Rethinking Nicaragua as a Travler's Destination
In a ramshackle yet proud artisan studio in the dusty town of San Juan de Oriente, a young 15-year-old boy casts pots using his feet for power on an old throw wheel. The wheel hums, the clay spins and the pottery that evolves is astonishingly intricate yet elegantly simple.
His younger sister tends to a new litter of seven puppies, and his younger brother stares at us with huge brown eyes as we admired the beautiful work.
We buy several pots for about five bucks, at least 10 times less than what we’d pay in Boston or at least what they’re really worth.
This will change.
For the moment, the boy and his art are apt symbols for Nicaragua, a poor country but wonderfully rich in tradition, culture and the generosity of its people.
Though the black silhouette sculpture of Augustino Calderon Sandino with his iconic fedora still dominates the hillside of Managua, Nicaragua’s capital, and casts a very long shadow over the country, the world still turns. Today Nicaragua may be one of the most authentic and least spoiled countries for curious travelers.
Its elegant, beautifully understated neo-colonial hotels, historic cities and dense, unspoiled rain forests, an ecologist’s delight, will attract the genuine traveler, probably not the casual tourist.
Leon and Granada are the crown jewels in Nicaragua’s diadem. Both are historic, colonial cities.
If Leon’s Cathedral is the largest religious colonial building in Central America, Granada (1524) is the oldest city in the Western Hemisphere.
Ringed by the muscular Mombacho Volcano and its lesser mountains, rich in jungle greenery, the city sits on the giant lake and is easily the most beautiful in the country.
A must see is the Convento San Francisco.
A tiled, multi-arched series of courtyards borrowing much from the Arabs (as does most of Spanish colonial architecture), the Convento has no brochures and no web site. It does have startling shrieks of parakeets zipping from tree to tree in sudden flashes of green.
Some travelers like to point out that Nicaragua is where Costa Rica was twenty or so years ago.
I disagree.
Nicaragua is following its own path based on its own unique history and culture.
With some wise planning, a little luck and the resourcefulness of its gracious people, the country is its own special destination for the thoughtful, curious traveler.
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