...too hot.
Currently, it is 08:00 and it's 28C. The high today is 32C, but yesterday when we came in, we passed a thermometre that said 35C.
Us poor northerners. We thought Vancouver was warm.
I meant to make a post in Vancouver, which I was going to save for the wait in the airport once we checked in, except, it turns out, international standby is a whole sort of beast unto itself in comparison with full-fare (aka regular) travel. We returned the rental car after a whirlwind day showing Alan the sights of Vancouver - lots of food, the seawall, Stanley Park, craft beer, walking all around downtown and Davie St and Denman St - after a whirlwind weekend of seeing my mom, and trying to catch up with Thomas (and taking his daughter, Emily for ice cream), after shopping with Kathleen (and eating my fill of fresh sushi), and after Cindy's wedding, and apple picking out in the valley, and then gorging myself on so many apples that I'm appled out for a little while.
We returned our car after all of that. On time. With plenty of time. Standby, however, dictated our lives in a different manner. We stood in line, we handed in our passports, and we were told to come back just before they closed the flight, because the flight was full, and they didn't know if they could get us on until then.
So instead of writing a blog post and uploading photos like I intended, I panicked. I'm out of practice with this traveling thing. My nerves were already high strung from an entire day of sightseeing, and crowds of people, and the general excitement of travel. Being told wait (who tells me to wait?) ...was more than I could handle. So we passed a few nervous hours sitting in international departures, while we shared some music from my headphones, and shared a coffee from Starbucks (which was gross, by the way), and waited for 10:15pm, to see if we could make our flight.
And we did. But only to Mexico City.
In Mexico City, we had to depart our flight, go through the line at customs, go through and grab our baggage, head out of the secured area, find an Aeromexico attendant, and try to get on our flight to Managua. And we managed. But I honestly don't know how. We had two hours between flights - we got through security and to our gate just as boarding started. We were positive we were going to spend the day in Mexico City.
And then Managua, where we were harangued the second we picked up our baggage, and harangued all the way from the airport to the block down the street we decided to walk. Only one time did I manage enough fluency with Spanish to convince a person to leave us alone - until I turned to Alan and translated, and then he came back. About a block down the road, we found a taxi that was willing to offer us the cheaper rate into town (an 11km jaunt which turned into a 45 minute taxi ride because he was a collectivo taxi, meaning he picks people up as he chooses, and drops them off as he chooses). But he was a registered taxi, and I haggled him down to 130 cordobas, which was still cheaper than the cheapest rate I managed at the airport (200c). I think we still overpaid, but we were tired, and hot, and overwhelmed, and I was running out of room for spanish in my brain with all the heat and noise.
Some 45 minutes later, as we took patrons to the foot doctor, and to school, and to their houses for noticeably cheaper than we ourselves paid, we arrived at La UCA, the bus station in Managua that takes you to the part of the country we were trying to get to - Léon. The bus was a flat rate of 54c (much better), though I did see the bus driver slip the taxi driver a few notes before he took off.
The bus station, if you could call it that, was a series of flat tin garages with large 15 person minivans in it. It's much more expensive than taking a chicken bus, but we didn't know how to find a chicken bus to get to Leon, and nobody I spoke to was willing to tell me. In the end, we didn't care. We got on, and it was air-conditioned.
If I have given the impression so far that we didn't like Managua, it's true. We didn't see a lot of it, but what we did see didn't garner confidence, either. It just didn't feel safe. Already, after an evening in Leon, there is a difference. People don't look at you here the way we were getting looked at in Managua. We get stared at still, but the stares are of curiosity or recognition of our foreign-ness, not the hard stares of hostility.
Maybe we were just really tired and overwhelmed, but we discussed it and we didn't want to stay there a moment longer than necessary.
Some hour and a half later, we arrived in Leon, and talked a bicycle taxi down to $1US each to get us to our destination (he refused to take cordoba). He got us here, and we realized that our airbnb host wasn't home. So, headached and sticky with sweat, we sat outside his apartment for an hour on the street, until we could get Alan's roaming to work (my phone was dead), and shot off a quick email to say "Hey! We're here! It's hot outside!"
...and well, it's hot inside too. But we had some cold showers, and some fresh fruit, and we slept for 12 hours last night. And now I'm too warm to type on my laptop, so we are going for showers, and to explore the town for the day.
I'll put up some pictures tonight. I haven't taken any so far in Nicaragua, but I've got some nice ones of Vancouver, and the wedding, and after today, I'll have a few of Leon.
Seriously. Somebody think cold thoughts for me. I'm sweltering.
Currently, it is 08:00 and it's 28C. The high today is 32C, but yesterday when we came in, we passed a thermometre that said 35C.
Us poor northerners. We thought Vancouver was warm.
I meant to make a post in Vancouver, which I was going to save for the wait in the airport once we checked in, except, it turns out, international standby is a whole sort of beast unto itself in comparison with full-fare (aka regular) travel. We returned the rental car after a whirlwind day showing Alan the sights of Vancouver - lots of food, the seawall, Stanley Park, craft beer, walking all around downtown and Davie St and Denman St - after a whirlwind weekend of seeing my mom, and trying to catch up with Thomas (and taking his daughter, Emily for ice cream), after shopping with Kathleen (and eating my fill of fresh sushi), and after Cindy's wedding, and apple picking out in the valley, and then gorging myself on so many apples that I'm appled out for a little while.
We returned our car after all of that. On time. With plenty of time. Standby, however, dictated our lives in a different manner. We stood in line, we handed in our passports, and we were told to come back just before they closed the flight, because the flight was full, and they didn't know if they could get us on until then.
So instead of writing a blog post and uploading photos like I intended, I panicked. I'm out of practice with this traveling thing. My nerves were already high strung from an entire day of sightseeing, and crowds of people, and the general excitement of travel. Being told wait (who tells me to wait?) ...was more than I could handle. So we passed a few nervous hours sitting in international departures, while we shared some music from my headphones, and shared a coffee from Starbucks (which was gross, by the way), and waited for 10:15pm, to see if we could make our flight.
And we did. But only to Mexico City.
In Mexico City, we had to depart our flight, go through the line at customs, go through and grab our baggage, head out of the secured area, find an Aeromexico attendant, and try to get on our flight to Managua. And we managed. But I honestly don't know how. We had two hours between flights - we got through security and to our gate just as boarding started. We were positive we were going to spend the day in Mexico City.
And then Managua, where we were harangued the second we picked up our baggage, and harangued all the way from the airport to the block down the street we decided to walk. Only one time did I manage enough fluency with Spanish to convince a person to leave us alone - until I turned to Alan and translated, and then he came back. About a block down the road, we found a taxi that was willing to offer us the cheaper rate into town (an 11km jaunt which turned into a 45 minute taxi ride because he was a collectivo taxi, meaning he picks people up as he chooses, and drops them off as he chooses). But he was a registered taxi, and I haggled him down to 130 cordobas, which was still cheaper than the cheapest rate I managed at the airport (200c). I think we still overpaid, but we were tired, and hot, and overwhelmed, and I was running out of room for spanish in my brain with all the heat and noise.
Some 45 minutes later, as we took patrons to the foot doctor, and to school, and to their houses for noticeably cheaper than we ourselves paid, we arrived at La UCA, the bus station in Managua that takes you to the part of the country we were trying to get to - Léon. The bus was a flat rate of 54c (much better), though I did see the bus driver slip the taxi driver a few notes before he took off.
The bus station, if you could call it that, was a series of flat tin garages with large 15 person minivans in it. It's much more expensive than taking a chicken bus, but we didn't know how to find a chicken bus to get to Leon, and nobody I spoke to was willing to tell me. In the end, we didn't care. We got on, and it was air-conditioned.
If I have given the impression so far that we didn't like Managua, it's true. We didn't see a lot of it, but what we did see didn't garner confidence, either. It just didn't feel safe. Already, after an evening in Leon, there is a difference. People don't look at you here the way we were getting looked at in Managua. We get stared at still, but the stares are of curiosity or recognition of our foreign-ness, not the hard stares of hostility.
Maybe we were just really tired and overwhelmed, but we discussed it and we didn't want to stay there a moment longer than necessary.
Some hour and a half later, we arrived in Leon, and talked a bicycle taxi down to $1US each to get us to our destination (he refused to take cordoba). He got us here, and we realized that our airbnb host wasn't home. So, headached and sticky with sweat, we sat outside his apartment for an hour on the street, until we could get Alan's roaming to work (my phone was dead), and shot off a quick email to say "Hey! We're here! It's hot outside!"
...and well, it's hot inside too. But we had some cold showers, and some fresh fruit, and we slept for 12 hours last night. And now I'm too warm to type on my laptop, so we are going for showers, and to explore the town for the day.
I'll put up some pictures tonight. I haven't taken any so far in Nicaragua, but I've got some nice ones of Vancouver, and the wedding, and after today, I'll have a few of Leon.
Seriously. Somebody think cold thoughts for me. I'm sweltering.
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