View from a bus window

We spend a lot of our time riding buses (and taxis) in Managua. Some days we carry books to pass the time, but sometimes we put the books down to take in the daily bustle of Nicaragua's largest city. Here are some things we see:

- small, green parrots for sale, offered to you on small sticks

- iguanas for sale (to make into soup), usually held up by their tales

- bags of green mango slices, usually sold with salt and chili sauce (chile sauce always poured from old soda bottles)

- clown jugglers who toss a few balls or bowling pins at stop lights and then pass their hats to waiting cars

- old school buses from places like Harrisburg, PA, Mojave, CA, or Albuquerque, NM

- new Russian buses that were recently "donated" to the Nicaraguan government and then "sold" to the Managua bus cooperatives

- countless pickup games of baseball and soccer

- scrawny horses pulling carts laden with tree trimmings, empty plastic bottles, or discarded metal appliances

- a horse cart with a Washington State license plate (pretty sure the horse and cart had never been to Washington)

- pickup trucks whose beds are so full of avacados, oranges, or green plantains that the bumpers are practically dragging on the ground

- flatbed trucks carrying huge canvas sacks filled with plastic bottles that lean precariously to one side

- families of five or six traveling together on one motorcycle

- a woman breastfeeding on the back of a motorcycle

- a man on a motorcycle answering his cellphone and removing his helmet at the same time (see previous post)

- signs for Coca Cola, Pepsi, and a Nicaraguan soda called Kola Shaler

- pink and yellow billboards announcing government programs or displaying huge photos of President Daniel Ortega

-signs insisting "6 squares of toilet paper are enough"

-volcanoes rising up out of Lake Managua