On our way to Jinotepe, we pass through Masaya, a town known for its artesanry and market. We only plan on spending a couple of hours here so we ask a woman at an internet cafe if we could leave our backpacks there for a bit. "Sure, if you trust me," she said, and I just replied, "Of course!" and we threw our bags down. We walked around the town from the basic goods market to the artesan market, getting a little mixed up after we wound around through the latter. So when we tried to get to the lovely lookout point our very out-dated 
guidebook mentioned, we ended up walking down some dirt residential streets, soliciting some strange looks and a couple hellos from small children. We did find the lake but had to look at it through our stinging eyes and with smoke that was rising up off the hillside of burning trash. Lovely, eh. On the way back we passed a dance troupe in the streets performing a sort of satirical play and dance that featured politicans, baby dolls and drag queens.In the late afternoon we find our bus to Jinotepe. It takes much longer than we anticipated because it winds through all of the Pueblos Blancos, the White Towns, before looping back around to Jinotepe. The Pueblos Blancos are a bunch of small towns, clustered near each other, and get their name from the white paint that they all use on their buildings. One of the towns that we passed through, Niquinohomo, was the hometown of Gen. Augusto Sandino and in a letter that we saw in the city government office in Masaya, I read that Sandino was very proud of his small town birth. Nice to know I share such a sentiment with such an admired revolutionary.
This country is so beautiful, it's hard for my heart and mind and eyes to take it all in in such a brief period of time. I love how people refer to each other casually and incessantly as "amor", "love", and how everyone teases each other and makes jokes and laughs endlessly. Everyone seems so happy and warm, even with a terrible war so recently behind them. And, for now, I won't even get started on the food.
