By Sarah Lemanczyk, Special to the Pioneer Press From Twin Cities

By Central American standards, Nicaragua is huge — with cowboy towns and coffee farms stretching north to the Honduran border, impenetrable jungle and occasional Spanish forts blanketing the Caribbean Sea’s Mosquito Coast and postcard-perfect surfing towns lining the Pacific shore. And surrounded by all this natural drama (19 active volcanoes alone) are two rival cities: LeÃn and Granada.

Like New York and Los Angeles, or say Minneapolis and St. Paul, these two great cities have some similarities and plenty of differences. Put another way, while all of Nicaragua echoes with the peels of ice cream bells and Catholic Mass, León is full of heady intellectualism and crumbling paint while Granada is conservative and the sidewalks are level.

Your international flight, however, will arrive in neither city. It lands in Managua. The only bit of Managua I saw was from the air — average except for the 40 foot, glowing yellow, metal “trees of life” statue inspired by a Gustav Klimt painting erected by first lady Rosario Murillo — wife of Daniel Ortega. Yes, that Daniel Ortega from the 1980s, from the Iran-Contra Affair, Oliver North and Ronald Reagan. Daniel Ortega outlasted them all.

The Revolution is over and Nicaragua is now an up-and-coming destination darling with travel publications from Conde Nast to National Geographic. If that doesn’t sell you, Nicaragua has the lowest crime rate in Central America (according to Lonely Planet) and a basic (if buggy) eco-lodge cabin in a cloud forest can be had for as low as $40 a night.

SANDINISTAS RECALLED

Life in LeÃn is hot, it’s grimy, the narrow sidewalks are crowded and everywhere there is color. Murals celebrating the Revolution adorn every corner, every wall: There are portraits of martyrs, uprisings and the stenciled outline of a cowboy hat, which is the symbol of Sandinista namesake and 1920s revolutionary Augusto Sandino. Sandino was assassinated by another familiar name from the 1980s — Samoza; in this case paterfamilias Anastasio Somoza Garcia; the decades that followed are a maze of assassinations, coups, ransoms and war.

Julio, who gave no last name and for $20 offered revolutionary tours of LeÃn, fought for the Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN in Spanish, and as he walked us through churches and down city streets and into museums he painted a picture of a popular uprising and of a united, hopeful people.

Nowhere is Julio’s battle-weary LeÃn more visible than at the Ruins of the Church of San Sebastian. Sandinista snipers would fire from bell towers, making churches frequent Contra targets. Surrounded by a high metal fence, the ruins look closed-off. But push open the creaky gate, and you can enter and walk through the shell of the church.

Today’s bustling, collegiate-oriented LeÃn is centered around the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Cathedral of LeÃn. This is your orientation place, the place you’ll buy ice cream bars under the blazing sun, the place you’ll watch teenage boys breakdance in the gazebo at dusk and home of the restaurant El Sesteo where you’ll eat dinner and fall in love with frijoles liquidos.

The cathedral is massive, the largest in Central America, and surrounded by black stone lions and housing numerous religious relics as well as the tomb of Nicaraguan hero-poet Ruben DarÃo, adorned with all the pomp and circumstance usually reserved for saints. But the true magic is finding the side door, shelling out $3 and climbing the narrow, twisting, stone staircase.

This is no bell tower view. After taking off your shoes, you’re allowed to run around the roof of the cathedral. White stone hills rise up from the wrong side of the church’s domes and the murmurs of Spanish Mass reverberate through stained glass skylights as you stand in the breeze overlooking the roofs of León and the volcanoes that rise in the background in every direction. You, too, feel like you could write poems that touch the soul and reach back through time — just like DarÃo.

OMETEPE SPECIAL

Heading south to the port town of Rivas along the western edge of Lake Nicaragua, I feel a twinge of ex-backpacker guilt when rocketing past the sweaty, plodding buses with our hired driver — but only a twinge because we pass so quickly.

Nicaragua’s roads are touted as being the best in Central America. In the open countryside, you could be driving through Iowa — except for the volcanoes, religious ox-cart processions, armed checked points and the telltale “lava evacuation routes.”

The island of Ometepe consists of two volcanoes, Maderas is smaller, extinct and cloud-forested. Concepción is a hulking, smoking conical monster that just keeps growing the nearer you get. The rivers of brown cascading down its sides become rocks and vegetation and you’re greeted with the cries of a blue jay the size of a parrot. It’s the dry season but in a cloud forest, even the dry season offers orchids.

On the island, the trees drip with white-faced capuchin monkeys and larger howlers lope through the trees looking for the last green leaves of the season. Pick-up trucks share the road with oxen, chickens, pigs and weary tourists walking rented bicycles.

The landscape is a deep yellow with black boulders that tumble into the lake. Everywhere, channels are cut deep into the soil to carry what must be torrents of water during the wet season. Women wash laundry in the lake, roadside rocks are painted Sandinista black and red and everyone has a cell phone.

Walking the island at night, the only sounds are the squeals of the pigs, the answering dogs and the easy laughter of teens following bouncing globs of flashlight over the jumble of roads. Walk on a wooden pier, between the shadow of two volcanoes, or hold up your phone and find wi-fi to power your star-finder app.

CITY FOUNDED IN 1524

Our last stop is the New World’s oldest city, Granada. Founded in 1524, it is Nicaragua’s most-tourist ready and a photographer’s dream of colonial architecture with churches of melting yellow and crumbling blue, handsome cabs, cobblestones and the beautiful Parque ColÃn — a plaza filled with tables, fountains and, briefly at dusk, the rabble of perhaps hundreds of grackles. It is backed by the neoclassical four-chapel, three nave Cathedral of Granada.

No one builds a Catholic church like Nicaragua builds a Catholic church. And it is always time for Mass, or dinner, I think. The streets leading away from the tourist drag fill with vendors with large sizzling black skillets, and children sell tomales steamed in banana leaves, 2 for 10 Cordobas or about 40 cents each.

On our final night in Nicaragua, Parque Colón was filled with the rhythm of horns and singing. A circle of locals five rows deep watched and clapped as a handful of dancer moved in the center.

I would never be here again and as I watched my eyes kept landing on a grandfather, in his Panama hat and silk shirt who had the moves. I wanted a dance. I said goodbye to Nicaragua breathless, spinning to the sound of the horn and a kiss on my cheek.

For more on this story go to: http://www.twincities.com/travel/ci_25724279/nicaragua-remains-comfortable-complex

IMAGE: www.aurorabeachfront.com