Nica-life
12 August 2008 | Share:
One of the pleasures of traveling to a place like Nicaragua is simply the immediacy of things.
In this country without street addresses — directions are given as “the green painted building two blocks up from the central park” or “cross the bridge, there’s a tree, the bus will pick you up there” — and where vendors come door-to-door selling everything from mangoes, milk, and pitaya (a fruit that looks like an artichoke, the color of a beet and tastier than a kiwi) to hardware equipment to chicken and pork on a portable grill, life goes on without much mediation. It’s all there in front of your face. This comes as a relief even to South Philadelphia eyes.
This is never more the case than in the market. Here in Granada (which lies on Lago de Nicaragua, the larger of the two giant lakes in this largest of Central American countries), and in the neighboring city of Masaya, the municipal market rewards.
It’s hot, with low tin roofs claustrophobic, and there is the marvelous, contagious fragrance of waste. It isn’t only food — but hot damn! the food, mountains of papaya and watermelon and eggs, tamales sweet and silken — rather every accommodation for life (jewelry repair, pirated CDs, money-changers, sling-shots, machetes, a block-long display of bras). And there is marimba and cries and horse carts and somnolence and sleepy eyes and sweat, and then perhaps, a passing shower.
It’s winter in Centroamerica.