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La Trinidad
So far this blog has included tours of Masaya, Ometepe, and San Juan del Sur, with little mention of La Trinidad! So here’s a long overdue description of the town I live in.
La Trinidad is an extremely rural village about 30 minutes south of Esteli and 3 hours north of Managua. The village is filled with lots of family owned shops, often connected to their homes, and not much else. Few cars are seen in the streets - horses seem to be a more popular form of transportation. The contents of each of these family owned shops has proved to be very random, and we’ve struggled to find items as simple as liquid soap. In fact, to finally obtain liquid soap, we had to take the 40 minute bus-ride to Esteli. Shops with refrigerated sections are also difficult to come by, but I recently discovered a fridge in the gas station, which seems to be the only place I can find to buy yogurt. Luckily though, all the shops have a mini freezer where we can purchase delicious Eskimo ice cream treats. The Eskimo brand is one of the best parts of Nicaragua, so most days include a trip to the Eskimo store to buy a 40-cent scoop of ice-cream. We rationalize it by recognizing that ice cream is truly our only source of dairy here!
Dinachi and I often comment that our life feels like “The Sound of Music.” There are beautiful green hills and mountains all around us, and on numerous occasions we’ve been prompted to sing “The Hills are Alive” (sometimes modifying the lyrics to fit our life in Nicaragua, when we’re feeling especially creative). The mountains are so expansive that it’s difficult to capture a good image without a panoramic camera, but here’s a nice one which also includes an example of a typical home:
The hills of Nicaragua.
Homes down the road from the hospital.
One of my favorite aspects of the shops here is that all the buildings are covered with paintings for all the products. You can’t find a single manufactured poster here! All the advertisements and decorations are painted by hand, and the results are beautiful.
Painted shops in the center of town.
