Welcome to......Jinotega

Finally made it out of Matagalpa after 4 nights, we cut a deal with the hotel (which was ran by a 12 year old) and stayed for 5 bucks a night, which extended our stay a bit. It was a nice city, cheap street food, a coffee museum, yummy peanut brittle snacks within arms reach and our favorite bakery on earth. One of Rachel's favorite street foods was this pancake sort of thing with a crumble salty cheese on top of it, the same stand also sold corn pudding and corn on the cob. I was really corned out by the end of it.

Matagalpa is know for being the birthplace of the revolutionary Carlos Fonseca, he's a pretty big deal around here. We visited his childhood home that is now converted into a museum and a holding place for this beautiful statue of him.

One of the days we hiked to the top of the Reserva Natural Cerro Apante, an hour or two walk from town. 

We're in Jinotega now, about 1 1/2 hours from Matagalpa. It's a nice town but it's been sort of a strange experience so far. For example, within a few minutes of stepping off the bus Rachel was hissed at by an albino, semi hugged by a passing 15 year old, we were followed for a moment by a drunk psychopath stumbling around in the middle of the street, went into a hospedaje that asked us how many hours we wanted the room for and after we told them the whole night they led us past rooms full of pornography to a man who told us they were full (not like it mattered), it seemed like half of the people on the street were drunk (on a sunday afternoon), and to top it all off last night we heard a loud scraping/screeching/crashing sound and look out of our balcony window to see a guy crashed on a motorcycle on the doorstep of our hotel! He finally manages to get the bike off of him after a few passerbys help him, stands up, stumbles around, gets BACK ON the back and gets it started, takes off and within 15 feet crashes AGAIN. Again, he manages to get up and get the bike started, at that moment a guy a half a block away throws down his bicycle and runs over, gets on the bike with the drunk guy, and they both go speeding down the road, cutting off a few cars in the meantime. This place is nuts! But it really is a pleasant town, kind of, and has a very pretty surrounding area. Everything just seems so twilight zonish I feel like i'm the crazy one. Plus the bakery is really expensive. Here is the view out of our hotel room window, and also the sight of the crash. And on the right the market where numerous odd encounters have occured.

We were gonna hike up to a viewpoint that overlooks the city, the trail for it begins in this beautiful cemetery, but after a local guy told us that it was dangerous and that 2 days ago some people were robbed at gunpoint, so we settled for just a walk around the cemetery. I think we'll be taking off tommorrow.