded a backlog of audio and video that we’ll be putting together on a week long trip up the Amazon towards Iquitos, Peru, beginning tomorrow.
In the mean time, here’s a photo from the Venezuelan Andes to keep you going:
I was ‘fortunate’ enough to be trapped in Managua, Nicaragua’s capital, whilst I decided what to do for Christmas. Managua is spread along the southern shore of Lago de Managua, and rose from obscurity in the mid 19th century as a ‘compromise capital’ due to the intense rivalry between Granada and León.
Since then, Managua has been far from lucky. In 1931 the colonial centre was destroyed by an earthquake, it was rebuilt, but burned down five years later. In 1972 the city was pretty much leveled by a huge earthquake, and following this, when geologists realized that the entire original centre was riddled with underground fault lines, the government decided to not rebuild and to ‘de-centralise’ the capital.
I was staying around the Tica bus station, in the Barrio Martha Quezada. This area didn’t feel entirely safe even during daylight hours, and following several warnings from the guest house manageress in Hospedaje El Ensueño along the lines of "You can go one block that way, but don’t walk more than one block that way it is very, very dangerous", I stuck close to home except for a taxi sight-seeing tour of the city by day.
So what is there to do in Managua? Not much, except marvel at its dereliction. I had no idea there were capital cities that looked and felt like this. I felt quite sad to drive around and see a city in such a state of decay, so much so that the taxi driver didn’t even know quite where to suggest going next – because there really wasn’t much to see.
The one thing worth mentioning was our trip to the top of the Loma de Tiscapa hill with great views over the Tiscapa crater lake. On the other side of the same hill Lake Managua can be seen in the background, complete with what I initially thought was a beautiful smoking volcano crater. It later turned out to be the city’s rubbish dump ‘recycling’ rubbish into the atmosphere. We also visited the Sandino Lives Exhibition on this hill – a rather minimal but nonetheless interesting tribute to Augusto C Sandino, the heroic Liberal leader who resisted the US supported tyrant Somoza.
Managua’s worth a visit but don’t go out after dark looking like a tourist.
