When Mike said that he wanted to add the country of Nicaragua to our list of countries to explore I had my misgivings. Turns out I was right. We said we were only going to walk a few blocks away to the cinema and they told us that even that would not be a safe thing to do.
It was broad daylight. That was enough for us. We never left the hotel. Our only picture of Managua is of the water cooler in the hotel lobby. The following morning we were picked up for a seven day escorted tour of the country.
Our driver and our tour guide were both friendly and wonderful people. Even they however gave us warnings about places to go and what time to be back inside our room. Since we were exploring Nicaragua for 21 days we had rented a car for the last 14 days of our trip. Bus travel in Nicaragua is spotty at best so it was deemed safer by our tour operator to do our own driving.
We were also headed to some places that would have been nearly impossible to find or get to without having our own vehicle such as the coffee finca Selva Negra in Matagalpa. We stayed for four nights in Leon using it as our base. The wonderful women at the hostel we stayed at insisted that Mike park the rental car behind the locked gates at night and before dark so that it would be safe. In Granada we watched people eating out of garbage cans because they were starving.
One of the hardest things to watch was people standing around and watching other people eating and when those people got up to leave those who were watching would swoop in before someone else got to the plate and take the uneaten food to have something to eat. In Granada we also met an expat who married a local woman. He said he hardly ever leaves his home because one day he dared to ride his bike outside the safety zone and he said he knew he had ridden too far that day and before he could turn around he was pounced on and they took his bike, his camera and his pride.
