Hi there

Wot a day... Travel is about experiencing diffrent cultures. Yep. Done that today. Don't know wot Kate wrote, but here's my version...
I've always had probs understanding that religion thing, especially the Catholics, but tonite made everything even weirderer... It was all about Mary, or Maria, the Spanish version/virgin. That's the easy part. And about the poor girls concepcion. Apparently it's all about sex. Or the lack of it. Immaculate. Hmmm. Probably IVF. I didn't know they had that back then. I'll have to google that. So they blow up big fire crackers all day long in Maria's honour- not quite sure how that relates, but it REALLY pissed Kate off! I suggested that it's about her concepcion coming with a Big Bang or sth, and that the Americans made a tv series about it? Not sure, but then it got even weirder.
Big stage, rite in front of our place, next to the beach, massive sound system, and we're like, oh cool, party, and more and more people showing up, just after sunset, and an oompah band, Nicaraguan version, more like a marching band, and they were then constantly trying - unsuccessfully - to compete with the sound system...
Great PA, massive mixer, all the mod cons, and, for reasons that completely elude me, they hired the worst ever DJ in the history of mankind. He only played ONE song, again and again, turning it down a bit to give some speech about Maria and her concepcion, then turning it up again and again and again, no eggsaturation, twenty, thirty times, interrupted by the oompah marching band, who, to their credit, played sth totally different, with a diffrent tact, and occasionally changed their song, and by the constant bangs and explosions celebrating Maria's lack of sex.
To make it worse, the DJ, with unerring accuracy, managed to get to the stage the worst ever singers in the universe (I mean, I don't sing, and there's a reason for this, but give me three bottles of tequila and rip my tongue out and strangle me at the same time, and I would sound MUCH better than those unfortunate girls, who, after massacring that poor mic for ten seconds always ended SCREEMING 'la concepcion de Maria') and as soon as they finished this, he turned his favourite, and only, song back up, and I mean REALLY up....
After suffering this cultural escapade for hours and hours (OK, probably only half an hour) we went outside, where there was a million people queuing up for reasons unknown, and when we came back out again, the place looked completely thrashed, rubbish everywhere, plastic bags n stuff, lots of the women looked totally stoned, with this weird smile in their face, and the DJ turned his song back on, again, and big bangs everywhere, and then all of a sudden, everyone just left. ...
WOW. Then we went and had some Pina Coladas, and that is that...
Greetings from Nicaragua. Hasi.