Day 20: Leon Viejo and other observations
Trip Start
Nov 2007
1
25
33
Trip End
Dec 2007
Leon,
Nicaragua
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
First, a correction! At this point, i get the gist of almost everything spoken to me in Spanish here. Depending on how directed the conversation is or especially how fast the person is speaking, i pick up less of the words, but i get enough to get the gist. However, somehow i got the impression in my talk with my prof that he fought for the contras in the last war here, but ends up he fought for the sandinistas. Oops. I realized it the next day when he came to class wearing a sandinista hat, so i clarified.
Today, Mel and I went to Leon Viejo, the ruins of the old city of leon. The city was one of the first in central america, founded by Francico Cordoba in the 1500s shortly after the spaniards found America. The town held about 200 spanish men so they estimate counting women, children and natives that it had 2000 or so people. The city was abandoned either a) after a series of earthquakes hit it, i believe later in the 1500s or b) a few years later when it was buried in ash from a volcanic eruption. They didn´t find many bodies here, so the assumption is that it was abandoned and resettled in current day leon. Leon Viejo was discovered only 50 years ago and is being excavated as a world heritage site. The base of 20 or so buildings can be seen as you walk through the old town and picture it as a bustling 1500s city. It´s wierd to stand in the old church and think that this is the church that started it all here. You can´t walk 5 feet without seeing a picture of jesus here. the country is overwhelmingly christian and this spanish church was where they started to make the argument for christianity in central america.
It´s a neat walk, about 30 minutes outside Leon, you can easily walk the entire site in an hour or less. But it is STIFLINGLY hot, mid 90´s on the day we went, but it can easily top 100 later in the summer.
Sidetrack: Leon is an interesting place because there are so few tourists. Frankly for being the ´tourist mecca´ of Nicaragua, there weren´t many in Granada... a few busloads at any one time during the time we were there... so you were likely to see a foreigner every few minutes. In Leon, we see the same handful of foreigners every day. I´m sure there are many more but by my experience there are about 50 here :). That means that there aren´t many westernized restaurants, laundry mats, etc. But it also creates some fun for the short term tourist.
First of all, the people here think that all Americans are made of solid gold. Litterly, i think they believe i have somewhere in the range of $1-3 billion in the bank. They don´t know what i can afford and they seem to have no idea what things cost in the US. So they just make shit up! This shirt costs $10 in Nica... maybe he´ll pay $30, $50!?, $100?! Who knows let´s try $60. Today, we took a cab out to leon veijo. The dude i called told me that a cab might cost $50 or more! When the cabbie showed up, Melissa said that we should cancel the cab and not go and suddenly the price dropped to $25. I think we probubly could have gotten him down to $10, but we paid $25. The key is to ask someone, anyone not associated with the thing you want how much it costs.
But there is another really interesting issue... Many business don´t do the ´let´s make up a crazy price´ thing, they legitamately charge closer to what it would cost in the US for a more westernized experience. For example, melissa and i ate at tourist restaurants yesterday and it cost us $12, $12 and $15 respectively for the meals ($39). They had nice menus and tried to look like a Appleby´s and were a bit cheaper than seattle.
Today, we ate bigger, better meals at local Nica restaurants for $3, $3 and $3 ($9). The price differential is huge! 4x. If you are willing to go a little out of your comfort zone you can save a bundle. Tonight we had great tacos for $3, but then again i had to run for the toilet a few minutes later... not sure if that´s related ;)
A funny side note, since no one speaks english here, any english you do see is hilariously mangled. Mel and i spent 20 minutes at a museum in Granada trying to decipher an english sign. I took a picture of it but that was stolen :( We´ve also seen... ¨Please do enjoy of the Culture of Nicaragua at our restaurant cuisine!¨ or ¨Wash your ropa here for $4!¨ (ropa is spanish for clothes) and... ¨Franscico Cordoba´s funeral was discovered here¨ (we think they meant tomb)
There was an excellent article about the coffee trade in today´s managua dialy newspaper. It mentioned that Nicas get, on average $3 per day to do 10 or more hours of hard labor collecting beans from the plants, $.30 less than Costa Rica, which has motivated so many people to head south to costa rica that there is a serious manpower shortage here. Also, Costa Ricans get paid a bit extra for food, but Nicaraguans must eat the food provided by their employer on site, which is often just gallo pinto (beans and rice). Coffee is extremely important to nica and sites are racing to get the ´organic labe´l
mel and i can ´try out coffee work for a few minutes when we visit estelli as part of a tourist education program. I look forward to that.
