Rancho Tranquillo and other hippy things.

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After reading her advert cleverly placed in the toilets of our hostel in Leon, we decided to take a trip to the north west coast to visit Tina ´The Gringa´(her words definately not mine) in Rancho Tranquillo. Her advert had certainly portrayed her as somewhat of a hippy and although nervous about the whole situation the place sounded gorgeous and we decided to give it a whirl.

Well a gringa she was and a definate hippy too, she had a hostel right on the beach and in the middle of a small community that she called home. The people were extremely friendly even by the high Nicaraguan standards we had come to expect, and the location was idyllic. Initially what was supposed to be a couple of days turned into a week of doing nothing but relaxing on a deserted beach over 2 miles long and spending some serious time in hammocks. What a lovely lady Tina was, an american who had relocated to Nicaragua to start a hostel and live life to her own hippy ideals, this did mean that the whole show was a vegetarian one, much to our dismay. However as vegetarianism is not the norm around here we were excited to find out that we could eat fish and chicken any time at the home of her surrogate ´mommy and poppy´, who were so lovely and regularly entertained her guests who weren´t of the veggie persuasion, so much so that even Tina agreed they were making more money than she was.

When we had committed to staying for longer Tina herself drove us to the nearest town so we could load up on cash and return. We were glad we did as we met some wicked people here and no-one did any kind of Poi and there was definately no early morning Yoga although I imagine it could have been arranged!!

One couple we met were from the US and were in their mid 60´s but had decided to do some travelling through central america for a few months in the winter. They were absolute legends, who were loads of fun and full of interesting stories and always up for a beer and a rum. After a whole week and the realisation that we had been in Nicaragua longer than we initially planned and in fact had moved north not south, we had to leave, much to the sadness of Tina who refused to let us go.

We decided to make the long journey south to Granada in one whole day, so after 5 buses and some dead legs and cramp later we arrived in the gorgeous city of Granada. This place is nothing like the rest of the country which although lovely has the feel of a developing nation, whereas in Granada you could be excused for thinking you were in Spain or Italy.

Like so many things on this trip we have been sidelined again as our plans fluctuate and change daily, with countries being added and dropped every minute. For example ´who wants to see Costa Rica when we could go to Columbia´ etc etc etc..... We have landed on our feet again here though as we have rented an apartment for a week at not much more cost than a hostel, and we are certainly getting the most for our cash as the pictures show.

We will be here for another 5 days by which point (hopefully) we will be closer to knowing what exactly we are going to do with ourselves........ Its a hard life!

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