Leon

Thanks Harneet for the summary!
Every city has its character, and since tonight is our last night in Leon, I wanted to write about it. Tomorrow we will head to San Juan del Sur for a night and then to Costa Rica.

Leon is one of the two oldest cities in Nicaragua. Cordoba, the man who founded both Granada and Leon, is named for the currency of Nicaragua. From the viewpoint of our feets, the streets of Leon is a smorgasboard of pavements- ceramic, brick, cement, some pavements are shiny from the morning washing, some are really dirty with nose boogies. Each building is made up of many different colors, depending on the whims of its habitants - lime green, adobe red, tangerine orange, etc. The city is organized in blocks, with its 16 churches as the most prominent landmarks. People will tell you directions from the cathedral and two blocks south rather than say the name of an avenue (in fact, I think many streets have no names). Foreigners, women with baskets of peeled mangoes, begger children, and professionals, uniform-wearing private school kids, all mingle together on the narrow streets. Eskimo ice cream shops are very popular, with exotic flavors such as pitalla (sp?), which is the fruit of a cactus that grows on jicaro trees. It is magenta and sweet. On the outside, it kind of looks like a softer, magenta version of a small pineapple. Yum. Although this is the rainy season in Nicaragua, these past few days in Leon has been rainless. The weather here is much more predictable than that of Sahsa, meaning it is hot, hot, hot. Walking around at 7AM could give you a good sweat. Occasionally, in between the alleys comes a cool breeze, which is almost as good as that pitalla ice cream...