San Juan de Limay
The Nicaraguan municipality of San Juan de Limay is located in the Estelí department. It is well-known for its handcrafted sculptures made of soapstone (marmolina).
Area: 427,6 km²
Population: 17 434 (2005)
Neighborhoods:
- Barrio Los Laureles
- Barrio Hanolicap
- Barrio Las Brisas
Just a short distance from the Honduran border, San Juan de Limay is situated in northern Nicaragua, 195 kilometers north of Managua. Although the town is 281 meters above sea level, the mountains that encircle the valley in which Limay is situated reach heights of 1400 meters. Both the Queso and the Negro rivers converge to form the wide valley.
The village is isolated by the surrounding mountains and the rivers that cut through the valley, making it challenging to go from Limay to Estelí. The delicate network that links Limay to other locations is continually being destroyed by erosion, mudslides, flooding, and falling rocks, making road maintenance challenging.
The road to San Juan de Limay is a challenging one from Estelí, the capital of the department where Limay is located. The traditional yellow school buses, which are the primary mode of transportation in Nicaragua, leave the town and drive 10 kilometers to La Sirena along the Pan American Highway. At this point, the bus to Limay takes a detour into "Hermanos Cruces," where the road crosses the Estelí plateau and becomes a rutted, rocky, occasionally muddy, and occasionally impassable section. This 37-kilometer section of the trip leads to the El Pino and San Luis districts. At this high altitude, the remnants of the pine groves can be seen, together with grain fields spread out across the mountainside and the city of Estelí in the distance. The crowded vehicle is made less hot by the cool air of the northern mountains.
Crossing the plateau reveals the Limay valley at Tepiscayán's edge, where Limay carvers have been gathering the marmolina they use for their sculptures for years. In favorable conditions, the arduous rocky road from Estelí to Limay can be traversed in two to three hours. It takes roughly five hours to travel the 195 miles from Managua to Limay.
Credits: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/
More information about this destination may follow soon. Please contact us on suggestions@visitnicaragua.org to make a suggestion or to suggest verifiable corrections about this destination. You are also welcome to send your photos of this destination to suggestions@visitnicaragua.org, remember to include the name of the area where the photos was taken as well as your contact details on the email.