The weather in Leon is very hot this time of year, so walking the streets proved to be tiring. We went in the direction of the cathedral, passing by other old churches and swarms of schoolchildren all dressed in uniforms. By the yellow church a child called us Gringo, a high point of our tour for Leia. The main cathedral did not open until 14:30, which left us enough time for lunch and some shopping.
We bought bandanas in a market stall for volcano boarding. Guy was very disappointed that Leia did not bother haggling over the C$25 (less than $1) bandanas. Guy also bought a pair of shorts from an actual store. That store also sold knockoff Adidas shoes and funny ties. Leia bought a top for herself too, and forbade Guy from buying cargo shorts or a bow tie.
Charging our SIM card here was a real struggle: we got a “Movistar” SIM card in Costa Rica because it’s a network that works all throughout Central America, but nobody here could charge the Costa Rican number. The official Movistar office wanted to sell us a new SIM card at four times what it was worth and offered packages only for Internet. We ended up getting a new one at a copy shop with a package for internet and 20 minutes of phone calls… but it worked only to other numbers in the same network! It felt like the telecom wild west of the ‘90s.
We had some overpriced and mediocre lunch in a fancy looking restaurant before going to the cathedral. The cathedral is big and impressive. We bought tickets to climb up to its roof. Once on the roof we were requested to take our shoes off, and got white paint flecks all over our socks. The roof is overlooking the city so you can see some other churches from there, and you can also see the volcanoes surrounding León. The buildings in the city are not high and it seems to still have its old flair.
Across from the cathedral is a “revolution museum” but it’s not really a museum as much as a work-in-progress or a living record: just a building with some portrait murals in the courtyard, and a collection of photos of heroes of the Sandinista revolution. It kind of reminded me of the “Hanoi Hilton” museum, but their propaganda had been better organized and curated. We were led through it by an enthusiastic former guerilla who pointed at relevant photos and told us - in Spanish and pantomime - the tale of the oppressive Samoza regime and the Sandinista revolution, and a little about the Contra counter-revolution. All the guides there are former guerillas, and none of them speak English. We didn’t understand much of the Spanish, but some other guests tried to translate for us and it didn’t sound like he told more of the history than we could have learned from Wikipedia - except that he was briefly jailed, tortured, and lost all his family during the revolution. After that they took us to the roof of that building too for a look at the view, which was made of corrugated sheet metal and seemed much less sturdy than the cathedral.
By the end of that “museum” tour we were out of water and getting dehydrated, so we went back to the hotel for a drink and a dip in the pool. In the evening the pool was pretty cold, so we rested in the room and went out in search of dinner. We ended up at Imbir again but the quality was not the same this time: we ordered two curries that were all right but not as good as last night, and the other half of the menu - nine pierogies of different flavors, that had good fillings but were tasteless compared to the Sri Lankan food. The staff really had trouble understanding that we didn’t want dill and green decorations all over everything, so we had to send the pierogies back for them to try again.
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