Whew it's been awhile. Sometimes circumstances make it difficult to get to a computer to peck away at the keys, even just for a moment. Time operates on a completely different scale when traveling, days can feel like a lifetime or fly by faster than you can rip pages off the calendar. Looking back at when I started, it feels like I've been down here quite a while, and sometimes I have to take a vacation from my vacation. Instead of waking up at the crack of dawn to go exploring or take some kind of tour, sometimes it's nice just to relax around the hostel reading a book or post up on a park bench to observe the rhythm of life in a foreign country.
As the sun rises at about 5:30am every morning, people are out and about from the first light of day or aurora till sundown (atardecer). Street vendors roll out their carts to sell fresh empanadas or quesillos, newspapers are sold to the shopkeepers rolling up their garage doors and sweeping out their tiendas and churchbells chime to tell you it's time to get your day going. The grind of blenders liquidating ice, fruit and milk into delicious batidos emerges from the comedores serving desayunos (breakfast) to those that start their work days early.
At about eight to 9am is when things really get going. The sun is now higher in the sky and the reddish hue of dawn has been replaced with bright and warming rays of golden light. The sidewalks are flooded with people heading to work in all directions; the streets with cars honking their horns, bikes and pedestrian overflow. The banter of shopkeepers chatting with friends passing by is punctuated by the street vendors who have started announcing their products over all the commotion with high-pitched, piercing calls of "quesillo!", "empanaditas!", "rosquillas!", "guineos!"...
One can learn a lot about a place by posting up on a park bench or in a cafe along a busy street. Sometimes the best thing to do is simply observe life over a cup of coffee from the lush mountains of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, or a delicious batido with your favorite fruits blended into one refreshing concoction. Once you find yourself in tune with the daily life of a city, your mind can play it back to you over and over in an endless, time-lapse fashion. Only then can you truly understand a place that was once completely foreign to you... I recommend trying it someday.
