Thank goodness for the fan in the bedroom I´m inhabiting, otherwise I´m not sure I would have slept at all. I forgot how oppressively hot it can be in a cement house in the middle of the city. I certainly didn´t need covers, not even the sheet that was provided for me. Although it did cool off after the huge rainstorm with thunder and lighting that came through in the middle of the night and woke me up.
However, the day has proved to be much cooler than yesterday with a fair amount of cloud cover and a light early afternoon rain. I even managed to get some laundry done with the help of the Italians´cleaning lady Esperanza, who showed me how to use the washer and then was kind enough to hang up my clothes for me.
I also managed to get to a little store to buy some shampoo, well really 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner because it´s much easier to just apply something to your hair once in this climate in the cool water from the showers and I don´t fancy having dreads. Although I could totally pull them off, right?
And I had my first Nicaraguan lunch in a little restaurant around the corner from the house. Stewede pork, rice and beans, and a cooked plaintain. It was delicious! Once again I was reminded of the Dominican Republic. It was so much like what I would have gotten there for lunch in a comedor (usually a breakfast and lunch place). Although I had to laugh at myself for loving the food so much because when I came back from the DR I was so tired of eating reice and beans every day that I have tended to avoid them for the last 4 years. Imagine my surprise when I devoured everything on my plate and had to keep myself from making appreciative sounds while I at alone at this little restaurant. It also only cost $3 for a plate full of food that would have cost me $15 in Hood River. I know there´s an argument there about the true cost of food, but since I´m trying to travel cheaply, I´m not going to be the one to make it at this point.
It was a lazy afternoon at the house after that hanging out and talking with Alessia and Andrea, an Italian couple that live at the house, and later their friend Irene who arrived from Chinandega in the North for a visit in Managua for the weekend. We had a lovely spaghetti carbonara for dinner made by Andrea and Alessia. I helped by making guacamole as an appetizer. Irene had brought a bottle of Chilean wine to share as well.
After dinner we waited for a couple of their Italian friends, Marco and Marco to come get us so we could go out and hear some live music at a popular bar area in Managua. After paying the cover charge, we walked in to listen to the music and three songs later it was over, or so we thought. But then another band started up and played for about an hour, and then came the headliner Milly Majuc, an extremely popular artist here who plays an interesting mix of rock with a carribean vibe. It was really quite fun and all the Nicaraguans in the crowd were singing along and dancing. We were dancing but not singing along, although the choruses weren´t too complicated so you could pick those up pretty quickly. And we drank our fair share of Toñas too.
After the music stopped we moved on to another bar called Ron Kon Rolas. I got a huge kick out of that name. We each had a rum drink and decided it was time to head home. But of course when we got there we had to cook spaghetti again to soak up the alcohol in our systems so we ended up going to bed quite late and I didn´t make it to San Carlos on Saturday as I had planned.
Instead I decided to stay another night with the Italians although we had a lazy day after our big Friday night. We went out to a mediocre Middle Eastern restaurant and then chilled at the house for the afternoon. However, there´s always a steady stream of visitors to the house and usually pretty late at night. The company began arriving about 8 pm and stayed until about midnight at which point all of us who had been out the night before were about to fall over. Plus, most of us were planning on getting up early to leave for trips to various parts of the country. So ended my time hanging out with the Italians this time around. They really were amazing hosts and we had some amazing conversations about just about everything under the sun. I will most likely visit them again when I pass back through Managua to other parts of the country.
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