In November 2006, just before the Nicaraguan election, Andrew Anthony published How I woke up and smelt the coffee in the Guardian UK, a British journal. Since you now know how his story ends (with regard to the elections) it makes for a captivating read, the story of a political sympathizer during the revolution years who returns in 2006 to see what's new in Nicaragua. Anthony does a remarkable job not only of evoking the feeling of the 1980s when the Sandinista revolution was in full force, but in looking at Daniel Ortega in the modern era.

Anthony writes:

Not long after I returned to England, the war ended, in 1990 the Sandinistas lost an election, and Nicaragua disappeared from the headlines. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, left-wing revolutions went quickly out of fashion. Overnight the Sandinistas seemed like a fleeting anachronism, a minor historical footnote destined to be forgotten.

Nineteen days ago I returned to Nicaragua in the middle of the presidential campaign that will be decided at the polls today. I knew I had changed and the world had changed, but what had become of the volcanic little country on which a whole world of idealists and ideologues once hung their hopes?

My two entries to the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, two decades apart, made for a novelistic contrast.

He comments on the politics, the passion, and just how much Nicaragua has changed since the last time you read about it in the papers. Read the rest of this brilliant article at the Guardian.