Jinotega,
Nicaragua
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
With a dutch couple we jumped on the local bus to Jinotega, at the foot of the coffee plantations. It´s not quite what we had in mind. The ´nicest´ hotel was about 16 dollars and was undergoing renovations. We couldn´t quite understand why he was still even open nevermind charging that much and in the typical latin american way refused to negotiate on price. It was Sunday. The town was dead. We had a buffet lunch - steak and chips - warmly welcomed after a few days of beans and eggs, and then the only thing for it was to hang out in the pool hall opposite for like 4 hours. This was an eye-opening experience. Jo (the dutch girl) and I were the only two women in the hall that weren´t working there. The 4 of us were the only gringos. Of course we generated a lot of attention and everyone wanted to be our friends. One drunk guy worked hard on Paul to get him to buy him a beer - tried the wrong guy! Then he followed Jo and I to the toilet, which we realised was only for men, no women´s facilities available, so we had to guard each other for fear of, well, what the hell was he going to do, the weirdo! The afternoon just got weirder and weirder with one guy asking us really deep questions and inviting us to spend they evening by his pool...so we had to leave.
That evening we innocently went looking for food and beer. Asked one place, innocently, if they served food. We thought he gave us an odd look but shrugged it off. The next place had an odd look about it with an ugly, short women wearing a tiny skirt outside and a drunken dwarf inside, and no, they didn´t do food either. Unperturbed we found a lovely little street BBQ. After, we went back to the first bar as it had seemed nice, ordered beer, played cards and after a while started to get a funny feeling about what was really going on. There were women behind curtains and men getting drunk and disappearing, then returning and the stupidness of it hit us like a bomb. Oh jesus, we were drinking in a brothel. Then the drunken dwarf walked in, cuddled us all and that pretty much ended the night right there.
