Tuesday, November 6, 2012

El Malecón

El malecón or the pier is basically downtown Managua. It is a nice, clean place with several historic buildings and sites.

The main attraction to el malecón I would say is definitely the old cathedral. It was in use until 1972 when an earthquake hit Managua and sent many buildings tumbling to dust. The cathedral still stands but has many cracks, is missing a roof, and is expected to crumble at any second.

From far away, you cannot really tell that anything is worng, but here are some up-close shots at the damage. 

 The structure right under the clocks is really cool on both of the towers because the four walls have completely seperated from each other, yet they are still up right.
 Look at the top of the two domes. The closer one has a cross, but the other one appears to have fallen. It has fallen backwards, but it is still just barely hanging on to the top of the dome with a little concrete. It looks so fragile, that everyone is just waiting for a little tremor to send it crashing down.









The grounds have been a little neglected as well!


Just across the street from the cathedral is a little fair. President, Daniel Ortega, ordered it for all the citizens in Nicaragua. It is completely free and will be here until Christmas.

There were thousands of people here and the lines were super long, but it had a really happy spirit and was fun to walk through. I had no intentions of riding any of the attractions as I believed there may be looser safety codes here (if any at all). However, some of the rides looked really fun and so Manfred and I sat and watched. It was great entertainment and we did not have to wait in line!


 Finally we went to the Malecón which looks out at Lake Managua. This lake was once a sewage dump and almost became a dead lake, but now the country is working on cleaning it up and reviving its beauty.


 At last, dusk came upon us and all of downtown lit up! It was so beautiful. The tree shown below in the largest tree in the city and is right in the middle of the fair. Other smaller trees are in all the round-abouts throughout Managua through thanks to the first lady.

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