Advertisement
When we arrived in the capital of Nicaragua from El Salvador we decided to head straight for the city of Granada for a few days. We both felt that we needed a couple of days in the same place and it also meant that we could do all the boring things like laundry etc. Granada is another colonial city and was very pretty. On our first full day there we explored the city, climbed up the bell tower of one of the churches for views of the volcano from the city (it was so lovely and cool compared to the humidity on the ground that we managed to stay up there for about 20 minutes) and generally just relaxed in the city.
The next day we headed to Masaya which is supposed to have the best artisan market in Nicaragua. Of course first we had to get there, the buses themselves are an experience in Nicaragua as it is not set up for tourists in any way, so just getting the right bus is a feat in its self. The bus stations are crowded full of buses with the conductors hanging out of the door shouting the name of the
place that they are heading to over and over as loud as they can. At the same time the taxi drivers crowd around you and try to take your bags so they can put them in their taxi therefore getting your custom.
We made it to Masaya and headed to what we thought was the artisans market but turned out to be the municipal market which was grim. A lot of half dead chickens, rotting fruit, meat that had been out for too long, stray mangy dogs and stifling heat made for a most disgusting smelling market I have ever been in. We were actually wretching as we were walking though so we made a quick exit and asked for directions to the artisans market. We got 3 different sets of directions from 3 different people and finally made it there. The artisans market was under cover with a small section at the end where the traders were making some of the products that they sold on the stalls. The market was good but have a lot of tourist tat so we bought hammocks wandered around a bit then headed back to Granada.
From Granada we headed to
the Corn islands where we were going to stay for 5 days of sunbathing and relaxing. The Corn Islands are on the carribean coast of Nicaragua and to get there you have to get a bus from Managua to El Rama, a Panga (small boat) from El Rama to Bluefields and then a ferry from Bluefields to Big Corn Island. This totalled 2 days travelling with an overnight stay in El Rama which is basically a truckers town in the middle of nowehere. We arrived there late so went to one of the food stalls to get something to eat. While we were there one of the guys started talking to us about his brothers who live in America and how he liked Man Utd etc. We must have looked suitably interested because he ended up paying for our dinner then offering to take us down to the dock so we could get our tickets for the morning. Then we realised that the dock was down a pitch black alley...err no thanks!! So atfer he had spent 20 minutes on the phone to someone we thanked him for dinner and hot footed it back to our hostel.
The Corn
Big Corn
This was the view from our cabin Islands are beautiful and to many the perfect carribean islands. The place that we stayed in was right on the beach in a quiet area. It was run by a scary big black guy who barked orders at people but seemed to take a shine to us. On our last day we heard him banging around outside so being nosey as we are we went to see what he was doing. It turned out he was hacking coconuts down from a tree with a big machete. When he saw us watching he got one down for each of us, cutting off the top with his machete so that we could drink the milk inside. This pretty much made our trip to the island worth while (we are easily pleased) and we spent a happy half an hour slurping coconut milk and spilling it all down ourselves.
Aside from our scarey coconut collecting cabin owner, the people on the islands were very friendly and always had a wave for us no matter how many times we had already walked past them that day. There were a couple of different places to eat but by far our favourate was Seva's, just
a taxi ride to the other side of the island was a small restaurant right on the beach serving fresh cocobread. This won our custom for three consecutive evenings.
The island grows quite a lot of produce itself and a lot of the restaurants claim to use island ingredients in the main with as few imported ingredients as possible. They also use fresh products as much as possible. This was demonstrated one day when Laura took a stroll to the shop and noticed a random cow tied to a tree that hadn't been there the previous day. She didn´t really think anything of it until early the following day when the cows head was outside one of the the little shacks which act as shops on the island... that night beef was on the menu.
On our second full day on Corn Island we decided that we would head over to Little Corn to Explore and soak up a little more sunshine. The 20 minute boat ride was by far the most amusing boat ride that we had taken up to this point, it was a small boat with a nippy engine, unfortunately the water was a bit
rough so the driver was in his element hitting the waves at force and causing as much spray onto his unsuspecting passengers as possible. We arrived at Little Corn a little damp and took the only pathway which runs around the island. The only means of transport on the island is bicycle or wheelbarrow. Once we had walked to the other side of the island we walked back, realised there wasn't very much to do so took a different path which ended at the baseball field. Sadly we weren't very impressed by the sites of the island (although we later found out that we had missed a lighthouse on this pathway from where we could have seen the whole island)so we sat in the sun for a while and then took a boat back to Big Corn.
Having started our tans and burned a little it was time to head back to the mainland and continue with our travels. In order to save time and having to stop in El Rama overnight we got the ferry at midnight on Sunday back to Bluefields. We got to the ferry at about 11pm and it was already pretty full. There was no space inside so we claimed some space on the deck and tried to settle down. Unfortunately laying on the deck made Laura feel seasick so she didn´t get any sleep even at the start of the journey and about 2 hours into our 6 hour ferry ride, a tropical storm hit. We spent the next 4 hours drenched and huddled under a tarpauline with about 10 other people and a young guy making eyes at Kirstine, while the boat pitched back and forth in the thunder and lightening. As dawn broke we rather soggily made it into Bluefields and caught the 2 hour panga (like a large motorised canoe) to El Rama. Again it was raining so we spent the next 2 hours huddled under a tarp wet and tired. On the positive side, it was so windy that the tarp completely pounded our backs... free massage! Completely drenched we then got a 5 hour bus to Managua before finding a hostel and discovering that pretty much everything in our backpacks was as wet and soggy as us, we then spent the evening trying to dry everything.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.114s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0465s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb