Finishing off Nicaragua

I haven't written for a while, so here's an update for anyone who still remembers about this blog.

Estelì in the North

After the adventures in Leòn, our time was running out in Nicaragua. We had one more stop in a mountainesque town, Estelì, towards the northern border with Honduras. Our main objective in Estelì was to visit a 25 metre waterfall rumoured to be a short distance out of town.

The journey there consisted of a bit of walking, some bus rides and a bit more walking, before arriving at a dirt track accompanying a small river leading out into the wilderness. Hence our anticipation was of a pristine waterfall, with clear water, surrounded by rich native woodland, unicorns drinking from the splash pool, and parrots serenading us with their songs.

But oh no, unfortunately it was typical scene that we had become far too accustomed to in Nicaragua, but to be fair, in most of Latin America. Rubbish. There was plastic garbage everywhere despite many signs posted around instructing people not to drop litter, and the water smelled. We carried on towards the actual waterfall we were after, to find a little less garbage, and a little cleaner water. We decided it was worth the risk and swam in the pool formed by the water fall, to escape the heat of the day. For the next 4 days I had an ear infection. Lesson learned.

Observations of Nicargua

Nicaragua is a very poor country, and it can be seen in every respect. Not only are the people poor in terms of their monetary wealth and posessions, but also in their education, their culture, their hygiene and their food (!). Statiistical evidence of this can be seen by a quick look at the demographic data of the country.

Rubbish

Generally the towns in Nicaragua are full of rubbish and pollution, the markets and the bus stations are especially bad, and it breaks your heart when you see young children playing around in all this mess. Hygiene, germs, cleanliness - these are all things that people have no knowledge of, let alone the affects of pollution on the natural environment, or even just the nice appearance of their own town, street or indeed their own garden. Most houses you pass with any kind of land infront or behind, are covered in garbage.

Food

The diet of the people appeared to me to be pretty terrible. I am trying to travel as economically as possible; the best and most interesting way of doing this is to get around how the local people get around, and eat what they eat. You might think that being a fairly tropical country, which produces all kinds of weird and wonderful fruit and vegetables, the popular cuisine might be rich with all these ingredients. Couple that with the fact that fruit and vegetables are the cheapest thing available to the market shopper, I am still bewildered at the fascination with tasteless deep fried fatty crap, rice and beans, and poor quality fried chicken. We really were suffering at the hands of local food, but to be fair to Nicaragua, we still are whilst travelling through El Salvador, Honduras, and rumour has it, the poor food continues into Guatemala. Though did I here a rumour that the Mexicans make good food..?

People
Well its hard to sum up the people I encountered in Nicaragua in one paragraph, as there were so many different experiences from different kinds of people. Some people live a hard life here, doing lots of physical work for literally no reward. Then other people do literally nothing all day, and quite rightly also recieve very little income. There weren't a huge amount of smiles flying around in Nicaragua, this really became noticable when you actually saw children having fun, smiling and laughing - playing football on the beach or diving into rivers from ever greater hights to impress their friends. This was such a constrast to the majority of glum faces - kids sitting in the gutter in the markets, selling chewing gum on the streets or carrying piles of wood up dirt tracks back to their house.

The poorest countries in Central America are turning out to be very similar, so although these comments are directly about Nicaragua, I have encountered the same kinds of things in El Salvador and Honduras.