The first day in San Juan del Sur! And in the library!! I can?t believe how much has changed. It doesn?t feel like so long ago that I was here, but in fact it has been a year and a half. Riccardo who drove us into San Juan Tuesday evening showed us some of the major changes. They now have a Bancentro right in the middle of town, and it sounds like a lot of people have been buying property in town. I?ll walk around the town in a little bit to check things out.
San Juan is only a 3 hour drive from Managua; so why didn?t we arrive until 24 hours after we landed? I will assure you we were not on the road the whole time! In fact Denise and I had a relaxing evening and morning before our lunch meeting with some members of ANIBIPA, the Nicaraguan equivalent of the American Library Association. Though Jane had business to take care of in Rivas, close to San Juan, early in the morning she planned return to Managua just for lunch. Since Denise knew one of the women, it didn?t make sense for Jane to come all the way back, so Denise and I met with the librarians to plan a mini-conference. Riccardo arrived to pick us up as we were closing down the restaurant and after stopping to pick up an order of shirts, we were on our way to (at last) to San Juan!
Later that day:
There are more guards around now than there were before. That is the main change I noticed in Managua since I hadn?t spent much time there. There was even a guard near one of the larger hostels downtown. I haven?t noticed if there is a connection between the places that have guards.