Grenada to Isla de Ometepe

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My first night in Grenada we met up with the GAP travel group from Leon again and got drinks at Zooms bar on the main thorough fare in Grenada. It´s a sports bar run by a Nicaraguan who was raised in New Jersey (of course) and who can actually make a repectable daquiri! The town itself is SO quaint it´s ridiculous, it was originally designed as a showpiece city by the Spanish and then burned to the ground a number of times (such as when William Walker the American, razed it after his failed attempt to conquer south america for the confederates) and has been rebuilt generally along it´s original lines. TONS of color, almost every builing in every imaginable shade, the Cathedral is bright yellow, the surrounding buildings orange, blue, purple, green, etc. The main tourist strip is a like a scene out of France, lined with little cafes selling food and drink at inflated prices. I stayed behind to finish my drink with a guide of another GAP group, Mauricio and we were eventually joined by some of the other tourists who had gotten left behind for dinner. He took us over to the Irish pub, introduced us to the owner and we got some of the best food I´ve had yet in Nicaragua. Eventually we had a very large group all joined together and we made our way to a bar for dancing, which was conveniently located right next to my hostel. It´s always a little sketchy though here, because when you go back to the hostel everything is locked up tight and you have to hope someone hears you and lets you in. Luckily the people working at this hostel had ESP and opened the gates right when I got there. I even managed to sleep deeply enough to miss the part where someone in the dorm next to us had two people on the top bunk, which proceeded to collapse onto the lower bunk, managing to miss the girl sleeping below, and who actually also managed to sleep through all the commotion.

The next morning I woke up with just enough time to find some breakfast, and I tracked down an out of the way honest to God waffle house in Nicaragua, likely the only one also. Of course I immediately ran into the same GAP kids that we had been following since Leon, but I managed to find my own table and settled down for a quick breakfast. Which of course came out 40 minutes after I placed my order and 5 minutes before I had to leave (with five other peoples orders at the same time, so mine was cold, Nicaraguan service does leave some things to be desired). I inhaled breakfast and got myself lost trying to find my way back to the hostel, obviously I had gotten cocky and mistakenly thought that because one road went straight the one next to it would as well. I changed into my riding clothes and was picked up by the owner of the Ranch, also the head of the Horseman´s Association in Nicaragua, who let me sit in blessed air conditioning the entire ride. I was introduced to all of the owners horses then mounted onto a Peruvian-English cross and followed my guide out on a two hour trail ride through the fields that lie beneath Volano Mombacho. It was gorgeous, because its the rainy season everything is extremely green, the horses were agreeable and the weather was significantly cooler out of the city and on moving horses. I was definitely ready to get off after two hours though, and again got to sit in air conditioning for another wonderful ride back to Grenada, I even came close to telling the man I would have paid just for the ride in the truck, but I managed to restrain myself.

For that afternoon I found myself a chicken bus to Laguna de Apoyo, seated next to a drunk old man that I physically pushed away from my personal space more than once, all the while praying that we would move faster than walking speed through the city as they tried to pick up more passengers. Once I got dropped off at the road to the Laguna I refused a taxi because I thought it was too expensive, more than 3 dollars! Insane! Too much! and had the impression that the laguna was really close to the road. Luckily I was quickly picked up by a taxi who had other passengers and quoted me a more reasonable price, 2 dollars I could do. Turns out it was more like 3 to 5 miles from the road and I was going to be one sad girl if that cab hadn´t picked me up. I got dropped off at the Monkey Hut which is the Bearded Monkey´s (my Grenada hostel) sister hostel by the laguna. The laguna itself is just how they desribed it, a blue crater lake, shining in the middle of this amazing green forest. The Monkey hut has a floating dock (where I spent the majority of the afternoon), inner tubes, hammocks (where I spent the rest of my time) and one of the most peaceful mountain atmospheres I´ve ever encountered. I stayed the afternoon and then caught a ride back to town at six. We got dinner at a pizzeria on the main drag (I wanted to go the Center Turistico on the lake but was outvoted, which happens) and then I pretty much immediately passed out in a hammock for most of the rest of the night, waking at 2 30 when the israelis came back to the hostel. I spent the next couple of hours on the computer, finishing the loan entrance counseling and realizing that I got a third of my paycheck exactly where it was supposed to go. That other two thirds though, the part I was counting on to finance this trip? Never made it into the account. So work got a frantic email that I followed up with a frantic phone call and a promise that it would get straightened out (hopefully soon).

The next morning I woke up, got breakfast on the central square, half a pinapple filled with a variety of fresh fruits, yummm, and then packed up and we headed for a bus to Rivas. I had asked a couple of times at the front desk when those buses ran and always gotten a different answer. This day I was told 10 30 so we left at 10, got there at 10 30 and then of course found out that the bus didn´t leave until 11 30. Apparently in Central America if you don´t know the answer you just make one up, it´s a cultural thing. So we waited in the sweltering heat for an hour on the ¨chicken bus¨and old US school bus (repainted in awesome red and white racing stripes) and then got on our way to Rivas. Arrived in Rivas and transferred immediately to a smaller bus, in between a microbus and a chicken bus in size, and got dropped off at the San Jorge ferry terminal. We had an hour and a half to kill so we got lunch, which of course meant that we were the VERY last people to get on the ferry, right as it started to rain. By the time we landed, an hour and a half later it was MONSOONING and I was the first person heading off the boat. Literally through the one woman who for some reason was standing and blocking the only walkway on the boat, which was only one person wide, and who stopped to shelter herself from the rain directly before the exit so that the rest of the people on the boat had to stand in it, NO WAY lady.

We arranged for a taxi to take us and a Danish couple across the Island to our respective hostels and spent the next hour and a half or so bouncing around on rutted stone and dirt roads, completely unable to see the two massive volcanos that make up the island, because they were completely hidden in cloud. Amazing, but true.

Eventually we got to Hacienda Merida, which is where I spent the next three nights, but I´ll pick up with that tomorrow.

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Comments

[Caroline]

"cultural things"
the lying thing must include all of central/south america, only just so you know they probably don't consider that lying, but rather "not telling the whole truth". the whole truth most likely being that a bus schedule doesn't exist at all, but they've probably SEEN the bus come at different moments within the 10:30 to 11:30 time frame - but whether or not it will come at that exact time again, or whether or not it will even come at all, is a mystery.