Basketball at Midnight

I suppose it’s about time for the conclusionary post. I’m actually remembering to write it this time!

As we expected, we spent the last couple days around Masaya. One day was mostly spent exploring the city, finding coffee, and relaxing. The next day we made our way to Apoyo, the crater lake for a rather large volcano. The waters were warm and azure, and it is allegedly the lowest point in Central America, with a depth of “at least 200 meters.” It was beautiful, and although our book didn’t give us good directions and it took us about 3 hours of busing, hitching, and walking to get there, the little resort we stayed at for lunch and the swim was quiet and beautiful, and we had a light and fun conversation with the host (who, with no other visitors, had no one else to talk to).

We contracted with a taxi to the airport the day before, and everything went smoothly getting to the airport, through customs, to Miami and then Chicago, and driving back home. Of course, in the middle of that next night, I woke up feverish and vomiting…. but I’m pretty much recovered.

So what would I say about traveling to Nicaragua?

Spanish is relatively important to know and understand. I would probably say moreso than in Asia (at least the places I’ve been in Asia). Through most of my Asian travels, it was relatively easily to understand, with some work, the meaning of what someone was trying to communicate, and it was fairly common to meet people that spoke some- or even good- English. It was not nearly as easy in Nicaragua, and I have some theories why. The first is that Spanish is frequent enough of a study in the US that the vast majority of travelers seem to already speak it, so the Nicas rarely need to try to communicate to non-Spanish speakers, and English probably doesn’t outnumber French or German by much. Tourism is also rather small, and a lot of people may not be accustomed to speaking to someone who doesn’t understand them. Lost of people- outside tourist restaurants and guest houses- don’t try to speak slowly and clearly when you say you’re having trouble understanding (I’ve observed the same thing with US Citizens trying to explain something to non-English speaking foreigners).

It also seems that there is a different level of social politeness in Nicaragua than in most of Asia. While traveling through Asia, I would often be asked all sorts of questions by anyone around. In that respect, the Asian peoples I met were very forward and expressed a lot of interest. If they spoke English well, these could be very long conversations. If they didn’t, it could be, “You are American?” and “You like Thai Whiskey?” and that about it.

In Nicaragua, the people were much less forward about conversation, though extremely friendly and willing to talk. I had quite a few very good conversations with Spanish-only Nicas (the host at Masaya, Apoyo, the girl on the bus at Umetepe, a couple cabbies), but it usually started with us asking a question to break the ice.

A final interesting point about Nicaragua compared to my other adventures: people are much less likely to try to rip you off. Prices range from even-keel to slightly inflated, and even the folks who are charging exorbitant fares are usually very quick to come down to a good price. That’s if you’re in the streets. We talked to a rather sheltered Canadian that was getting taken for everything, but he just rented a driver for the day (or maybe week), never took the public bus, and never entered an actual streetside shop (imagine his surprise when we told him the price for a liter of beer (<$2) was less than he was paying for a six pack). All in all, though, in spending time with the locals, prices are usually pretty reasonable (with a few exceptions, of course). This may, of course, be because there is relatively little tourism and an increase in dumb travelers willing to pay $6 for a six pack will change the social perception of travellers… but for the time being, it’s a rather nice change.

So there we have it. The broad, general, traveler-observations I made about Nicaragua. A beautiful place (where else can you go to see… what was it …. 29 volcanoes?), very nice people, intriguing political history.