- Met my acquaintance from the internet
- Walked up to the lagoon overlooking the city.
- Walked around the city
- Tried (unsuccessfully) to plug a leaky shower.
Summary
What is there to say about Managua? It is the capital of Nicaragua, has a large portion of the population, and is not the most interesting place in the world. It's downtown area was destroyed in an earthquake and not rebuilt because it sits on multiple fault lines.
I stayed near some of the international bus stations because this part of town has the cheap lodgings. (Managua seems quite overpriced.) Not surprisingly, this neighborhood has some of the seedier elements. There was more than one person with that "let's see how much we can get out of this guy" look. And, as is apparently the norm in Nicaragau, plenty of people saying "Give me a dollar" as I walk by.
I did get to hang out with my first Nico (Nicaraguan), although even that was kind of disappointing.
I have no pictures of Managua because I did not take my camera with me when exploring it. The crime rate was too high in some parts of town to risk carrying my camera. In the end, I didn't go through those parts.
Details
When I got to Managua and got off the bus, I ended up sharing an overpriced taxi with a Dutch guy whom I chatted with.
When my taxi passed the Ticabus station down the street from the hotel I wanted to go to, a tout ran after the taxi so he could get to the hotel gate before I did. The hotel was overpriced (and I wonder if the tout resulted in a price increase.) I could not get rid of the tout until I headed to an area where he apparently could not get commissions. He tried to convince me that they were too expensive.
My hotel seemed fine at first, but then I realized that the walls did not go all the way up to the ceiling. The result: you could hear every sound anywhere in that part of the building. If someone showered, you could hear it. In the morning, the music and cooking from the kitchen came in loud and clear. I moved to another hotel the next day and it was even worse. That one had a leaky shower head which made the room super-humid. I tried to fix this by tightly wrapping plastic around it with rubber bands. For a shower with no pressure, it had enough pressure to explode the plastic.
My first evening in Managua was spent meeting Oscar, who lives there. We walked around my neighborhood a bit, stopped by the big mall there, and had dinner in a restaurant nearby. Oscar is lawyer by training. He was working in Panama and is now getting certified for Nicaragua. Our conversation was fine, but a little bit depressing. Neither of us made an effort to get together again that weekend.
When I left after dinner, I was advised to take a cab the 5 blocks to my hotel. I knew that the neighborhood was dangerous after dark.
The next day, I decided to see a bit of Managua. I considered going to the area monumental--the destroyed former center of town. However, I knew that this was a crime ridden part of town and didn't want to be bothered with that that day. Instead, I walked up the hill to the lagoon. From there, I got a good view of the area monumental and Lake Managua behind it. I could see the remains of the cathedral very clearly.
The lagoon itself was OK, but nothing spectacular.
After the lagoon, I decided to walk to the Zona Rosa, which I had ascertained from locals was a safe walk. Safe, but not particularly attractive. The most interesting things were casinos and this odd church with tons of little hemispheres all over the roof. (It was, unfortunately, pretty ugly.)
It was without much regret that I left Managua less than two days after arriving.
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