The City

For the visitor, sprawling Managua can be thankfully divided into a few distinct areas. The old ruined centre on the lakeshore is the site of the city's tourist attractions, such as they are, including the few impressive colonial-style buildings that survived the 1931 and 1972 earthquakes, like the slowly decaying old municipal cathedral and the magnificently restored Palacio Nacional . Lago de Managua , which forms such a pretty backdrop to the old centre, is severely polluted from raw sewage and regular dumpings of garbage, chemical waste, and mercury. The air doesn't seem any cleaner; winds from the lake blow dust around the city and old buses, schoolbuses and Ladas belch fumes into an increasingly crowded city.

Twelve blocks south from the old centre, most of Managua's hospedajes and restaurants are clustered in the barrio Martha Quezada , a district that was home to the international community during the Revolution. Just to the east, but visible from everywhere, is the city's main landmark, the Hotel Inter-Continental (not to be confused with the new Inter-Continental Metro Centro hotel at the Metrocentro shopping mall in the south of the city), whose white form, reminiscent of a Maya pyramid, sails above the city - it's about 1km south of the ruined old city centre, and not worth a visit in its own right, though you'll probably end up passing by it anyway as it

stands at the junction of Av Bolivar, which runs north-south from the lake to Plaza Espana, and C Julio Buitrago, a major east-west thoroughfare. Many of the city's banks, airline offices and the well-stocked La Colonia supermarket can be found a further 2km south, around Plaza Espana . To the southeast of the city, a new commercial district has grown up along the Carretera a Masaya between the Metrocentro shopping centre and the upmarket suburb of Altamira .

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