After 8 hours spent on buses and slowly making our way through a long hot line to cross the border, we arrived in Granada, Nicaragua. The oldest city in Nicaragua, Granada is colorful and Spanish-inspired with towering adobe colonial-style buildings and fluffy palms lining it´s laid back streets. We moved into a hostal right on the edge of the hectic Central Market. Our room was huge- big double doors at both ends, tall ceilings, and 7 full sized, if not queen sized beds. We wandered through the laid back parks, crumbling churches, and down a long lazy stretch of road to el lago de Nicaragua where we savored a rare sunset breeze. Nicaragua is smoldering hot. We have spent the last two days dripping with sweat and not surprisingly our intinerary has us moving fast through the beautiful colonial cities and to the beach as soon as possible.
Today, after cruising through the tunnels of Granada's truly eclectic market, we took a bus for the equivalent of 30 cents to Masaya. Nicaragua is also wonderfully cheap. Our hotel tonight is $4 and we're about to go get a mexican dinner for about a dollar. There are also dollar stores on every street which is pretty humorous considering how often everything here costs just about that anyway. Masaya is drastically different than it's near neighbor. We got dropped at the most third world bus station any of us has ever experienced. Between broken english help from a couple friendly students, Lauren's Spanish skills, and a map we got into a taxi and made our way to the center of the little city. We ate and wandered their markets, one of which, Mercado Viejo, is a dreamy shaded maze of hammocks, homemade knick knacks, and satisfying snacks inside fortress-looking walls. As I type there are horse drawn carts driving by the window of the internet cafe and it's wonderfully hard to ignore that we are indeed hanging out in Nicaragua. We're sublimely happy to be on the road, out of place, sometimes lost, often confused, and in control with our Lonely Planet guide by our side.
Mercado Viejo en Masaya . . .
Tommorow we throw on our neglected sneakers and hunt down our first volcanoes. Of the 20+ residing in Nicaragua, half are still active and I can't wait to get an up close peek. Parque Nacional Volcan Masaya seems to have a handful of volcanoes and craters, one of which, Crater Santiago which last erupted in the 1700's, is quite active and known through it's history as "the mouth of hell." Back in the day children and maidens were sacrificed into it's fuming cone and Nicas still find their skeletons inside the lava tunnels from time to time. Skeletons, molten lava, the mouth of hell... we'll be going to bed early. After our adventure we're heading to Isla de Ometepe- an island in el lago de Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America, formed completely by it's two side by side volcanic peaks. Hopefully by tomorrow night we'll have made our way to water and refreshment.
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