Random thoughts on Gracias, Honduras

After spending three nights in frenetic and crowded Tegucigalpa, I wanted to experience a slower lifestyle for at least a few days.  I decided to spend a few nights in Gracias.  Gracias was founded in the 1500s and was briefly the capitol of Central America in the same century.  Today it has about 25,000 residents.  It is a sleepy town up in mountainous center of western Honduras.  

It also is just a short bus ride away from the popular Copan ruins; however, I didn't go to the ruins.  I've been to a few of the famous indigenous ruins in the Americas - Tikal, Teotihuacan, Machu Picchu - and after a while they all just start running together in my mind.  I'm more interested in what's going on right now in various communities than exploring the dead past.  Don't get me wrong; I love history that informs us about the reasons for current situations.  I'm just not interested in ancient history that has very little effect on us today.

Street in Gracias

Cathedral in Gracias

Old man in Gracias

View of Gracias from the roof of my hotel

The smaller towns in Latin America tend to be safer than the big cities.  In the big cities, a person can go the entire day without seeing someone they know, often leading people to act more recklessly.  But in smaller towns, the opposite is the case.  A person knows the neighborhood baker or shopkeeper or boys who sit in the central park after school.  When people know the people around them, they are much less likely to harass or act violently towards them.  I felt very safe the entire time I was in Gracias.  I would go out for a stroll each evening after the sun went down.  I would eat dinner at a stall in the bustling central park and often talk with locals.  Even though Gracias was in the center of the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, I felt safer than I do at times in downtown Tucson.

Street in Gracias

Gracias' overall safety and location in a deeply socially and economically troubled country makes it a perfect spot for volunteer and medical opportunities and missionary work.  While I was in town, there were plenty of events going on around town for gringos with a heart or people who just want a better chance at getting into heaven.  One evening there was a festival on the center square put on by a missionary group from Dallas.  The missionaries had come to town to help a local church.  Just to get this out of the way, I don't agree with the whole missionary thing and felt like the missionaries could have better spent their money and time on other, more impactful projects.  But, from what I saw, both the Hondurans and the Americans seemed to be having a decent cultural exchange.  As the sun set over Gracias, there were a couple hundred people playing tug-of-war and dancing to music; many Hondurans were even being helped by two doctors who were a part of the missionary group.  

Missionaries from Dallas, Texas in Gracias

View of Gracias from San Cristobal Fortress

Three nights in Tegucigalpa

It was quickly approaching nighttime when my bus pulled in to the bus terminal in Tegucigalpa.  I was starved, so I stopped at a neighboring outdoor pupusa restaurant.  When I sat down to eat, I took notice of all that immediately surrounded me.  A reasonably maintained restaurant; a noisy main thoroughfare; chatting teenagers as they walked up a center walkway of the a major road.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for an average Central America city.  

Street in Tegucigalpa

Shop in Barrio Abajo

Reporter on Calle Peatonal

After I finished my bite to eat, I hopped in a cab that was waiting at the bus terminal.  All of the hotel options given in my ebook, "The Rough Guide to Central America," were in Barrio La Hoya or Colonia Palmira, both about a mile away from where I was.  The sun was just setting as we sped along the winding and often confusing roads in central Tegucigalpa.  The taxi driver was in his mid-50s; had long, black hair; and had a debonaire sophistication about him.  As we began chatting about the city where he had lived for decades, I began to realize that perhaps the danger in Tegucigalpa was actually lurking out in the open.  It was within the cracks and fissures of everyday life.  

I pressed the taxi driver on the issues of gang payments.  I had listened to an NPR story just a couple weeks before about how cab and bus drivers in Tegucigalpa were forced to make weekly payments to various gangs.  He said that he had to payoff four gangs the following morning.  His response was very manner-of-fact.  When he was describing the payments, he didn't seem to show any emotion.  

A couple days later, another one of my cab drivers told me about his payments to various gangs.  He probably in his mid-40s but looked a lot older.  He had jagged and protruding teeth; whenever I looked directly at him I couldn't help but focus my gaze on his repulsive but all-the-while entrancing mouth.  He was extremely chatty and spoke with his hands.  With a teasing smile on his face, he imitated a knife slicing open his neck with his pointer finger, showing what would happen if he didn't pay the gangs each week. 

I could tell that both of my taxi drivers knew that this wasn't a regular occurrence in cities around the world.  However they used the word "impuestos," or taxes, to describe these payments.  The tax would keep them and their families reasonably safe from being killed by fellow gang members.  But the fine for not paying is torture or death?  In the United States, if you don't pay your taxes you might get a small fine or maybe six months in jail!  And the taxes in Honduras to gangs were not even restricted to just taxi and bus drivers.  Depending on the neighborhood, people also had to pay taxes to various gangs to run their street stalls or brick-and-mortar stores.

Young police officers in Barrio Abajo

Two police officers guarding a Burger King in Barrio Abajo

I stayed at the Granada II hotel in Barrio La Hoya for three nights.  I felt very safe inside of the hotel.  I frequently worked on my iPad in the lobby which was easily seen from the street.  The hotel was reasonably cheap, about $25 or so per night.  The receptionists and maids were very helpful and responsive.  The guests at the hotel tended to be higher socioeconomically than the general population of Tegucigalpa.  Many of them had come to Tegucigalpa for business or to visit family.

View from my hotel window

I wore very unassuming garb when traveling and my trip Tegucigalpa was no exception.  No jewelry, no cameras, no fancy clothes.  The two things of value that I always carry with me are my wallet (in Tegucigalpa, I only carried around enough money to get me through the day, usually only a few hundred limpiras) and my iPhone.  (For me, my iPhone is an all-in-one device.  It provides me with maps, cellphone service, Facebook, email, notes, and a better-than-you-would expect camera.  In fact, all of the pictures you currently see on my blog were taken with my iPhone 5!)  Even though I regularly took my wallet and iPhone out of my pocket on the street, I did not have any issues with potential thieves in Tegucigalpa.

I ventured into the mercado in Barrio El Centavo.  This neighborhood, over the Choluteca River from Barrio La Hoya, sees even fewer tourists than others areas and has even fewer police officers.  I walked through the large and crowded streets of the marketplace and occasionally dipped into the thin walkways with stalls lining each side.  I went the the museums, government buildings, and monuments in Barrio Abajo.  Like many centers of cities around the world, Barrio Abajo was somewhat seedy but charming nonetheless.  I walked down Bulevar Morazán in Colonia Palmira.  I saw most of the nicest hotels in Tegucigalpa: Hotel Honduras Maya, Hotel Plaza San Martin.

Plaza Morazan  

Calle Peatonal in Barrio Abajo

Barrio El Centavo

Barrio El Centavo

Barrio El Centavo

Congreso Nacional in Barrio Abajo

Barrio Abajo

Just south of Barrio El Centavo

Fruit market just south of Barrio El Centavo

I had a long chat with a Taiwanese woman, Wendy, who had just moved to Tegucigalpa two years ago to be with her new Honduras husband.  She was the only other foreigner I met in Tegucigalpa not from Central America.  She ran a Thai Restaurant that she and her husband has opened on Bulevar Morazán.  She told me that she was initially enamored with the city.  Compared to the Taiwanese, she had found Hondurans to be very friendly, greeting everyone with a hug and kiss.  However, after she had moved here, she realized the city's faults and dangers.  She rarely left the house at night and all of her employees had stories about being robbed.

One afternoon, I took a chickenbus bus to El Picacho, a great vista point where you can see most of Tegucigapla.  I had been told by multiple people and internet sites not to ride the buses in Tegucigalpa.  However, the two buses that I took seemed to be completely safe.  The bus that I caught from right outside of my hotel was brimming with people.  I had to grab on to a railing as the bus snaked up the side of the mountain.  Most of the fellow passengers were young, probably school age.  I hopped out when the bus approached the entrance to El Picacho.  As I walked along the lonely and desolate road on my way to the vista point, I chuckled to myself.  My parents had not approved of me traveling to Honduras, and I was lucky that my parents did not know where I was at that moment!  

View from El Picacho

I had been scared into thinking that Tegucigalpa was the Wild West of Central America.   I read about dead human bodies that people had seen on the streets.  A girl in Nicaragua told me that her friend had witnessed an actual murder in Tegucigalpa.  I heard tons of stories about being robbed or extorted.  However, I found a completely different city than the one portrayed on the news, print media, and by fellow travelers.  Tegucigalpa is not without its faults and dangers.  There is plenty of corruption, extortion, and violence.  However, this is mainly between gangs or over drugs or local "impuestos."  Tourists are generally bypassed in Honduras when it comes to violence or kidnapping.  My short trip to Tegucigalpa was very informative and interesting.  I would suggest it to anyone looking for a different, exciting, and culturally relevant type of tourism.

Not a good thing to be first place in the world at

Tegucigalpa, amazingly enough, doesn't actually have the highest murder rate in Honduras!  In 2011, the homicide rate in Tegucigalpa was 102 murders per 100,000 residents, which was high enough for fifth place in the world.  But the first prize goes to San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in Honduras.  It is in the northwest of the country, near the Atlantic Ocean and border with Guatemala.  In 2013, the homicide rate was 169 murders per 100,000 residents, first place in the world for two consecutive years.

Why litter?: Central America's troubling problem

Jairo and I sauntered across a small bridge in Masaya, Nicaragua on our way to his hometown of La Curva.  I noticed trash that had nearly brought the waterway beneath us to a halt.  Looking at me, Jairo shrugged and then looked at the trash disparagingly.  He had already answered all of the questions to visiting Americans that he knew I was about to hurl at him.  He knew Nicaragua had a severe problem with trash disposal and littering.  But as one man, he couldn't educate and potentally sway people into being more responsible with their trash.  

A waterway in Masaya, Nicaragua

During our bus ride down to La Curva, I saw two people sitting right in front of me pull down the windows of the chickenbus and casually throw trash out of the window of the moving bus; nobody in the bus seemed to care.  I saw a young child thoughtlessly toss his candy wrapper on the street in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; his mother did not seem to mind.  I saw various people toss non-disposable items out of the bus from Tegucigapla to Gracias; no one even took a second look.  It was acceptable.  

A stream running through a neighborhood in central Tegucigalpa

An average street in Gracias, Honduras

The side of the roads and highways in Central America are littered with trash.  Trash is enterring the waterways and thus the water-supply.  Trash is altering the way the environment interacts and counteracts with itself.  However, no one seems to care.  Nobody seems to even notice.  Maybe I am have become more aware of our treatment of the earth on my current trip, but the seemingly indifferent attitude towards littering in Central America is very troubling.  In the United States, society as a whole is reasonably responsible when littering is concerned.  People know the issues that arise from irresponsible trash disposal.  Children are taught the correct way to dispose of trash from a very young age.    

Why are there such discrepencies concerning trash disposal between the United States and Central America?  I think I might have a couple of potential answers.  First, the United States basically invented and continues to mass-produce trash!  Most of the trash that is thrown out of the window of Central American buses is sold by American companies.  Bags of Doritios?  They are made by Frito-Lay, an American food company.  Bottles of Dasani water?  They are produced by The Coca-Cola Company, another American-based company.  Since these products were developed and produced in America, the United States knows how to use and dispose of the products better than most other countries.  

Second, Europe is the originator of modern-day trash.  Remember reading about the Industrial Revolution?  That was basically all Europe.  Over the centuries, Europeans learned to dispose of their trash in a responsible manner.  Many Americans have been brought-up in a European-centric culture.  On the other side of the coin, most of the citizens of Central American countries are descended from people indigenious to America.  They have only recently been introduced to non-descomposting trash by way of the Americans and Europeans in the past generation or two.  

Rio Choluteca, a major river running through Tegucigapla

Unfortanately, because of general pollution, the global population has recently enterred a period of extreme change and potential disatrous affects, be that in terms of climate change or damage to the waterways and environment.  I don't want to downplay America and Europe's contribution to these problems; they both have horrendous records.  But Central America needs to fix their littering problem soon if we are going to have any chance of saving our world for many generations to come.

Safety in Honduras

Even though I'll crumble like a bad of potato chips if push comes to shove, I think that I look reasonably intimidating.  I'm tall with an athletic body.  I assume that this is the main reason I have not had any major incidents on the street throughout my travels.  I'm not completely clueless either.  Concerning safety, I won't take ridiculous risks.  I won't go in to dangerous neighborhoods alone at night and will stay away from certain areas that I hear are especially risky.  But, that said, I've had some of my most memorable experiences in dicey regions of the United States and abroad.  The more perilous and questionable a region is, the more I tend to want to explore it.  

But, I have to say, I am a little bit more worried about my trip into Honduras than usual.  I had been under the impression that Honduras and El Salvador were on par with each other in terms of safety before I came to Nicaragua.  However, I have had person after person tell me that Honduras is worse.  Much worse.

Is it really that much more dangerous in Honduras compared to Nicaragua and El Salvador?

On the State Department website, there is a stern warning about traveling to Honduras.  "The Department of State continues to warn U.S. citizens that the level of crime and violence in Honduras remains critically high, although it has declined in the past two years... Honduras has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for the last five years."  In fact, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras had the highest rate of intentional homicide in the world in 2012, with 7,172 intentional homicides or 90.4 per a population of 100,000.

The intentional homicide rate was the highest in the world in 2012 in Honduras

From Jairo and his cousin to a cab driver in Managua to a middle-aged woman working in a clothing store in Estelí, native Nicaraguans have told me about the danger I will experience once I've crossed the border into Honduras.  I pressed the taxi driver to explain why there was so much violence there as opposed to in Nicaragua.  They only thing he could come up with was that people in Honduras are much more aggressive than people in Nicaragua.  When I pressed him further, he shrugged his shoulders.  I left the taxi feeling like he had implied that there was a recognizable difference between Nicaraguans and Honduras, especially when it came to violence.  

I'll be interested to see if there is a noticeable difference between Hondurans and Nicaraguans

However, few Nicaraguans I talked to have even been across the border and much fewer have spent a couple days in Honduras.  Even Jairo just took a bus straight from Guatemala to Nicaragua.  Maybe these Nicaraguans have no rational reason to be speaking so poorly of the safety in Honduras.  Or maybe they are preaching the truth.  Whatever the answer is, I will find out what the answer really is in the next week or so!

Cigar Factory Tour

I have spent the last five days in Estelí, Nicaragua relaxing and catching up on various tasks before I head into the mysterious and at times problematic Honduras.  Estelí is a town of about 130,000, the third largest town in Nicaragua behind Managua and Leon.  It is in the mountainous region of Nicaragua, a thin slip in between the vast expanses of the Pacific and Caribbean lowlands.  Because of my hatred towards humidity, I assume I will stay in the highlands for the rest of my trip to Central America.

A couple of days ago, I spontaneously decided to go on a cigar factory tour.  I arranged the tour with Treehuggers, a local tourism office.  The only other people on the tour was an older German couple.  Our tour guide was a 24-year-old woman originally from Matagalpa, another reasonably large city in the Nicaragua mountains.  She had moved to Estelí three years ago for school.

The comprehensive tour took place in Tabacalera Santiago, a cigar factory in the center of Estelí.  There was a room for every step of the cigar making process, including box construction, packaging, leave sorting, and production.  Karen, who only spoke Spanish throughout the tour, told us that a Cuban owned and operated the factory.  I found that interesting considering Cuba is still a strictly communist society.  However, maybe Karen was strictly speaking about the owner's origin, not where he currently resides.

Street sign for Tabacalera Santiago factory

Cigar box construction

Cigar box art room.  That's Karen in the foreground.

Leave-drying

Leaving-sorting

Cigar production

Packaging

There are about 120 employees at the cigar factory.  Depending on whether they worked on the production line or in other, less knowledge-based areas, they generally made between 6,000 and 8,000 córdobas per month, working six days per week.  In American dollars, that adds up to about $240 to $320.  In Arizona, with a $8.05 minumun wage a worker would make $322 per week if they worked 40 hours.  Reasoning how relatively expensive general commodities cost in Nicaragua, it was hard to imagine satisfactorily supporting a family of four on a single person's salary.

However, everyone who worked in the cigar factory seemed relatively happy and content.  Many laborers had a lit cigar close at hand while they worked.  Although I believe that this wasn't an actual Zona Franca, the factory was similar to how I had imagined a large business in Nicaragua operating.  In general though, Nicaraguans - not just in Estelí but throughout the country - seem mostly content with their situations in life.  Although national wages are generally low, violence and corruption seem to be relatively tame.  This is perhaps one of the reasons that the United States has very few Nicaraguan immigrants compared with Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico.

A content worker

One day with Jairo

Whenever I'm traveling through a new area, I usually try and find someone who has lived in and knows a good amount about the area and is willing to show me around.  My friend from Tucson, Kim, lived in Nicaragua for 15 years and suggested to me that I email her friend, Jairo.  She told me that Jairo lived just outside of Managua and worked as a kind of social worker, teaching children certain life skills through the medium of painting.

When I got in touch with Jairo, he told me that he lived in Masaya, a town about 40 minutes southeast of Managua.  He suggested we meet in Managua, but I proposed meeting in Masaya.  I had read about Masaya in my guidebook and it seemed intriguing.  Masaya is beneath a hulking volcano and is the center of Nicaragua's artesania production.  

We met the following afternoon in Masaya.  We went to the town center for coffee.  Jairo, in his late 30s, has lived in the Managua area for all of his life.  He, unlike most Nicaraguans, has traveled extensively.  He has spent time in Guatemala, various states in Mexico, and about six months in the United States on two separate trips.  Basically all of his traveling has been funded by certain art-related foundations.

When we got comfortable at our outdoor table, Jairo told me he was actually not from Masaya but from a smaller town called Niquinohomo about 20 minutes south of Masaya.  When I brought out my iPhone map, he came clean.  He was instead from a small, lesser-known, rural pueblo just outside of Niquinohomo called La Curva  He invited me to come spend the following night with him in his pueblo; we agreed that I would go the following day to La Curva and stay the night at his parents' house.  Niquinohomo - and especially La Curva - were not in any travel guides, giving me the impression that I would have an onobstructed view into average Nicaraguan life.  In fact, I would soon find out that it was rare for anyone from Jairo's family to invite people to spend the night at their house.  His parents were a little suspicious of me throughout my visit.

The next day at 10 in the morning, Jairo met me at my hotel to guide me to his pueblo.  We walked across Masaya, through the market, to the bus depot.  He bought some fruits and vegetables along the way, I assumed for his family.  When our bus reached La Curva, we exited and began a short walk along dirt roads to his parents' house.  La Curva is at a higher altitude than Masaya or Managua, making me very content, at least for a night.  "No more humidity; well, at least for one night, anyways," I thought.  As we walked by various ramshakle houses with children playing in the road, I noticed that the only vehicles traveling down the side streets of La Curva were three-wheeled taxis.  Rides cost between 10 and 30 Córdobas, or about 40 cents and a little bit over a dollar.

When we arrived at Jairo's parents' house, we walked through a steel gate, enterring a vegetable garden and what seemed to be a miniature farm.  His mother raised chickens, roosters, cats, and dogs, all for various uses, I presume.  In fact, that night, a dog would give birth to a puppy, surprising Jairo's entire family as they had no idea that the dog was even pregant.  

Soon after lunch - which for me, a vegetarian, included gallo pinto (a dish almost synonymous with Nicaragua), rice, and avocado - we set off a couple of bicycles lent to Jairo by his neighbors.  We rode through downtown La Curva, which included a couple restaurants and an internet cafe. We rode through other small towns outside of Niquinohomo, including Pio XII and Nandasmo.  We visited Jairo's cousin's house.  As we peeled and consumed fruits very similar to tangerines, I was told by Jairo's cousin and his wife about their work in a Zona Franca.  Zona Francas, which tend to be located in poorer communities in rural Nicaragua, are massive factories specializing in various products.  They are usually owned by Chinese or Korean business people.  From my view, they tend to be very similar to maquiladores, the manufacturing factories located across the Mexican border in poorer Mexican communities.  Both types of factories, being located in poorer countries, are able to pay their workers far less by comparison to factories located in first-world countries.  Jairo told me about the various abuses of that the Zona Francas imposed on their workers.  These stories reminded me of what had heard from various Mexican laborers in the maquiladores through the years.  Jairo understood that Zona Francas provided income (granted, small income) to people inside his community and was reasonably ambivalent about the existence of Zona Francas in general. 

 

Since the night was fast approaching, we pedaled back to Jairo's house.  We ate dinner and enjoyed ice cream as we talked with Jorge, a 19-year-old student of Jairo's.  Like Jairo, Jorge wanted to become an art teacher.  Jorge currently plied his trade as a construction worker alongside his father but hoped to become an art teacher by taking classes at a local college.  Soon after Jorge left, we went to bed, retiring to our separate rooms.  

Oh, the humidity!

I landed in Managua on Wednesday, Feburary 25.  Immediately when I walked out of the airport I could feel the humidity wash over me.  It was midday, with the sun blasting from above.  I could already tell that I wouldn't last long in this climate.  When I went to Mexico for about four months earlier last year, I spent my first couple weeks traveling down the west coast.  All of the places I visited were beautiuful in their own right, from the monster waves on Boca de Pascales, Colima to the breathtaking view from a hut I rented in Maruata, Michoacan, overlooking a near-vacant beach and stunning bay.  But after two weeks, I had had it with the humity plus the heat.  I headed up into the mountains where I stayed for the rest of my trip, only traveling back to the coast in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco for three days for a wedding of a friend from Tucson.  

I realize I'm from Tucson, where the sun beats down on us throughout the year.  But people are right when they stress the importance of dry heat versus humidity.  I have spent almost my entire life in relatively dry heat.  I'm accustomed and used to a warm but dry climate.  Whenever I go into a climate where the humidity is high, I feel like my entire body is constantly melting.  Maybe I feel that way because of the place where I was raised.  Maybe it is a symptom of me being a climate snob.  Whatever it is, I have slowly realized that I can never live in a place like Managua for an extended period of time.  I like my dry heat.

Managua

I decided that I would at least spend a couple of days exploring and diciphering the intracacies of Managua, the capitol of Nicaragua.  I'll begin by giving you a few stats and figures about Managua and Nicaragua so that, if you have never been there, you can better imagine what it's like.  Managua has over 2 million residents, about 1/3 on the entire population of Nicaragua.  Managua is the second most populous city in Central American behind Guatemala City.  Fifty-four percent of the population of Nicaragua is urban; it is the largest Central American country by landmass.  However, it has only 33 people per square kilometer, small by Central American standards.  

Now a little bit of Managua's history.  During the dictictorial Somoza regime of the 20th century, Managua grew at a rapid pace.  New governmental and independent buildings were constructed and new universities were established.  However, the multiple earthquakes - especially in 1972 where 6,000 people were killed and 250,000 were left homeless - and the fighting between various political factions in the 1970s and 1980s left Managua in serious disrepair.  Only in the mid-1990s did Managua once again begin to make strides in development.  More than 300,000 Nicaraguans returned from abroad after fleeing the wars in Nicaragua.  These people included the "Miami Boys" of Nicaragua, members of wealthy Nicaraguan families that returned but continued to appreciate all things American.

I made it through customs without a hitch and hailed a taxi outside of the airport.  My cab driver was very personable.  He was about 50-years-old, had a bald head, a potbelly, and sweat dripping down the side of his face because of the constant humidity.  He drove me through the hectic streets of Managua.  Traffic was probably on par with Mexico; worse than the United States but better than Southeast Asia.  We drove by Lake Managua, sometimes referred to as the most comtaminated lake in Central America.  Since the 1920s, the sewage from the city has been dumped in the lake.  Although a modern wastewater treatment plant had been built in 2009, it only is currently able to treat about 40 percent of the entire city's wastewater.  The rest of the sewage still primarily seeps into Lake Managua.

My cab driver had a couple grown children with kids of their own.  He was very proud to be married to the same woman after 30 or so years.  He told me that he had never been out of the country, not even to Honduras or Costa Rica.  Most people in Nicaragua haven't ever ventured outside the international borders.  They tend to be content with where they are.  Unlike in the Northern Triangle of Central America, Nicaragua doesn't have the same economic or cultural forces pulling them towards immigration.  However, with an ever-expanding global world, I wouldn't be surprised if the younger generation in Nicaragua feels the same attraction to traveling as many of us do in the United States.  

The cab driver dropped me off in Barrio Quezada, a neighborhood where travelers - specifically backpackers - like to stay because its easy access to multiple bus stations.  It's also close to a lot of interesting places that tourists generally frequent in Managua.  Barrio Quezada is known as a relatively dangerous part of Managua, especially at night.  However, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, even when I went for solo walks around the neighborhood after the sun had gone down.  I talked with a gentleman about the not-so-friendly neighborhoods of Managua, and he told me that one existed two blocks from my hotel!  I walked around that part of Barrio Quezada (not at night, though!); some people would stare at me for a little bit longer than usual, but I think that might have been because they didn't see too many white folks taking leisurely strolls around their section of the neighborhood.  Actually, the only place in Managua I didn't feel completely safe was at a bus station.  When I arrived at the bus station in a taxi, the doors immediately opened on both sides of the taxi.  Three men were shouting at me to choose their bus over the others.  I was taken aback; they were a lot more aggressive then people at bus stations in Mexico.  However, I soon regained my presence of mind and calmly chose a bus.

Urban areas around the world often get bad names for themselves do to traffic, pollution, absence of nature, unappealing landscapes, crime, and general corruption.  Although Managua had bits and pieces of all of those stereotypes, I found it an appealing city with very friendly people.