Granada to Managua

I woke up in my massive chambers with the sun shining through the holes in the ceiling and beaten-up cars careening along the street outside. My head hurt horrifically and after grabbing an aspirin I discovered that I’d missed Arma’s insanely early departure to the Corn Islands and was now, at least temporarily alone. Still suffering from a combination of possible concussion and alcohol poisoning I packed my pack and jumped from the hostel to a speedy transit bus that would take me to Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. The plan was to go straight to the city, change for a chicken bus to Leon and see about getting to El Salvador tomorrow. If I could have ignored Managua I would have, I was apprehensive about going back there and for good reason. Mostly destroyed in a series of earthquakes and never rebuilt the city is a heap of concrete crisscrossed with the dark scars of highways, the sort of place where hordes of children follow you up the street for a dollar and a siren is never far away. Still apprehensive about traveling alone I slung the bag on the roof of the bus and clambered inside the small space, finding it full of dark passive faces.

As we whizzed quickly down the highway past the edge of lake Nicagua and out into a landscape of flat, dry planes punctuated with barbed fences and shabby settlements I felt at peace again. This is the real Central America for me, busses belching smoke as the conductor leans out of the window yelling the names of his stops, ‘Maaassssayyyyya, Massssssaaayyyya, Masssssssayyyyyaaaaa’ at siren-like volume. As we passed a pick-up truck, it’s small bed crowded with more than ten white shirted Nicaraguan men, as we dodged around an army truck filled with plastic chairs, I remembered why I loved traveling. There is something magical about leaning out of a bus window and watching such a foreign world drift by.

I was in luck on this particular bus ride because I happened to be sitting next to a very nice Dutch couple called Mathieu and Anchor, sitting with their Lonely Planet and working out a route to El Salvador. They’d traveled all the way from Carnival in Brazil and had the light, funny air of confidence that Arma had shown. As I’ve said I my original plan had been to go by chicken bus to Leon and then work my way up through Honduras straight to Managua but after five minutes I decided on traveling instead with my new friends by Tica Bus to somewhere in the south of El Salvador. When the bus stopped in Managua the three of us jumped down together and hefted our packs into the back of a cab in really good time, wading through the heat and almost visible pollution. From there we went careering off down a collection of fairly sordid streets and stopped in front of the Tica Bus headquarters where I bought a $25 dollar ticket straight to El Salvador, a trip of 15 hours leaving at the ungodly time of four AM. We also ended up staying at a hotel run by Tica Bus, the area around the terminal contained guesthouses of such dodgy quality and dubious security that they made the Tranquilo in San Jose seem like a five star resort.

After settling into a very clean three bed room with fan we caught another cab to “central” but instead of a plaza and church like in most Central American cities the center of Managua is a sprawl of expensive malls and hotels that clash horribly if you’ve been outside the town and seen the miles of slums and rubbish dumps. In a display of sudden weakness we went into the food court for McDonalds, cheesecake and fried chicken and the movies for a slice of Hollywood. In the corner of the galleria was a full sized fiberglass horse for children to ride on and it made me smile to see Nicaragua develop such weird ideas about what Americans liked to do in their spare time. About three hours later we emerged from Pirates of the Caribbean 3 feeling confused and cheated by the films bizarre surrealism and massive bevy of special affects that did not make up for the lack of concrete plot. Feeling pissed off the three of us skipped dinner and went home, settling down for an alcohol free night and falling straight asleep despite a bizarre man next door who snored like a pig rooting for truffles.