Leon, Nicaragua

Leon is great. Last night we didn´t do much except find the supermarket to buy beer and rum, then got some late night vender hamburgers and played some cards.

Today we slept in a little bit, which is difficult in Leon. At 7am and Noon everyday a crazy loud air raid siren goes off and echos around the entire town. Apparently it´s from the old days when it was used to call the factory workers to work. I guess now they keep it for nostalgic reasons. Thank god we read about it in the guide book or else it would have scared the crap out of us. The parrot living in the courtyard outside our door also made it hard to sleep in today, it´s very talkative first thing in the morning. After a big cheap breakfast at a cafe, we went to the phone booth store and called our parents. Then we walked around town looking for a book store and a surf shop, failed in both. On our way back to our room, we bought a Mame (pronounced mamay, don´t know if I spelled it right though) which is a fruit that reminds me of a hard peach with a brown skin, orange flesh and a big seed in the middle, but it tastes more like a mango. It´s awesome.

In the afternoon we visited an museum of Nicaraguan legends and torture (yeah, a strange mix), which was an old prison in use from 1920 to 1978. During the revolutions and dictatorships, this is where the government troops (the evil National Guard) tortured prisoners. In all the old cells where life sized figures of various nicaraguan lengends like witches and evil colonels. Our guide, who only spoke spanish, would switch back and forth between talking about torture to how people dance in the street with colourful costumes. It took me a while to catch on. My favourite legend was the woman with the really big boobs that used to kill men by smothering them, also the headless priest that roams the streets looking for his head, or the witch that turns into an evil black pig and kills unfaithful men or the golden crab that´s unlucky to see. We went to see Sherlock Holmes in spanish and now we really want to see the English version.

We´re off the Las Penitas tomorrow, a beach where the surf breaks!