After the fracas that was the Nicaraguan border post, the rest of the bus ride went rather smoothly. The roads were (mostly) paved, and I even saw some encouraging electricity-generating windmill construction along the countryside. And behind them was either a mountain with a cloud hanging over it, or a steaming volcano (which isn't as ridiculous as it sounds). Nicaragua is pretty seismically active, and has several volcanoes that have been teetering on the brink of eruption for decades, if not longer.
(In fact, seismic instability ranked just below political instability as the reason that engineers bypassed Nicaragua to build a canal in Panama. Some say that--other than these two admittedly serious reasons--the conditions are actually better in this country.)
The bus ride ended in the late afternoon with a nice reunion with Aimee in the Managua bus terminal. We didn't stay in the capital for long, though, since Managua is widely considered to be the ugliest city in the world. There was a pretty serious earthquake in the 70's, and, until recently, there hasn't been the political will or financial resources to clean up. So the city just stayed in a perpetual state of disaster. These days, you won't see too many collapsed buildings, but it still feels pretty run down.
We hopped on the next bus to San Isidro, where we arrived after dinner on the 30th. This was the town that Aimee spent most of her two years in. It's a quaint pueblo of 7000 people that we would call a bedroom community if there were actually jobs for people to commute to.
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A view of the city from one of the surrounding hills:
Each family seems to have one or two wage earners that support the rest of the family, including any unmarried grown children. There are a few jobs in the surrounding rice fields, as well as some in the local offices of a national cell phone carrier, but most people bus to the larger surrounding cities to work. Those that remain at home live la vida tranquilla, and help run the family store that many people (including our hosts) have in the front rooms of their houses.
Speaking of hosts, we're staying with the wonderful family that housed Aimee during her stay here. They have a clothing-focused general store in the front of their house, and are clearly one of the better-off families in town.
The store:
The courtyard in the center of the house:
Like I mentioned, this is one of the nicer homes in town. Most are brick or cement walled structures that are--by North American standards--very unfinished. Almost all of the homes have bare concrete walls, large gaps at the roof junctions, and Aimee tells me that many just have bare dirt floors. Kind of puts our recession in perspective, doesn't it?
And a few photos of the neighborhood:
The last one isn't actually of San Isidro, but rather of La Trinidad, a nearby city that feels pretty similar.
If you click the first photo to expand it, you can see one of the many horseback-riding locals. If I had to guess, I'd bet that for every car you see going down the road here, you'd also see a horse, three motorcycles, ten bicycles, and twenty five pedestrians. It's actually pretty nice. And not too surprising, since hardly any of the roads are paved.
All in all, it's a great community where the locals are friendly, and everyone greats you from their front porch as you walk down the street. But that just could be because Aimee's a bit of a local celebrity. On more than one occasion, we've been walking down the street, and a car will drive by, honk it's horn, and one of the passengers will yell out, "Hola! Aimee!" She's clearly a hit around here. I'm just arm candy.
