Navigating Managua

We went up to Managua on Friday to go to the dentist (I thought I’d take advantage of the $30 cost of a cleaning - versus the $100+ I’ll pay back home). I scheduled this trip for a Friday as I wanted to go to La Casa de Mejia Godoy to hear Carlos Mejia Godoy play his usual Friday night concert. The concert was great and we had a wonderful time - even spent less time than usual wandering lost about the city looking for a place we ‘know’ exists.

I think I may have mentioned before how difficult it can be to find places in Managua. This trip we were challenged to find the hotel that had been recommended, and at which we had reservations. We were told it was 2 blocks past the Spanish Embassy on the left.... it took us about 30 minutes to find it. That’s ‘good’ by our track record.

The reason that finding places in Managua is frustrating is due to it’s unique system of addresses. Here is the description given in the Lonely Planet guide....

...only Managua’s major roads are named. Large buildings, rotondas (traffic circles) and traffic lights serve as de facto points of reference, and locations are described in terms of their direction and distance, usually in cuadras (blocks) from these points. Many of these reference points no longer exist, nd thus addresses may begin with something like ‘de donde fue Sandy’s’ (from where Sandy’s used to be....)

From the reference point, a special system is used for the cardinal points, whereby ‘al lago’ (to the lake) means north, while ‘a la montaña’ (to the mountains) means south. Arriba (up) is east toward the sunrise, while abajo (down) is west and sunset. thus one might hear: ‘del antiguo Cine Dorado, una cuadra al lago y dos cuadras arriba’ (from the one Cine Dorado, one block toward the lake and two blocks up.

!!!!

This is all fine and good if you can find the initial point that the address starts with. In our case, we ‘thought’ we were at the Spanish embassy (they WERE flying the Spanish flag, after all). Turns out we were about 10 blocks away from were we needed to be... so no wonder the directions were frustrating the hell out of us. Ah well.... just part of the adventure.