Friday afternoon-Esteli
Feeling the need not to take a bus ride every single day of the trip I decided to stay over in Esteli for a second night.
I arrived around 10am yesterday morning and wandered the town centre looking for a room in one of the better, but still cheap, hotels. After getting a “ sorry we have no rooms” response from every one I resigned myself to the one high priced option in town -Hotel Los Arcos. The place is absolutely spotless with a couple of nice courtyards, hot water in the shower, clean and comfortable beds, free internet, 90 channels of mostly Spanish language TV plus free buffet breakfast in the morning. The kicker is that it is $45 a night-twice the price of the other hotels. However some of that money goes to local community projects and other charitable groups so the money is going to a good cause.
The last time I was here, we had a total of 2 hours to explore the town, so this time a more in depth look is in order.
The town proper is less than a kilometre wide but at least 2.5 km long. Built on a plain between various mountain ranges it is about 800 meters above sea level and is much cooler than Granada. The CA1 (Pan-American Hwy) runs through the east side of the town with the downtown core a few blocks west.
Esteli is one of the few towns in Nicaragua that has street signage with numbered avenues running north-south and streets running east-west. In spite of that everyone resorts to standard Nica directions to identify places i.e. go 3 blocks south from the Cathedral and 2 blocks west.
Esteli is famous for two major industries here. One is tobacco in the form of cigars, the other is leather. One can get custom leather boots or a saddle made in about a week. If a week is too long then at least 3 dozen leather shops have a large selection of ready to go stock including thousands of hand made belts. The other option would be to just steal a horse, saddle and all. There are dozens of them tethered to trees and telephone poles all over town while the riders are off doing business around town.
There are close to 50 cigar makers in town, some producing at the rate of up to 5000 hand made cigars a day, others somewhat less.
Today’s tour was, essentially, the same one I took on my last visit, but it was still interesting the second time around. It’s main purpose, however was to allow me the chance to buy cigars at factory cost, significantly below the price at the airport duty free.
And NO, I don’t smoke them myself!
Esteli has a history of conflict and was “carpet bombed” by Somoza in the late ‘70’s due to the high concentration of Sandanista guerrillas in the area.
A small museum La Galeria de Heroes y Martires was originally one of the jails used by Somoza to house his political enemies. It is now a photographic memorial to the local men and women (many just teens) who lost their lives in the battle against Somoza’s National Guard in 1979.
Interestingly enough, on our last visit, the museum also featured a photo display from the Contra/Sandanista Conflict (1980-1991) That display, which included photos of Ben Linder had been removed, supposedly to a safe area awaiting the construction of a special memorial. As the only documented American citizen killed by the Contra’s i.e. the American backed opposition, I suspect the display’s removal was done to sanitize history for the benefit of American tourists visiting the museum.
[Working as an engineer developing simple hydro-electric projects in Nicaragua, Ben Linder’s life is a movie waiting to be made- a google search will give you an idea what I mean]
Looking around the town today there is little evidence of the previous destruction. It also feels much safer than other similar sized towns, although the tour books suggest avoiding the barrios (poor suburbs)
After checking on bus schedules this morning I walked from the northern bus depot (which, incidentally is at the south end of town!) towards the market where I spent a good half hour wandering and taking pictures of people and produce.
A 2km hike back to the central square allowed me time to check out leather shops, snap photos of the many murals scattered through town and stop for lunch at a restaurant featuring Cuban food- Sandwich Cubano (smoked meats and cheese on a half baguette) plus chicken soup (a bowl big enough to soak your feet in!) plus a beer for $6.00.
I also stopped at a street vegetable stand and picked up an avocado that probably weighs over a pound. That is going to be my main course for supper, with perhaps a couple of pieces of fried chicken from one of the stalls in the central square. [Got to make sure those lipid levels don’t slip too low!!]
The bus schedule to San Raphael tomorrow is 5am, 6am, and 7am and maybe a couple more including maybe one around 1pm- that is the information I got at the bus depot. That’s what I love about this country- the attention to detail!!!
So with that in mind, my the plan is to drag my ass out of bed at 6 and grab a taxi to the Cotran Norte and hope there is a bus heading for my destination when I get there.
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