León and Granada, Nicaragua – From Maltagalpa we took the bus down to León. León was hot – we’d heard it was hot from other tourists we’d met in Honduras who where traveling north, and they weren’t kidding. It hit us like a brick when we got off the bus and we had a very sweaty walk to our hostel, Lazy Bones. We were pleased that the Lazy Bones had a pool and hammocks – there were definitely some lazy afternoons in our future.
The cathedral in Leon.
We spent our mornings in Leon touring the sights around the city, a few churches, a roof tour of the Cathedral, a so-so art museum and the Heroes and Martyrs museum, which was a bunch of mug shots of Sandinistas taken during the war. It was morbid and haunting – most of solders looked like little boys. As a tourist it’s hard to see that many of the countries we visited were so recently involved in horrific revolutions and civil wars. This exhibit – though simple – really brought that home for us. Some of these guys are probably our taxi cab drivers, waiters, hotel staff or the shoe shiners in the park.
