Reflections on the Road: Nicaragua in Black and White (Part Four -- Matagalpa)

On Day Seven of my all-too-short visit to Nicaragua, I said goodbye to friends who had wonderfully hosted me in their Managua home and took a taxi across the city to Mercado Mayoreo Stop (one of Managua's major bus stations) and boarded a bus to Matagalpa.  For days I had been struck by how much hotter Nicaragua was than its neighbor Costa Rica at this time of year.  I was looking forward to the cooler climes of Matagalpa, located at an elevation of 2100 feet.

An old school bus from the States, this beast was no wimp.  My guidebook said the trip would take two hours and thirty minutes.  My driver, however, proved that it could be done in one hour and twenty-five minutes.

Here buses are lined up at the Matagalpa bus station, where I had arrived in a cooler clime.  I had also arrived at the hometown of Carlos Fonseca, the legendary leader of the Sandinistas. 

From Wikipedia:

Fonseca was the son of Augustina Fonseca Ubeda, "an unmarried twenty-six year old washerwoman from the countryside." His father, Fausto Amador Aleman, a member of the prominent coffee-growing Amador family, did not acknowledge Fonseca until his elementary school years. Fonseca's father was part of a rich family, while his mother was a peasant. His father helped him later on to go to school and educate himself, but he always admired his mother more, because of her work ethic and strength. Because of this, Fonseca would repeatedly use her last name and was known as Carlos Fonseca Amador.

Fonseca was killed in an ambush in 1976, three years before the Sandinistas came to power.

Nicaragua's complicated and bloody political history wasn't what I thought about as I walked down the streets of town.  I simply enjoyed the fresh air, friendly folks, and the view of mountains ringing town.

I also took in some music in the town square, were these two gentlemen were playing their instruments.

Kids on a bike

"If you don't like my flag, kiss my rebel ass," the man's t-shirt read.  I loved it: as if Nicaragua didn't have enough history of political controversy and bloodshed, one of its citizens sported a t-shirt reflecting the political violence that belonged to the country's mammoth neighbor to the north.  (Out of the picture and to the right was the man's young son, getting his shoes shined.)

There were females in Matagalpa.  I had been told that the town was home to the most beautiful women in Nicaragua.  In one cafe I asked several men if this was true.  With eyes bulging and faces confident, they assured me it was.

Two days in a town is not enough to get a good handle on a place's characteristics and qualities.  But Matagalpa was small enough that after enough back-and-forth walks down the main street, I came to feel as if I knew many of the people who worked in adjacent shops.  With my abysmal grasp of Spanish (i.e. I had no grasp), the language barrier was often as much a barrier as this glass window.  It had been a while since I had been in a country where I felt so hamstrung by my lack of language ability.  So many conversations could have been born if only I had taken Spanish rather than German in high school and college.

But I could at least step inside, smile, and say a few words, like "Puedo sacar una foto?" (May I take your photo?).  These women work in an optometrist shop.

And these women work as street vendors.

And this teenage pair weren't working at all.  They, too, were enjoying the fresh air, and each other.

On my second day in Matagalpa I took a bus 20 minutes outside the city.  During the short ride, a fellow passenger had written down a list of about 30 Spanish words she thought I should learn (at my request).  With this list, and having been dropped off at this abandoned tank, I would begin a two-kilometer walk through coffee fields belonging to Selva Negra, a coffee farm founded in the 1880s by German immigrants.  Matagalpa is the hub of Nicaragua's coffee industry.

That's my bus in the background.

I would pass who knows how many millions of coffee cherries, each of which contains two beans.  The cherries would be ripe in a matter of days, marking the start of harvest.

I would also pass this Nicaraguan girl, perhaps 12 years old, sitting among coffee bushes with her Bible.  She and her mother were on their way home from church (it was Sunday morning).

Yes, Nicaragua is very much a Catholic country, as witnessed by young girls in coffee fields and by words painted on Blue Bird buses.  It is a country in which I would have liked to have spent much, much more time.  But racing the clock as I was, back in Matagalpa I boarded a bus to continue my whirlwind journey.  Next stop: Leon.

For more in this series:

Part One -- GRANADA

Part Two -- MASAYA

Part Three -- MANAGUA

		Joel Carillet, Gather Travel Correspondent
	Joel's column, "Reflections on the Road," is published every other Thursday to Gather Essentials: Travel. His articles, based on extensive travels in Asia and the Middle East, seek to shed light on humanity, both our own and that of others.   They aim not merely to entertain and inform but also to develop a sense of connection between the reader and the world. Joel's writing and photography have appeared in several publications, including the Kansas City Star, Christian Science Monitor, and The Best Travel Writing 2008.   He is also the author of 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. If interested in learning more about Joel or purchasing photographic prints, visit http://joelcarillet.com. When not on the road, he happily calls Tennessee home. Keep up with Joel's article series by joining his network, or subscribing to his content.