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Viva Nicaragua
Entry 38 of 79 | show all | print this entry |
I travel because I can. I travel because it makes me feel alive. Without it I am lost. I need to see how beautiful the world is just to remind myself that life is worth living.
I woke up this morning feeling the heat for the first time in a long time. As we ventured south on this continent of the world, the tropical heat got stronger. Managua, located at a low elevation compared to other Central American capital cities, was hot and humid. My dog bite wound was felling better in the last few days of highland travel now beginning to turn soft and painful again due to the heat.
Me and Juliette had a very nice continental breakfast at a very fancy restaurant before heading off to see the interesting sites. Managua has a very distinct socialist central planning city design, similar to that of Brazilia or Canberra (Aus), but much different than other Central American cities where urban sprawl and narrow streets dominate the architecture. Managua's wide boulevard is a classical socialist style with trees on either side, and unlike other cities, there is very little traffic, at least at the city center. The walk was very pleasant but the heat was getting to us and we had to go into the Museo Nacional just to cool down. The main cathedral was in ruins, clearly reminded the people the socialist revolution was not a distant memory and religion was slowly fading away. We enjoyed a relaxing stroll through Parc Central with the Presidential Palace on one side and Centro Cultural on the other. There were only a handful of people among us in this huge area, somewhat seemed like a beautiful dramatization of post nuclear doom. This city was destroyed by countless earthquakes, wars and a great fire is still standing strong. A great symbol of Man's strength and survival.
We had a break at the shores of Lago Managua. This lake is huge in terms of area, I could not even see the shore on the other side of the lake. The dark color blue gives the lake a beautiful yet mysterious look, I wondered how many innocent people were killed and thrown into the lake during the civil war. We also visited a modern shopping mall near the Universidad Centroamericana, quite a contrast between the new capitalism of foreign investment and old socialist revolution. It was getting really hot in the afternoon, and we had to take a break every 30min, refreshingly we decided to watch a movie, Rush Hour 2, in the modern shopping mall. There was a power outage and we had to leave half way through the movie, but hey, like China today, Nicaragua's modernization takes time to develop.
I didn't expect Managua for what it is, but it sure opened my eyes to the world a little more, it is still beautiful.
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