Nicaragua's capital city is not on the itinerary of many travelers in Central America and gets quite poor reviews from most guidebooks. I had a few extra days in Granada, though, before my cycling tour with Explore was set to begin, so I figured I’d take a bus to Managua and check it out since it’s only an hour away. Hey, even if there’s not all that much to see in Managua, it’s worth checking out a national capital for a day.

Historically Leon and Granada were Nicaragua’s two main cities and were both founded shortly after the Spanish conquest of the region in the early 1500s . The cities became competing political forces in the 1800s after independence with Leon supporting the Liberal Party and Granada the conservative party. Managua, a town of no major significance before that time, was chosen as the national capital 1852 and has grown to be Nicaragua’s biggest city by far. I’ve seen conflicting population figures for the city that probably differ based on how widely the metropolitan region is drawn but some suggest a population over two million or around 40% of Nicaragua’s population.

Managua’s problem historically is that it was built on very seismically active land on the shore of Lake Managua and has been destroyed several times by major earthquakes. The last of those big earthquakes was in 1971 after which the center of the city was for the most part abandoned. Instead of rebuilding the center, the Somoza dictatorship decided in its latter years in power to rebuild in outlying areas where Somoza and many of his cronies owned land. Then there was the Sandinista Revolution and several years of war between the new government and the U.S. supported Contras.

Managua is described as a "shambles" and I found it to be one of the least attractive capital cities I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Nowadays it’s like a city without a defined center, and from the hilltop park at Loma de Tiscapa you can gaze out at a city that sprawls distantly to the east, west, and south at a very low density . Gertrude Stein might have said, “Managua, there’s no there there!” That makes it very different from San Salvador which has a dense urban commercial center and barrios that spread out into the hills. Even Managua’s so-called Zona Rosa is more like far flung low-density American suburbs than the wealthy urban neighborhoods that go by the same name in other Latin American capitals.

After a lot of walking from the bus stop at the university I did eventually make it to the old city center around the Plaza de la Revolution around which the city’s historical buildings are located. The city’s old cathedral has been a roped off shell for 45 years since the earthquake, a ruin that can’t even be entered. I don’t know where Nicaragua’s modern National Assembly meets, but the old building on the plaza has been restored as a national library and the National Museum of Nicaragua. There’s also a functioning national theater and the tombs of three leaders of the Sandinista Revolution, including that of Commander Carlos Fonseca, plus eternal flames .

Managua has its fair share of socialist-inspired monuments built after the Revolution, including statues of Nicaraguan workers and a weird oversized one of a guerilla fighter. Some of those make sense for the country considering that Daniel Ortega has been president again for nearly ten years, as the the monuments to national poet Ruben Dario and South American independence leader Simon Bolivar as well as the hilltop silhouette of Sandino himself. What I didn’t get, though, are the big colorful metal sculptures all around the city that seem to be trees but serve no clear purpose. They’re everywhere and they’re just not pretty.

Getting to and from Managua was simple enough on the bus from Granada, but that’s not to say it was pleasant. The buses were, of course, un-air-conditioned and the temperature was around 95*. The ride back especially was so crowded I thought they were going to make someone sit on my lap. OK, I’ve had it with local transportation in Central America. From now on it’s going to be private transportation!

So if you’re considering travel in Central America and are thinking about going to Managua, I’d recommend skipping it. You won’t be missing much.