Granada

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August 5 – Today started like most recent days. Awake at 7:30am, breakfast, skype with Jeroen. I had to finish packing and then I got a taxi to the bus station, a direct bus to Managua and then changed over to a bus to Granada. It was one of the buses that stopped frequently to get people, yet it still only took an hour or so. I sat up front next to the driver, along with my things, as there was nowhere for the backpack to go. Tight fit, but far better than standing. When I arrived, I walked over to the two closest hostels, and picked one similar to last night, though with a tv in my room. But the wifi doesn't reach that far. You can't have it all here. It took a while for the woman to show me around and get me the key. I'm not sure if I want to stay another night here or not. The frig is tiny and the woman who lives here/runs the place is using most of it. It is another hot day. And it is gray and cloudy now. Was hoping ti would rain and cool down, but so far no luck. I went to the grocery store – always my first port of call – and was not that impressed. Bought some pasta and some kind of tomato sauce, though I'm not sure if it is really for pasta. I also bought a couple sodas. I have been chugging a fair bit of coke and 7up, despite giving it up a while ago. My body seems to crave that stuff here. Went out again to look around and took a walk to a nearby fort. Waked back to the central park area, but it was cloudy and depressing and since I thought it might rain, I came back. Bonus – there was a hummingbird sitting on a washing line and I got a picture, which was nice. So far unimpressed with Granada, but hoping to look into tours tomorrow when everything is open again.

Monday – Today was a better day – well, it became a better day. I woke up at 6:45am because my room is apparently right next door to a boys school. There was a soccer game from the sound of it. It was not great. I had some breakfast and then looked at some places to stay when I leave for Ometepe in a couple of days. Then I decided to look for another place to stay. I felt like I was intruding in this place, it was this lady's home. And then the water didn't work in my room anymore. It was weird. So I looked at a few places and found one I loved – Casa del Agua. Beautiful room, a little more expensive, but that was fine. But, it would be full tomorrow unless they got a cancellation. So I looked around at some more places but nothing compared. I came back to ask if there had been a cancellation but the Irish guy who owns the place (Gerry) was at an Irish pub, having breakfast. So I tracked him down and he made me a deal. A good price for today and Wednesday, but I'd have to leave Tuesday. I agreed. I just wanted to stay there. I spent some time talking to him and having lunch and then skyping with Jeroen. Then I decided to see if I could make the 2pm kayaking tour. There was a family of 4 from the states going, so I decided to go along with them. It was a beautiful day and it was a three hour tour (again!) around the small islands here. We had a nice time but didn't get nearly as far as we should have, because the kids each had their own kayak and couldn't figure it out for a while. Then they were tired. But I enjoyed the conversations and it was so pretty. Even I was tired by the end. I don't usually use my arms for getting around. But it was a good day. And I even got a mango directly from the tree from our guide. Dessert tonight. I got back a bit after 5pm and met Paul, a Canadian who has been living in one of the apartments attached to the guesthouse for a year or so. Amazing. Then I met Bert, a Belgian who has been living in a small beach town nearby for a year. He is on his way back to Belgium for a few months before coming back. Does no one work anymore?

I got changed out of my wet clothes – you cannot kayak dry – and then went to dinner. I brought Bert with me. I always wish someone would ask me to go when they go, so I asked him. It was nice to have company. I went back to the place from last night and got a steak with plantains, salad, and rice. With a mango juice. It was delicious. Expensive at just under 5 dollars. And, I've decided to go to Ometepe tomorrow and come back here for a few days at the end of the week. Then I can stay here for several days in a row. Yay! It should be a great end to the trip. Tomorrow a hurricane is swinging by it seems – hopefully the weather here will not be affected. Ometepe is an island in Lake Nicaragua here. It was two volcanoes on it. I do not think I will climb either one, as they are hard and muddy and I did not bring my boots. But, when I come back to Granada, I think I will do the tour of Volcano Mombacho and combine it with a zipline tour. I'm actually excited about this week now. Yay!

**Ometepe break**

August 9 – I decided to get the early boat at 7am back to Rivas, to get an early start to the day. That worked out well, and I met Vincent, a psychiatrist from Taiwan. We shared a taxi to the bus station and then got the bus to Granada together. The bus did not actually go all the way to Granada, but let us off at a turn off to the town, so we shared a tuk tuk type taxi the rest of the way. We were going to different places but agreed to meet up for dinner later. I came back to Casa del Aqua just after 10am and got a different room than last time. Too bad – loved the upstairs balcony room. But this one is nice too. I watched the Olympics for a while, ate some pasta for lunch and then skyped with Jeroen for a bit. I was watching The Wedding Date in my room before I made the pasta, and then went to watch it in the kitchen while I cooked, but there, the same movie on the same channel was in Spanish. That was unexpected. I tried to figure out why but never did. Eventually my friend Kati arrived and we went for a walk together. We walked down the main touristy street with the idea of getting a drink and chatting but ended up walking on to the lake to have a look. Afterwards we waked back and ended up with a delicious dark chocoate gelatos and ate them sitting in a nice garden. Yum.

We wanted to look into tours for tomorrow and decided we should get started. After getting some information, we decided to go on a tour tonight to Masaya volcano, which was closed only a few days ago due to some recent activity. The tour started at 4pm and it was already 3:15, so we had to rush back to our hostels and get ready. I wrote Vincent to tell him I couldn't make dinner only to find he had already written me to tell me he had also signed up for a Masaya tour tonight. Funny.

The tour picked me up at 4pm and we headed to the volcano. Aside from Kati, there was also a Canadian and a Brazilian woman on the tour, and a man and his son Josh. Very cur kid going into 5^th grade. We saw the many craters in that park, as well as the two main lakes of Nicaragua from the craters. We also walked inside of a lava tube and visited a bat cave, where bats were flying around coming out for the night. Hardly a first for me, but nice to see again. It started raining while we were there and that prevented us from trying to see the glow of the lava that we may have seen if it wasn't raining. The last stop was in Masaya town, in the market. Thursday nights they have a special dancing show, and I shopped a bit and ate a shredded beef dinner there. Very nice actually. The service was quite slow and my food came last and not without Kati asking for it again. I had decided to buy something and then went back and found the shop closed. Perhaps I will find something tomorrow. Instead of a tour, I will visit another town with Kati. Looking forward to it.As I type this, I am watching Pride and Prejudice. Love this movie. and it's in English.

Friday – This morning I woke up at 5:30am and was worried I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. I went with the eye mask and ear plugs and slept until 8:30am! First time all month. I turned on the tv and Pride and Prejudice was on again. I was excited that I could watch the ending that I didn't see last night - I went to sleep at midnight and it was still on. But this time, it was in Spanish. Huh. It was raining, so I write Kati to see what she wanted to do. We were meeting at 10:30am to go to Catarina, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go in the rain. We agreed to meet and then decide what to do. I made some scrambled eggs with garlic and washed a few pieces of clothes. It's not a proper wash but more of a rinsing the sweat out.

The rain stopped just before I left to meet Kati, which was a surprise. We went for a coffee and then decided to go to Catarina. We walked to the right bus “station” and the bus left quite quickly. It took about 45 minutes and 50 cents before we got to Catarina. The big attraction in town was the mirador – or lookout – onto the lake Apoyo. Beyond that we could see Granada and Lake Nicaragua as well as Mombacho volcano. It was quite a nice view. We went for a walk and then got a coke in a small restaurant that was showing the Olympics and playing a random assortment of music, from Vanilla Ice to Ramstein. We lingered there for a while and then decided to head back. We had to wait at the main road and hail the bus when it came by, which was easy. We stopped at the grocery store when we got back to Granada and then went to the tour office from last night and told them we would go on the ziplining tour tomorrow morning. I'm glad Kati wanted to go with me. We went to drop off our groceries and then met up again at the same restaurant I've already eaten in twice. The dinner was good – we both had the churrasco – and then we stopped at the tour office to pay for the trip. I really hope the weather holds out in the morning (it is raining now). We walked to the movie theater, bt they are only playing Batman, which I've seen. We decided to go back to our hostels and meet again for the tour in the morning. I wanted to Skype with my mom, but the internet is out here. I am finding that really annoying. Addiction. (Crap – the internet wasn't out. It was my computer being weird).

Saturday – I woke up this morning at 5:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. Got up at 6am, watched some tv, and looked for Jeroen on Skype to no avail. I made some scrambled eggs for breakfast and went outside to meet the tour bus at 9am. It didn't show up until 9:30am and in the meantime I talked to Paul, the guy in the apartment here. A local guy was saying that his son was sick, throwing up last night, and that the doctor said he needed meds that would cost $20, which he was trying to get Paul to pay for, since everyone here is poor. We explained that he probably didn't need any meds and that he should wait to see how the kid felt later. Messy.

In the tour bus Kati and I met a Dutch girl, but she was headed out on the Mombacho volcano tour. Nice girl studying Spanish here. We were dropped off at the ziplining place and it was great. There were three guides just for the two of us. We got geared up and then they gave us some instructions and off we went. I think it was 11 lines and about 300 meters, and between 15 and 40 m high. I even did two of the lines in different positions – superman and upside down (for 100 meters)!. So crazy. I really enjoyed it. I'm glad we did it. We came back to Granada and got some lunch at a local place in the central park area. A million people came over while we sat there and tried to sell us everything from nuts to ceramics. Kind of annoying. The we walked around a little bit to see some more of the city and Kati decided to shave her head. So we went to a barber shop and she did it! Amazing! Afterwards we went back to the tourist street to have a coke. We lingered there chatting for a while, and then went to have a gelato across the street. Delicious. From there we did some more walking, though it was SO hot then. The sun was brutal. It was cool in the shade where we'd had our ice cream and I hadn't realized that so late in the day the sun was still so hot. It's been cloudy for days, so I had somehow forgotten. We went to La Merced church and climbed up the tower for a view of the city which was quite nice. We also had a good view of the rain that was coming.

We had been talking about going to a nice dinner for a change, and we stopped at my place for me to pay for the last few days and ask Jerry about restaurants. He said the Irish pub was good and cheap and there was a really good steak restaurant as well. We were trying to decide where to go but realized that after the ice cream we weren't really hungry enough for an early dinner. We ended up at her hostel watching tv for a couple of hours. It started raining then but at 7pm, we decided we were hungry, so she got her raincoat and I borrowed an umbrella and off we went. We settled on the Irish pub. I have eaten local food for almost every meal and felt slightly bad about eating in an Irish pub. Until I saw the menu. I ordered a blueberry drink and nachos and it exactly hit the spot. Delicious. Kati and I decided to meet there tomorrow morning for breakfast as well. Tomorrow I head back to Managua for my flight Monday morning and she will also leave for a new destination. There is a running of the bulls here in town tomorrow, which might be cool to see, but it is later in the day and would probably get in the way of getting to Managua at a good time, so I will leave earlier. It's been quite a good time here in Granada, but I am looking forward to going home as well.

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