Nicaraguan Adventures 5: Jinotepe and Leon

These two towns have at least one thing in common although they are not real near each other: They both had no decent hotel available for us. Consequently we spent only one night in each town. So there will be less commentary and more pictures for this segment.

Jinotepe

Above and Below Left: Central Park. This is where the pulse of the town is. It is very hard to get information on this town so I took a gander at the reviews from Google. Lots of fruit and snack stands are here. Some weekends you will be treated to marimba music.

Concerning this park several people wrote that it was rather unsafe, especially at night. Speaking of nightlife, one reviewer related that he rescued a sloth off the street. I checked iNaturalist and apparently there are Two-toed Sloths in the area! The park has free Wifi. It also has one of those tiresome outstretched wings statues where you can stand in front of it and pretend to be an angel. Bordering the park is the Cathedral and the German Polytechnical Institute.

On the right is the first hotel we tried to go to. The old lady took a look at us and shivered a big No. Hmm. First impressions. Our second hotel candidate had load piped-in music in all the rooms. Nope. Our third hotel was doable but forgettable.

Parroquia Santiago Apóstol. A very old church, obviously. How old? I could not find out.

Like many Nicaraguan towns, Jinotepe has murals and patriotic art memorializing the Sandinistas.

Walking across a weedy field brings us to our bus station. Right net to the market.

Horse-drawn vehicles not uncommon here. This young horse seems better fed then some I have seen in this country. Many owners try to get by with just letting their horses eat grass, stinting on oats.

Leon

Three photos in a row with bananas and other fruit. Really cheap, really fresh. In the first two photos you an see part of a motorcyclist. A very crowded situation, but lively. In China this scene would be called “re nao” (“hot boisterous”).

Left: Unlike the previous town in this article, Leon has a really decent supermarket. Right: Leon and Jinotepe in Western Nicaragua. Notice that I did not highlight Managua because we never stayed there, only changing buses here once or twice – and that hurriedly. A really sketchy city. At the time of our first visit to the country there were still robust demonstrations against Ortega. Several people were fired upon, some fatally, by snipers.

Lots of old architecture in this city.

This city has much in common with Granada. Both cities are named after ones in the home country of Spain. Both have plenty of old structures, churches especially. But, unlike Granada, Leon has a lot more murals celebrating recent history. And they seem to be more determined to maintain their churches than Granada does.

I have not been able to identify this church.

The Iglesia La Recolección (Church of the Recollection) is much more impressive on the outside. The interior, except for the rightly famous baroque altarpiece, is less remarkable.

A lot of remodeling is being done on the Cathedral-Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Inside this church is the grave of Ruben Dario, probably the most famous writer of Nicaragua.

A lot of tourists come to this city. For various reasons. We met a young man who was enamored with a local heroine, Nora Astorga, the “Nicaraguan Mata Hari”. Wikipedia has a lot of information on her, her seduction and subsequent part in the murdering of a government official, her work for the Contras, and early death from cancer. She had even helped write speeches for the new president Ortega. This was all in the 80s and since then a dubious hagiography has grown around this woman.

The Nicaragua series continues here with: Jinotega, Selva Negra, and Matagalpa

A separate series starts here: Goodbye, Cozumel.