Nicaragua - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

By Russell Maddicks and Culture Smart

More and more travelers are discovering the delights of Nicaragua—a land of lakes and volcanoes. The image has persisted of a country racked by revolution and war, but the reality awaiting travelers couldn't be more different. The largest country in Central America, Nicaragua is also one of the most diverse and least explored, with a chain of puffing volcanoes along the Pacific coast, two huge freshwater lakes, important rainforest reserves on the tropical Mosquito Coast, and tiny, picture-postcard Caribbean islands where English Creole is the lingua franca. Travelers' budgets will stretch further here than in other Latin American destinations, and around every corner, there are cobblestone streets, high-altitude coffee plantations, world-class bird-watching, perfect surf, and Flor de CaÑa, the smoothest rum that ever came out of an oak barrel. Culture Smart! Nicaragua offers readers an insider's view of the country and its people. It explores Nicaragua's national traditions, turbulent history, tasty local dishes, fun fiestas, and unique cultural expressions. It arms readers with key phrases in Nica-speak, or NicaÑol, so you can break the ice, and provides insights into what the people of Nicaragua are like at home, at play, and in business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kuperard
• Release date: Jan 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781787029484

Book preview

chapter one

LAND & PEOPLE

GEOGRAPHICAL SNAPSHOT

Nicaragua is a triangular wedge between Honduras in the north and Costa Rica to the south, with the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean to the east. The largest country in Central America, it occupies an area of 50,336 square miles (130,370 sq. km)—slightly larger than the US state of Mississippi.

The country can be divided into three broad geographical areas: the Pacific lowlands in the west, which consist of a broad and fertile plain that runs from the Golfo de Fonseca in the north to Costa Rica in the south; the central highlands, which sweep down from the forested uplands bordering Honduras through the middle of the country, effectively cutting it in half; and the Atlantic lowlands to the east, which take up almost 50 percent of the nation’s territory, dominated by a long Caribbean coastline from Gracias a Dios in the north to San Juan de Nicaragua in the south, incorporating the lush Corn Islands and remote Pearl Cays.

Pacific Lowlands

You only have to glance at a topographical map of Nicaragua to see why it is known as the Land of Lakes and Volcanoes. The Pacific coast is dotted with an imposing string of twenty-five volcanoes, both active and dormant, that stretch from the huge crater lake of Cosigüina on the Golfo de Fonseca to the twin-volcano island of Ometepe in Lago Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua), the largest freshwater lake in Central America and the ninth-largest in the world. The lake covers an area of 3,191 square miles (8,264 sq. km) and is so vast that when the Spanish conquistadors arrived on its shores in 1523 they thought they had reached an ocean. Only when their horses started to drink from it did they realize it was a freshwater lake—and so they named it the Mar Dulce (Sweet Sea). Connected to the Caribbean Sea via the Rio San Juan, Lago Cocibolca is home to bull sharks that have adapted to its low salinity, and encompasses several archipelagos, including Las Isletas, close to the colonial city of Granada, and Solentiname in the far south.

Nicaragua’s other large body of fresh water, Lago Xolotlán (Lake Managua), has been cleaned up in recent years, in particular the lakeside promenade in the capital, Managua, which now has a restaurant complex named after the deposed Chilean President Salvador Allende and a pier from which pleasure boats set off on short trips.

The country’s volcanoes are a huge magnet for tourists. Thrill-seekers climb to the summit of the still active Cerro Negro—the youngest volcano in Central America—and volcano board down the black ash slopes created by its last eruption in 1999. If you don’t fancy a hike, you can drive right to the lip of the Masaya volcano, near Managua, and stare down at a bubbling lake of red-hot lava. Small belches of smoke or ash occur regularly at volcanoes like San Cristóbal, which appears on the label of Flor de Caña rum and is the tallest of Nicaragua’s volcanoes at 5,725 feet (1,745 m). When Cosigüina exploded in 1835 it was the biggest eruption in Nicaragua’s history, sending clouds of ash as far as Mexico and Jamaica. But even that pales in comparison to the eruption of the Mombacho volcano some 25,000 years ago, which was so explosive that rocks blown from the cone formed the 365 tiny islands of Las Isletas. As if to remind the world of the power of nature, the perfect cone of Momotombo burst dramatically back to life in 2015 after lying dormant for a hundred years.

The cause of all this volcanic action is Nicaragua’s location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped area of seismic activity created by the juddering grind of tectonic plates that affects countries all around the Pacific rim, from New Zealand and Japan via North and Central America to Peru and Chile in South America.

Nicaragua’s historic colonial cities of Granada and León are also located along the Pacific strip, and the country’s top surfing beaches can be found around the tourist town of San Juan del Sur.

Central Highlands

To the east of the Pacific lowlands the cool hills around the northern cities of Matagalpa and Jinotega are Nicaragua’s prime coffee country. Some of the best high-altitude Arabica shade coffee in the world is grown here on forested farms, where birdwatchers come to see the three-wattled bellbird and the resplendent quetzal in all its tail-shimmering glory. In the nineteenth century German immigrants settled here and set up coffee farms, drawn by government incentives and land grants. Their influence can still be seen today at the Selva Negra coffee hacienda, named after the Black Forest and run by descendants of those first German settlers.

Around the northern city of Estelí, the main crop is tobacco. The introduction of Cuban tobacco seeds following the Cuban revolution, and the fertility of the local soil, have led to a situation where Nicaraguan cigars regularly beat their Cuban rivals to the top spots on the annual lists of magazines like Cigar Aficionado. Estelí is also surrounded by national parks such as Tisey and Miraflor, where coffee cooperatives offer home-stays for foreign tourists who want to hike in the hills or learn about rural life.

Cerro Mogotón, at 6,913 feet (2,107m) Nicaragua’s highest mountain, lies on the Honduran border in the Reserva Nacional Cordillera Dipilto y Jalapa in Nueva Segovia department. Also on that border is the Cañon de Somoto, a meandering canyon of deep ravines cut through some of the oldest rock formations in Central America by the Comali and Tapacali Rivers.

Atlantic Lowlands

The land along the Mosquito Coast—once the haunt of European pirates and briefly a remote outpost of the British Empire—is home to Nicaragua’s last indigenous tribes, Afro-Caribbean fishing villages, and huge swathes of coastal mangroves. Covering over half the country, these sparsely populated lowlands are home to fewer than a million inhabitants.

In the north, the border with Honduras is marked by the Río Coco (or Wanky to the Miskito people)—the longest river in Central America at 466 miles (750 km) long—which flows into the Caribbean at Cabo Gracias a Dios. In the south, the Río San Juan marks the border with Costa Rica at San Juan de Nicaragua. In between, the only cities of any size are the ports of Bluefields and Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas).

Important gold reserves are mined in the jungles around the aptly named northern town of Bonanza, in an area known as the Golden Triangle, and the pristine rainforests of the Bosawas and Indio Maíz nature reserves are home to a myriad marvels of nature.

Off the coast, the palm-fringed Corn Islands are the main draw for tourists, offering lazy days on beautiful beaches and scuba diving at all levels.

CLIMATE

Due to its position north of the Equator, Nicaragua has a subtropical climate that blesses it with all-year sunshine and warm temperatures. There are two main seasons: dry and rainy. The temporada seca (dry season), or verano (summer), brings the hottest temperatures and runs from January to the end of April. It is generally dry, but short tropical downpours in the afternoon or overnight are not unusual.

The temporada de lluvia (rainy season), or invierno (winter), runs from May through to the end of the hurricane season in November. Rainfall is generally heavier in August and September, when tropical storms can bring spectacular torrential downpours, especially along the Atlantic coast and the islands of the Caribbean. Storms tend not to last long and are interspersed with bright periods of sunshine. In December the weather can be fresh, and January is the coolest month, although fluctuations in the pattern of the rains in recent years have made it harder to predict.

It is generally hotter on the coastal lowlands, cooler in the northern uplands, and hotter, wetter, and more humid in the dense forests of the Atlantic coast.

For travelers to the Pacific lowlands, the height of the dry season can feel very hot, especially in cities like Managua and León. Granada benefits from the cooling winds coming off Lago Cocibolca, and San Juan del Sur and other Pacific beach resorts are wafted by sea breezes. An upside to the withering heat of the dry season is a reduction in flies and mosquitoes.

The benefits of traveling in the rainy season are that it doesn’t rain every day, it’s fresher, and the countryside is greener. Surfers also prefer the rainy months, as the rains bring heavier swells and bigger breakers.

Average temperatures in the Pacific lowlands can reach daytime highs of over 90°F (32°C) and lows of 75°F (23°C), which is a similar pattern to the Corn Islands. The highland cities of Matagalpa, Estelí, and Jinotega are always a few degrees cooler.

THE PEOPLE

Nicaragua, like its neighbors in Central America, is a mestizo nation—a melting pot of the indigenous Amerindian people who were here before Columbus arrived in 1502, mixed with the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors who followed in his wake and other European settlers. Some 69 percent of Nicaraguans identify as mestizo, and they make up the bulk of the population along the Pacific coast and in the northern highlands. The old elite of Spanish colonialists and the Europeans who got rich from coffee and the California steamboat route in the nineteenth century make up the majority of the 17 percent identified as white, and there is also a small but well-established expat community of North Americans and Canadians in Granada, León, and San Juan del Sur.

Living along the sparsely populated Atlantic coast are most of the 9 percent of the Nicaraguan population who identify as black or Afro-Caribbean. These are descendants of Africans brought in chains to the Caribbean to work in British sugar plantations. Under the British protectorate that operated in the eighteenth century along the Mosquito Coast and out on the Corn Islands thousands of Afro-Caribbeans came to Nicaragua, mainly from Jamaica, from where the protectorate was run. Caribbean culture, music, and food are still predominant along the Mosquito Coast, and Nicaragua’s Afro-Caribbeans maintain ties to their African and British past in the English Creole they speak, the rondón seafood soup they eat, and the maypole dances of the Tulululu fiestas held every May in Bluefields and elsewhere.

There are also about 500 Garifuna in the community of Orinoco, on Laguna de Perlas. Made up of African slaves who mixed with Caribs and Arawaks on the island of St. Vincent, the Garifuna were cast out from St. Vincent in 1797 by the British following slave revolts, and arrived on the shores of Roatan, in Honduras, from where they spread to Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Famous for their music and punta drumbeat, the Garifuna of Nicaragua keep their traditions and language alive through regular contact with other Garifuna groups in Central America.

When the Spanish first arrived in Central America they encountered a large indigenous population of Nahuatl-speakers with cultural ties to the Aztecs and Mayas of present-day Mexico, Chibcha groups from South America, and Taino groups from the Caribbean islands. Nowadays in Nicaragua, indigenous Amerindians make up only 5 percent of the population and are almost exclusively found on the Atlantic coast. The largest group is the Miskito, or Miskitu, who give their name to the Mosquito Coast. An Afro-indigenous group, the Miskito were close to the British in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and their leaders were crowned kings by the English governors of Jamaica. They keep their language alive through community radio and regular festivities and cultural events in their communities. Other smaller indigenous groups, such as the Rama and the Mayagna, or Sumu, also remain on ancestral lands in the autonomous regions of the Atlantic.

Nicaraguans still refer to Arabic people—both Christian and Muslim—as Turcos (Turks), a legacy of