If Central America was a family, what member would Nicaragua be?

And more or less, it kind of goes like this:

Costa Rica: Oh jolly good show, Panama old chap.

Panama: Hmm. Yes indeed. It is of utmost excellence.

Guatemala & Honduras: AY YAY YEAH WOOOOOO!!!

El Salvador: All these fakes motherf*ckers sh*ts...

Nicaragua: ********

A little exaggerated but ehh, come on it's kind of true.

Everybody, I'm your host Barbs, and we are back in Central America.

Now in the words of Nicaraguan Geograpeep Luis,

"I love my country, but I kind of have to admit.

It's kind of like the "New Jersey of Central America".

Like everyone knows that a Nicaraguan can cuss you out...

But once you befriend them, you are part of a tight loving family...

a family that cusses each other out."

Hey! Honest uptight confrontation beats false delusional sense of complacency any day.

We're getting ahead of ourselves though.

Let's talk about the technical stuff first.

Here's the mappy, segment... thing, we do it in every episode.

You know what I'm talking about.

[♪ Political Geography ♪]

Nicaragua, named after the Nicarao tribe and

Agua, the Spanish word for water referring to the two major lakes found within this country.

First of all, the country is located in Central America, a bicoastal nation with coasts on both the Pacific and Caribbean Sea.

They are located just below Honduras and above Costa Rica

and with Costa Rica,

they really did not want them to get even the slightest touch of Lake Nicaragua,

at its narrowest point,the corridor is less than 2 miles wide from the border.

And not only that but it gets even weirder with Costa Rica along the border with the Caribbean.

They take some strange twists, cut through a peninsula, claimed the entire Portillos Lagoon completely enclaved by Costa Rica.

Anyway, the country is divided into 15 departments, 2 autonomous regions

with the capital and largest city Managua, located right under Lake Managua or Xolotlan

and it contains the country's largest airport, Managua's Augusto Cesar Sandino International.

The second and third largest cities are León and Masaya.

The majority of the country at about 89% lives along the southwestern portion of the country.

Here, most major roads and avenues of transport lie.

Otherwise, only one main highway, number 5 connects to the Eastern Caribbean coast and it ends in Puerto Cabezas.

And in the southwest, the Port of Corinto is the largest seaport that handles most shipments.

Most of Nicaragua's west side has an uninterrupted coast, whereas the east side has all the main offshore islands.

The largest ones being the Cayos Miskitos Biological Rreserve and the Corn Islands.

See these guys that are nicely close to Nicaragua?

Nope, they belong to Colombia for some reason.

Otherwise, the country has a few territorial disputes:

You have the Bajo Nuevo and Seranilla Banks, Jamaica and the US.

And back to the border with Costa Rica,

This entire island called Isla Calero is disputed and it has a crazy story behind it.

Look it up.

Interestingly enough though, like Costa Rica, Nicaragua address system is ridiculously confusing.

They don't have street names or postal codes.

So in order to find a place or send mail,

they go by direction and distance from landmarks.

And half of the time the landmarks don't even exist anymore

so they have to write "where the landmark used to be". It's like:

Hey, I want to write you a letter. What's your address?

Oh, it's simple

you know just write down the west barrio of the city of Managua the third floor unit in the light blue apartment three and a

half blocks down from the statue of the soldier with the hat by the lake

but not the soldier with the hat and the gun there's a lemon tree across from us with an old lady that sells lemonade with

the lemons that she stole from the lemon tree

but not the old lady selling lemonade and condoms like ten varas away from her just the left. What's a vara?

Oh, it's ~84 centimeters. Roughly. Yeah, it's a unit of measurement. We use here in Nicaragua as well

Okay, maybe not that extreme

But yeah, it might be hard for non locals to know exactly where things are when they arrive. Let's see

What else do we have? The country used to have a rail network, but it was kind of suspended in 2001

Ah, there was a point in time when multiple countries like the USA and China were like hey

Let's try to do the same thing Panem

I did and build the second canal from coast to coast but then Nicaragua was like no, it's gonna destroy too much

rainforests and everyone hates that idea

Anyway, if you decide to visit some places of interest might include the National Museum

The lay owned ruins and lyon cathedral the beautiful historic city of granada. The messiah crafts market the cliff carvings of LT

Say the revolution museum so many cigar factories that offer tours soffit era island monoliths

apoyo lagoon matagalpa

chocolate factory and tour this cool chocolate spa where you can get a chocolate massage a casita volcano memorial the San Jacinto mud pools

still communities a chaos mosquitoes beautiful city of Esteli and its waterfalls and one of the top attractions you can actually

sandboard down cerro negro the youngest volcano in Central America and that

The thing if there's one iconic symbol that summarizes the power of Nicaragua it would be the volcano and there's quite a few of them

That we can talk about in this next section

Central America is known for many things the vibrant traditions the confusing politics

And of course the landscape the country may have some tent stuff going on and we won't gloss over it

But for now, let's just kind of enjoy the natural view

first of all

The country is located on the eastern part of the Ring of Fire right at the convergence of the North American plate and the Cocos

Plate were the middle American trench off the coast lies

This is essentially what gives Nicaragua its

volcanic belt about 19 of which are active mostly dotting the coast on the southwest side the largest one being San

Cristobal just a skip away you find the largest lakes Lake Managua or Lake Chelan and a big one Lake Nicaragua or

Casablanca it is the largest lake not only in Nicaragua

but all of Central America volcanoes dot each one of these lakes you have Appa Yakka and Momo Tom

Beaufort Managua and the most famous landmark almost a pea island made of two volcanoes

Concepción and maderas in the middle of Lake Nicaragua all of which are active to some degree

The weird thing is even though the lake is less than 10 miles from the coast

It actually drains into the Caribbean via the San Juan River that creates part of the border with Costa Rica

Nonetheless the Cocos River up north on the border with Honduras is the longest river of the country

However, the Rio Grande de matagalpa is the longest completely within the country

The country is divided into three physical regions the Pacific lowland where the volcanic cool stuff is in the north central highlands where the tallest

Peak Mobile tone lies and the Caribbean lowlands which are made up of primarily dense rainforest on the Caribbean coast

You have swampy wetlands that receive the most rainfall out of anywhere else in the country at over 250 inches

There's so much more we could talk about like how the masaya volcano has a constant bubbling lava pit

So motel Canyon is cool Lake Managua has a bit of a pollution problem

But we'll save some of that for fan Friday in the meantime

This is the part where I take a triple shot of espresso and Noah fills in

The things you see on youtube and nicaragua's land is lush and rich

But the sad reality is these resources don't exactly quite reflect the fragile state of their economic output

They ranked as the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti in terms of nominal GDP and GDP per capita around

40% of people live off less than a dollar a day and about 15% of GDP is

Subsisted by remittance money and sent from family member abroad they are currently members of the IMF's heavily indebted poor countries

Initiative that assists an international relief this is due to a number of factors

We will discuss later but essentially nicaragua's economy is kind of like this. Oh, we're doing great. We're doing great. Okay

Well, that wasn't too bad. Hey, we're doing great again

Okay, well stuff like that happens all the time. Nothing could possibly go wrong this time

Hey, by the way, uh, this is uh, Duncan from curly kid life follow him and Instagram. Say hi. Oh, yeah

They're also the nation with the lowest percentage of electricity generation in Central America

Many private home was a pen on oil for generators

Which also led to an energy crisis in?

2006 interestingly enough the energy they do produce in the private sector is pretty clean

The world Energy Council was recently ranked Nicaragua as the country with the highest

geothermal energy

potential as over ten percent of their energy has already generated through heat from the volcanoes with potential for more wildlife is abundant here of

Course you have hundreds of different mammals such as primates bats felines like the Jaguar hundreds of different birds

Including the national bird the turquoise brown motmot. Otherwise, it's time to end this segment

Like we always do food. Some dishes might include things like Matunga kco Indio Viejo

Rondon tanto con. Yoga. Naka Tom Oh Ajo. Supa de mon

Dango, you know leo drink and almost all you mentioned bigger owned and Gayo pinto classic dishes

alright so that does it for the land now, there's just one piece left missing to this puzzle the people

Thank you know follow him on instagram you got it

Now we've discussed some of the nicknames of other previous Central American states. Costa. Ricans are Tico's Salvadorans are guanacos

Guatemalans are chopped beans Hondurans our cutthroat Jose and the cog wins our penal arrows

Yeah, and Nicaraguans love being Nicaraguan. In fact, they have a saying so I pour open Alero Nicaraguan

Say por Gracia de dios, or I am totally penal arrow Nicaraguan by the grace of God

first of all

The country has about 6.2 million people today and due to diaspora about one out of every six

Nicaraguans in the world lives either in the USA or Costa Rica the country is primarily made up of mestizos at around 69 percent

whereas the white population

Mostly with Spanish heritage makes of about 17 percent the black community makes about 9 percent and the remainder are mostly made up of various

Indigenous Amerind groups they use the Cordoba as their currency

They use the American type a plug outlet and they drive on the right side of the road now

You've probably gathered from the graph that

Nicaragua is pretty diverse much of it is due to their history of colonization and various powers getting

Involved everything from Christopher Columbus to French pirates to this crazy American dude for one

Nicaragua has the largest community of people of African descent in Central America most of whom live on the East Caribbean coast

especially in the town of blue fields as

mentioned in the Honduras episode the majority were actually brought over by the British back when they had colonized what back then was called the

Mosquito Coast named after the Mosquito tribe that lived there and today the Garifuna community

Lives on today the majority of them actually speak English or English Creole as their first language and they have a similar dialect Jamaican

Otherwise, they're around 20 men indigenous communities found within Nicaragua

Most of whom are related to the larger Aztec and Maya peoples that historically inhabited the Mesoamerican subcontinent like the Rama

Mosquito and sumo tribes now, of course Spanish is the official language

however

Nicaraguans are known for having their own distinct way of talking and slang here are some of you guys the geography is explaining first of

All we do not pronounce the letter S at the end of words

for example, when we say number two in Spanish we say though instead of

Using

An example and growing up. We have a lot of slang word used Ronnie and Catina

mahi, Nightfire

so La Motta sauce maker own systems occurs a lot in all the things that they say one of their most famous ones is

Course and I guess everything that the matter is the phrase that can be heard as their battle cry for all the protests

Google, it look it up get informed about the unrest going on in you get out. Thank you

They're very passionate and despite being the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It's totally safe to travel and visit

They have the lowest homicide rate in Central America at only about 6 or 7 per 100,000 inhabitants lower than Panama and Costa Rica Nicaragua

Yeah, less than those two. And those are often seen as the good guys

The largest faith group like many other Latin countries is Roman Catholicism at about fifty eight percent

Whereas about a third are Protestant often during times of political crisis

The Catholic Church will act as mediators between parties to help alleviate tension

Religion has played a crucial role in the development of Nicaraguan culture. There's so much to discuss and here is random Hannah to explain

Did someone say Hanna?

Nicaraguans are known for having a colorful mixture of variables that make them who they are like the traditional mesta saw a

Costume that fuses Spanish and indigenous textures worn during celebrations

Nicaragua is loaded with full klore and legends. They're often called the Latin country with the most poets per capita

Some folklore stories are fun and happy others creepy and scary a lot of them contain ghosts women for some reason

Unique to Nicaragua is Elba win say it's honored on the UNESCO intangible heritage list

This performance tells legends and folklore done with masks and costumes are usually at the feast of san

Sebastian the mask also make great souvenirs

Then you have the levite area or policeman a celebration similar to Halloween

But done to honor the assumption of the Virgin Mary on the 7th of December the east coast of Nicaragua within the black community

Celebrates a maple festival every May with music and dancing the prima

Vista art style gained popularity in the 70s and today is still prevalent and finally

Nicaragua also sticks out as one of the few Latin countries that prefers to play baseball instead of soccer many