The Best and The Worst

We´re in Managua right now getting ready to head to the airport to meet Mandy and Eric, who will be in Nicaragua for a little more than a week. Our plan is to spend four nights hiking, maybe climbing a volcano, visiting waterfalls and relaxing in Isla Ometepe, and then we´re heading to Granada for four nights. We´re so excited to see these guys! We´re gonna have a blast. Unfortuanately, Poor Mando and Eric are gonna have a long travel day... they´ll get off a plane, get into a cab for a 2 hour ride to the ferry dock, then get on a ferry to the island, which will take an hour, and then get into another cab for a bumpy bumpy hour-long ride to the cabins where we are staying. I´m sure it´ll be worth it though!

So... back to Managua. We´d heard bad bad things about the city ... high crime ... dirty, etc. We had no idea how the city was laid out so we picked a hotel based on Trip Advisor reviews. The price was right at $30 and it had a pool. We arrived at the Managua bus station after a very very easy ride from Rivas. We had been told the cab ride would be $10 but the driver tried to charge us $20! What? That´s a lot of money for us! We eventually talked the guy down to $15, but still. Our hotel was far away from the city center and the airport. I was a little disappointed with our choice. Once we got our hotel we were pleasantly surprised. The place is in a quiet residential area, is very quaint and clean and has a fabulous pool. Oh, and we have cable, which is a treat!

We did have two very different and interesting culinary experiences yesterday. The first meal was, with out a doubt, the WORST meal we have had in our entire trip. Chris and I are honestly relieved that we didn´t get horribly horribly ill!

We hadn´t eaten much all day and just wanted something quick and cheap for lunch. There were no restaurants open so we headed toward the super market. In front of the market was a concession stand looking place selling "enchiladas." Sounded good to us. We ordered two for a total price of 30 Cordobas ($1.50). To our horror, the woman opened up a metal cabinet, pulled out two room-temperature fried tortilla things. She covered them with coleslaw and a soggy tomato piece. She then proceeded to clean off two dirty forks by pouring a cup of water on them and rubbing them with her hands. We should´ve walked away then and there, but we were gluttons for punishment. She handed us the two fried masses and we prepared ourselves to eat the horrible things. They were worse than they looked. Trying to crack open the fried tortilla was like cracking open a crab shell, once we did open it we were greeted by some stringy mystery meat and dry rice. We didn´t even bother with the weird white slaw and tomato.

Honestly, I can´t believe we finished eating the fried nightmares but we did and the experience will stick with us for a long long time.

Fortunately at dinner we had probably the best meal of the trip, and ironically, it cost almost the same as the worst.

We weren´t very hungry last night after the trauma with the football enchiladas, but we had to eat. Chris remembered seeing a sign down the street from our hotel for Nacatamales -- normal tamales except larger and served in a banana leaf. We decided to check it out. Walking at night near our hotel was not a problem, which was a huge relief. We found the sign for Nacatamales. It was posted on the porch of someone´s home. We didn´t want to disturb the family, and we were about to walk away when a man with one leg on crutches came out and welcomed us into his home.

The restaurant was nothing more than two plastic tables and four chairs in the entry way of the family´s home. Two shy little girls smiled at us from the kitchen and their grandfather waved at us from his chair in the living room. We ordered two tamales and two gaseosas, the specialty of the house. We made small talk with the little girls and their sweet cowboy-hat wearing grandpa. The cook of the restaurant was the grandma. She happily cooked us up our food and treated us as if we were guests in her house. Then she brought out the food. WOW. The delicious tamales were perfectly cooked and filled with stewed chicken. We felt honored to have been welcomed into the family´s home when they were clearly not prepared to serve food. We will never forget this experience, just as we unfortunately won´t forget our enchilada experience earlier in the day.


All in all, other than the expensive cab, we´ve enjoyed our short time at our hotel and our quaint neighborhood in Managua. If we ever come back to the city, we´ll definitely be staying at this hotel (Hotel D´lido of anyone is ever in the area and needs a cool place to stay!).

That´s it for now. Off to the airport.

¡Ciao!