How’s this for an unplanned, untouristy day: Nicaraguan baseball and hanging out with the local bomberos at the fire station!  We woke up on our last day of Las Penitas, still unsure of where we were headed.  Our thought was to spend a night in Leon, grab a room with free internet and re-group.  But once on the bus, we decided just to keep on going. 

We landed in Masaya, a larger town centered among a bunch of villages known for producing all sorts of woodwork and hand crafts: rocking chairs, tables, hammocks, guitars, wooden vases and bowls and on and on.  Masaya sports a huge “old” market, a maze of stalls nestled behind castle-like walls.  A six year old guide book laying around Sol y Mar described Masaya as a place most tourists opt to do as a day trip from Managua or Grenada since accommodations are sparse and “has little to offer” other than shopping.  Well, it was right on the accommodations part.  We found the one street with a handful of hotels which by US standards would be considered the ghetto based on the number of liquor tiendas, store-front casinos, black-windowed clubs and lingerie shops but may in fact be a ritzy neighborhood from the perspective of having enough disposable income to frequent these types of businesses.  We went door to door until we found a room with wifi and settled in for the evening. 

Over the next morning’s coffee, we met the only two other hotel guests: two firefighters from Holland there to assist the Masaya department.  They set off for a day of training; we set off for a day of exploring.  We had no map, no destination, but did have knowledge of Masaya’s Roberto Clemente Baseball Stadium and I guess our thoughts guided our steps because not only did we end up there, a game was in progress.  Why not?  For $1 you could buy seats in the shade, a buck fifty got you behind home plate, or 50 cents and sunshine for the really tight budget.  We opted for mid-range seats and hoped as gringos we wouldn’t be the only ones who paid for the upgrade.  We needn’t have worried.  There was a fairly decent turn out for a mid-afternoon game: all Nicaraguans, and all sitting in the shade. 

No matter your latitude, baseball is baseball.  Sure, there were a few differences.  The vendors, mostly older women, toted folding stands while carrying their wares on their heads in huge baskets.  Same monotone calling out of their goods, but instead of “popcorn, peanuts, cold beer here” it was “plantanos con queso, gaseoso frio” (fried plantain slices with cheese, cold pop).  However, there was a hamburger guy, one hamerguesa with ketchup, mustard, lettuce, onion, and tomato for 75 cents.  Fred couldn’t resist. 

After the hot game and the even hotter walk back, we were past customary siesta hour so instead took a cool shower (as if there is any other kind) and bought the lounging fireman a beer.  Carlos, the fire department’s IT guy and English translator for the Dutchmen, had joined them and we got to pick the brain of a town insider who doubted our ability to rent a place to live in Masaya.  This was becoming a current theme.  Pedro and Maria are from the very “normal” town of Mesetepe and they had their friends and family asking around about a house for us to rent.  When they called us that morning, they reported our only option would be for Maria to have her daughter move out for a month.  We think they were joking!

Anyway, the guys had to go back to the station to set up the new computers that had arrived in the container from Holland and been cleared by the customs official after the right amount of corodobas had been passed over.  Fred had his eye on their Masaya Bomberos t-shirts as we headed over to check out the new equipment and meet the guys.  It’s one of those things you’d just normally never get to do: hang out at the firehouse all evening.  We talked to the guys (as best we could), met the comandante, and served up a 3 liter of coke for everyone’s refreshment. 

And then we gave up and boarded a bus for San Juan Del Sur.  This “sleepy little fishing town” has been transformed.  It might be hard given the current value of your house, but remember our real estate boom?  Well, it hit one Nicaraguan city as well.  San Juan Del Sur is built around a bay and surrounded by mountains.  For whatever reason, foreign investors and expats got it in their heads that this was the place to be over other Nica spots and raised a condo building, a few subdivisions, in-filled many casas (houses) and opened a wide offering of restaurants, shops and bars.  This provides a still small, but bustling town with a blend of typical Nicaraguan life (a.k.a. public market, carrying your just-off-the-boat bought fish by the tail, and roads that resemble dirt paths) with gringo culture (a.k.a. loud bars, an English bookshop/coffee house and a corner store that sells Pam).  Most important for us: several different options in the way of one month rentals. 

The game has changed from being in an Untourist type of place, to rooting out an Untourist lifestyle in a popular location!  It is hard, at least with my Spanish vocabulary, to determine what share the local residents have in the new economy, but we did manage to find a housing option that is Nicaraguan owned and out of the fray.  Casa Max is built into the side of a hill and overlooks the Pacific Ocean.  Its three rooms (kitchen/dining/living, bedroom, bathroom) are everything we need and the back patio with an open pit grill is a great bonus!  It is cloaked in trees for shade and planted with an abundant array of flowers which supports good hummingbird watching.  From town, our very steep walk takes us through a sizeable Nicaraguan neighborhood so we at least have a chance of making some friends that actually live here.  We already bought room temperature eggs from an old man sitting on his porch next to his hand-written sign “hay huevos” meaning “there are eggs,” cooked up a giant pot of red beans which we paid $1 for and eat with almost every meal and have started drinking the tap water.  (Solid waste is one of Nicaragua’s biggest environmental issues: bottled water arrived in country before scheduled trash pick-up.)  We’ll have to see what other ways we can discover to “go local” while enjoying our peace and privacy for intensive Spanish study, writing, beaching and relaxing. 

More Pictures!  Click here to see our illustrated adventures on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42679370@N06/sets/72157623972347140/show/with/4569392549/