Video rentals, both VHS and DVD, are now everywhere in Nicaragua. Thanks to the Internet and loose respect for Intellectual Property rights, you can usually rent the latest DVD months before the movie makes it to the big screens of Nicaragua’s cinemas.
Movies usually rent for about $2, and opening an account at video rental stores is easy. People also often sell pirated DVDs on the street.
Shopping
Managua’s numerous shopping malls, such as the massive MetroCentro, Centro Comercial Managua and Plaza Intur, offer most consumer goods and brand names from the United States. The brand new Galerías Santo Domingo, scheduled to open in early 2005 in Managua, will be the largest mall in all of Nicaragua, will 107 stores, 33 restaurants and 10 large movie theaters.
New smaller strip malls are popping up all the time, as testament that the days of the economic embargo are now a thing of the past. La Curacao department stores offers electric domestic appliances and are found all over the country, and Managua even has a new Price Mart.
The largest malls are complete with food courts and movie theaters offering all the creature comforts of Ohio, only with fewer obese people.
Many of the products sold in malls are more expensive because of import duties, but you can find pretty much everything you need, from Radio Shack and Pizza Hut, to SpongeBob Square Pants and Play Station II.
Shopaholicas will love the new Metro Centro Mall in Managua
For other hard to find goods, or expensive electrodomestic appliances, some people take advantage of trips to Miami or Panama to bring some household items back to Nicaragua. But most of what you need you can find here.
Wooden furniture and quality handicrafts are readily available in Nicaragua. The department of Masaya is famous for its beautiful and inexpensive hardwood rocking chairs, doors and furniture. Many of the artisans will take custom orders, and are very good at reproducing furniture from a picture taken from a magazine, or off the Internet.
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