The only chela in town

Last night after I ate dinner at "The house of hamburgers" with 2 other Americans I met, I sat in the central park by myself for awhile to people watch. It was great and I was more or less left alone because I pretended I didn´t speak English or Spanish. Unfortunately, once night fell I looked around and realized that the only other women in the park were prostitutes. Ah, the joys of the big 3rd world city.

Woke up this morning at 4:30 to catch my 5:30 bus. Was dropped off at another random hotel at 7:30, at which point I got on another bus that brought me to Managua. From Managua, I caught a shuttle to the town of Chinandega, and from there got a taxi to my hotel. Chinandega´s really just a pit stop for me, since tomorrow morning I´m going to try to get to the beach and spend a night there. My hotel is nothing to write home about (although, ironically, I guess I am writing home about it right now...), but the landlady´s really nice and is letting me stay in a room with a private bathroom, even though I´m only paying for a single room.

Probably my favorite part about Chinandega is it means I´m off the "gringo trail" and back in the middle of nowhere. So far I haven´t seen another tourist here (possibly because there´s not much to see) and I´ve been called "chela" or "chelita" about 6 times. Chele/a is a word they use for white people, but when you´re in a sea of gringos, no one differentiates you that way. Nicaraguans are huge on addressing people by their physical characteristics rather than their names. It would be like calling someone "chubby" or "tan" or "blonde" to their face in English, only it´s much less offensive in Spanish. So right now, I own the chela title.