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Published: March 28th 2011
Granada was a hole in my Nica experience. A big one. It’s like going to Scotland and not visiting Edinburgh. Travelling around Italy, and missing out Venice. I’d spent the best part of two months in Nicaragua and not darkened the doors of its second city.
The weekend before I flew home to a mini-mountain of paperwork and a defunct boiler I rectified my omission.
Granada is Nicaragua scrubbed-up for the tourist or the retiring ex-pat. (And very beautifully it’s been scrubbed-up too.) That’s not necessarily a point against it; it’s just something to remember as you sit at a Parque Central café supping your ice-cold Toña while the dying rays of the afternoon sun make the Cathedral glow dazzlingly golden.
Because this Granada, the scrubbed-up version, isn’t the whole story – although it’s something of which Nicaragua is rightly proud. A local museum proclaims that “granada is nowadays the best conserved center of the country ”.
A few streets away from the well-swept Parque Central, and the well-groomed horses awaiting punters to fill their carriages, is the Other Version, the Other Granada. The one where real Granadans live and work and shop and play. The bustling
Mercado Municipal, its crowds of Saturday lunchtime shoppers bringing traffic to a standstill. Young men playing basketball at one end of a Cruz Rojo court while a trio of boys shoot hoops at the other. The weekend’s baseball games fought out on dusty pitches. A wedding party gathering for photographs outside the doors of Iglesia Guadalupe. The only-for-you focus of young love on the benches of the lakeside park. Although it’s called Centro Turistico, the vast majority of people here are local: it’s just perhaps a little scruffy, a little smelly, a little unkempt and with a few too many flies for the average well-heeled, discerning Tourist, happier in the bars and cafés of the very gringo-dominated Calle La Calzada. There you can find Hotel America, Irish Pub and a Beatles-tribute restaurant; pizzas and Tex-Mex on offer; a wide avenue with pretty lights down the middle and neat tables and chairs at the side. Cocktail, darling?
No sign in Calle La Calzada of peeling paintwork, dustily untended and un-watered parks, uneven surfaces, open drains, and uncollected – or simply dumped – rubbish (even tourist litter has to go somewhere), waiting for someone to strike a match. Rubbish collection and
disposal in Nicaragua can be pretty unsophisticated.
Yet the line between Tourist Granada and the Other Granada is gratifyingly blurred. There may be a bit of a them-and-us when it comes to eating and sleeping, but living is a different matter. While Parque Central is edged with stalls selling over-priced souvenirs and local artists’ creations, it’s Granadan old men sitting on its benches putting the world to rights, and beautiful young Granadan teenagers hanging out by the fountain. Tourists – at least of the backpacker variety – and locals alike stop for a cold drink or pay C$10 (US$0.50) for a freshly-made quesillo, a tortilla wrap filled with local soft cheese, pickled onion and cream; chilli sauce optional. On the balcony of Café Don Simon, weekending Managuans and tourists mix with the upper echelons of Granadan society, all to a greater or lesser extent people-watching and absorbing the atmosphere of the still-bustling Parque as Eskimo icecream carts gradually give way to fritangas serving up barbecued food on banana leaves with the ubiquitous gallo pinto (fried rice and beans). On the wonderfully even surface of the pavements at the top of Calle La Calzada, young Granadan skateboarders try out their
skills in the weekend dusk.
And there’s no denying that the Scrubbed-Up Granada is very pretty, with its rainbow of buildings and churches, each different from the last, though I find the churches’ interiors less dramatic than those of their León cousins. Here muted pastel shades and dressed-up mannequins prevail, rather than the north-western town’s white and gold and wood. For a dollar you can battle your vertigo to climb the tower of Iglesia La Merced and drink in the view of endless Mediterranean-like tiled roofs, pretty church towers and dramatic scenery. Like León, Granada’s skyline is dominated by volcanoes – although fewer in number – but, unlike the dustily hot León, the eastern edge of Granada is framed by water: Lago Cocibolca or Lago de Nicaragua (the former, the indigenous, name means “sweet sea”), the largest lake in Central America. At the other end of town, the Fortaleza La Polvora was technically closed for refurbishment when I visited, but the kindly janitor offered to let me in for a few minutes, pointing me in the right direction for its rooftop view up a precariously-positioned ladder, and took me over to the sheltered ruins of the fortress’s eighteenth century
ancestor. He seemed bemused but touched when I asked to take his photograph as he showed me the small resident cannon.
It’s a fitting end to my extended sojourn in Nicaragua. As I write, the birds are flocking into the trees at the corner of the Parque Central, noisily comparing notes on the day’s events, a prelude to nightfall. The moon is rising, full and dramatically bright in its unusual proximity to Earth this month. I finish my drink and amble back to my hotel for a shower before gearing up to explore Granada’s fine dining options.
And my final verdict on this funny little slice of Central America which has so inveigled itself into my affections? “¡Dacachimba!*”
¡Hasta la próxima!
* the Nica-Spanish equivalent to the American “awesome”
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Lauren
non-member comment
Love it! Great shots, great write up! Have a safe trip home--and hopefully your work will only have to keep you there for a week or so! : )