Nicaragua Trip Day Two

Our main purpose in going to Estelí was to take a cigar factory tour, but as it was Sunday, we had to wait until Monday for that to happen. So we just walked around. And it was incredibly delightful. I had pretty much planned the whole trip, and the answer I got from Brian and Andrew was: whatever you want to do is fine. Barton had a few ideas about things to do, but they were mostly in León and Granada. I'm a big fan of walking around foreign towns. It's not that I'm opposed to seeing the famous cathedral, monument, museum, or natural wonder-but-walking around a regular town or city gives a great impression of what daily life in a country is like. We had beautiful sunny weather, and Estelí truly is a gorgeous little hub town in a mountainous tobacco and coffee region. When we got to the edges of town, with dusty streets and adobe colored houses, it looked kind of like the towns you see in old Western movies with scenes in Mexico. 

One thing we immediately noticed was the amazing painting on the sides of buildings. Like in much of Costa Rica, the general construction model is cinder blocks with corrugated tin sheet roofs. Well, in all of Nicaragua that I saw, and especially the smaller towns, instead of printing posters or signs to put on the walls outside a commercial establishment, they just paint the cinder blocks. It was gorgeous and at times hilarious. It certainly gave lots more character to the car parts store, barbershop, supermarket, etc. Another thing we discovered about Nicaragua was that not only do they love baseball, but they also love hot dogs and hamburgers. There were food carts with empanadas or meat on a stick, but there were a lot more with hot dogs and hamburgers. And, holy cow, do they load up their hot dogs. Sadly, I think I was too hungry to take a picture first-but it had onions, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and perhaps a few more fixings I'm forgetting.

(where we had more than one meal during our time in Estelí)

*Remember-lots more pictures on my tumblr or on my Picasa album-links to the right.