Aventuras Nicas (Segunda Parte)

Hey everybody,

Yeah I know it's taken me over a month to finish the second part of the trip story.  I'm not going to blame it on Trump like everybody else.  Just lazy.  As a bonus for you though, dear reader, I did manage to put together some videos from the trip.  So if you have ten minutes to kill or if you like to use your tablet while you're pooping... you're welcome.  Just be thankful I didn't upload the 30 minutes of jittery motorbike riding between Playa El Coco and Playa Hermosa.  To view bigger images click the fullscreen or the watch in YouTube links on the bottom right:



Ear update:  We received an unexpected souvenir of our trip when a dead bug fell out of Dawn's ear about two weeks after we got home.  Don't worry she's fine.  Dawn... not the bug.

So where was I?  Oh yeah... Ometepe.  It's an island formed from twin volcano eruptions in Lake Nicaragua.  There are several places to take the ferry to the island and apparently the term "ferry" is used loosely in Nicaragua.  Since it was Sunday the regular ferry was not running so we had to settle for the "lancha".  If I tell you that it was one of those boats where they hand out life jackets to everyone until they run out I think you'll get the picture.  We were herded to the bottom level to a wooden bench near the engine.  For the entirety of the 90 minute boat ride there was a guy manually operating what looked like a butter churn but I think was actually a bilge pump.  At least we had a nice breeze since there were no windows on the boat.

On Ometepe we stayed at Finca del Sol, a small eco-lodge operated by a Canadian/Italian couple Sheri and Cristiano.  We had a nice little bungalow with a two-layer mosquito net (sweet) and a compostable toilet (not as sweet).  Cristiano had an impenetrable Italian accent and spoke in a constant, punctuation-less stream.  Sheri organized an all-day tour for us on our first day with Eddie, a chubby local cab driver with a sweet minivan.  We spent the first morning on a kayak tour through the Istian river on the isthmus between the two volcano islands:  Maderas and Concepcion.  Our guide Willy navigated us through the mangrove swamp that was surprisingly free of mosquitoes.  We saw lots of turtles, herons, wasps and even a few caimans.  The thing that I stood out in my mind, though, was that it smelled nice... like fruit.  After a lunch of whole fish topped with shrimp we spent an hour or so floating through the Agua de Ojo mineral spring.  Eddie then drove us to the Charco Verde reserve where I visited my first butterfly sanctuary.  I have to tell you... it was beautiful.  I could have stayed there for hours watching the colors floating around me.  It has to have some kind of therapeutic value.  From the sanctuary we walked around the reserve to where we had a view of the volcanoes in the distance over a lagoon by sunset.

The next day, our last on Ometepe, we went for a morning hike with Arles up Maderas to a lookout spot and on a tour of local petroglyphs (rock art carved by the natives of the island).  We walked through a banana farm and saw a plantation house from the Somoza dynasty days.  We found out Morning Glory seeds can be hallucinogenic.  We saw Arles make a trumpet out of a flower stem.  We found out that the Seiba tree makes great filling for pillows but is also known as the "makeout tree" since couples can hide away in the trunk.  We saw monkeys, goats, pigs and chickens. We found out that Arles' grandfather lost all their family land because he was an alcoholic.  I ate a goat burger that Sheri made from one of their own goats.  It was a busy morning where we tried to pack in as much as possible before leaving Ometepe.  Dawn and I took the afternoon ferry back to San Jorge and were picked up by Pedro (a taxi driver friend of Cristiano's) for the ride to San Juan Del Sur.  Pedro was an incredibly animated character that really stretched my approximately 40% comprehension of the Spanish language.  In the hour-long ride he discussed how Cristiano talks, his work, the Nicaraguan economy, tourism, motorbikes, and Trump.  At least I think it was Trump since he pronounced it "Tronk" and said we were all getting kicked out of the U.S.  Then he laughed.

San Juan Del Sur is a small surf town on the Pacific coast that's packed with expats, mostly from the U.S.  This is not necessarily a bad thing but it did give the town a more touristy vibe than anywhere else we had visited in Nicaragua.  Along the beach there are huge restaurants and bars with brightly (sometimes garishly) lit outdoor seating and waiters dressed in the uniform of whatever theme the restaurant happens to have landed on.  Farther toward the center of the small town things seem a bit more normal with small bodegas and comedors interspersed with fancy surfwear shops.  The beach in San Juan is not really that nice so it's more of a rallying point for people who want to experience the beaches up and down the southern Pacific coast.  Dawn had a pretty relaxing few days lounging around the town.  We got a massage, had a few pints at Nicaragua's first craft brewery (SJDS Cerveceria) and went ziplining along the treetops on the hills surrounding San Juan.  The operation (Da Flying Frog) is run by 8 Nicaraguans from surrounding towns and featured some fantastic views of the ocean.  We also happened to be in San Juan for the night of La Griteria which is the culmination of the 9-day festival I mentioned in my previous post.  All the streets were packed with locals wandering around, standing in lines to go into either stores or people's houses to sing religious songs for food or treats.  A large procession wound its way around town behind a float topped with an alter of the virgin Mary which ended with fireworks at the church in the town center.

On our last day in San Juan we rented a 200cc off-road bike from a couple that ran a nursery and their chubby, crazy-eyed baby.  I subjected Dawn to about 90 minutes of dirt biking up and down the coast across rocky trails, streams, and cow crossings.  We visited Playa El Coco reserve which is meant to be one of the nicest beaches in Nicaragua.  It's about 2 miles long and very secluded due to its being bookended by cliffs.  It wasn't as impressive as the guide books had made it sound and it started raining right away forcing us to abandon any plans for sunbathing.  We rode on to Playa Hermosa which is exclusively accessible from a surfer's ecolodge just south of San Juan.  The beach was much longer than El Coco and almost as nice.  There were hammocks and bungalows along the beach that were filled with backpacker residents talking their usual nonsense so had lunch and a beer and left.  I was fairly disappointed since this was the only day I could've tried surfing the Nicaraguan coast but all the breaks were closing out.

The next day we were again picked up by Pedro for a two-hour ride to Managua to catch our flight to the Corn Islands.  This time he was a bit less animated until we stopped at a gas station so he could get "Dragon" which is apparently some kind of energy drink.  After that he was a nonstop talking machine.  We found out that he had a lady friend who had killed someone while drunk driving and got sentenced to 10 years in jail, although 30 is the maximum.  They really throw the book at drunk drivers.  Anyhow, he went and visited her a few times in the women's prison and all he could talk about was how all the women there would throw themselves at him and try to get him to sneak off in to some closet.  Then he'd laugh and whoop hysterically.  Then he's say, "No, no really women's prison is rough and horrible.  My friend had a tough time there.  But man... those ladies really come after you.  It's hard to resist!  Woo!  Haha!  No, no... but I'm a married man.  I would never do that. But woo!  One man!  A lot of ladies!  Woo!"  Meanwhile Dawn is cracking up in the back seat.

I wish I could say that our 4 days on Little Corn Island were the highlight of our trip.  That was the intention.  Finishing the trip with a few days on a 1.6 square mile Caribbean island snorkeling and sunbathing sounded pretty fantastic.  We landed on Big Corn Island and rushed over to the dock to take the panga (small boat) for the ride to Little Corn.  They weren't sure that the pangas would be running given the waves and bad weather.  Since a boatful of Costa Ricans died when a panga overturned a year or so ago the Nicaraguan navy doesn't allow he pangas to run if the wind is over 20 knots.  The fact that hey had to consider this was the first bad sign.  So we get on the panga, are handed life jackets (of course), and for the next 45 minutes are flying across the ocean, bobbing up and down like a demented rollercoaster while trying not to heave overboard.  And this was arguably the better of our two panga rides.

We enjoyed approximately 10 minutes of sun in 4 days on Little Corn Island.  No snorkeling.  No sunbathing.  The hilltop bungalow we had booked for ocean views turned into a prison where the echoes of the constant rain banging against the tin roof made it impossible to sleep and the 15 minute walk to the village made it impossible to stay dry.  The incredibly uncomfortable bed and door that wouldn't close all the way did not help matters.  We managed to get in a few short hikes around the island between downpours but mostly were seeking shelter in cafes and bars.  We trekked to the north part of the island to the exclusive Yamaya resort in order to at least say we lounged at a beach bar.  The lonely bartender looked surprised that anyone would even show up since, as you may have guessed, we were the only patrons.  We did enjoy some great seafood and probably the best pina colada of my life.  I fulfilled my quest to swim in the ocean for a good 10 minutes and if you squinted you could sort of kind of visualize how lovely it would look on a sunny day.  That's what everyone there kept saying anyway.  "It's such a shame... it's truly a paradise!"  Dawn and I decided to make the best of it and enjoy the one feature of the island no weather could ruin:  lobster.  A lobster dish cost $8 and was enough for both of us.  We ate lobster 7 times in 3 days.

Don't get me wrong.  Little Corn does look like it would be incredibly idyllic on a normal day.  The problem is that we got stuck on this tiny island with shit weather and no escape for 4 days.  Literally no escape.  The panga boats did not run because the weather was so terrible and waves were over 2 meters.  It rained almost nonstop and it was none of that light drizzle business... we're talking sitting under a shower.  We got stuck loitering either in our shack or at one of two or three cafes and constantly running into the same people.  The island can't fit more than a few hundred people so that shouldn't have been a surprise.  There were a few tourists like us who had nowhere to go but mostly it seemed like either locals or long-term backpackers who had decided to make Little Corn their home for a few months or even years.  It was a strangely cliquey environment among these expats, most of whom were nice enough to the tourists with a nod and a wink mostly kept within their own groups.  There were a lot of inside references thrown around, sometimes more loudly than necessary, and the number of t-shirts that read "I <3 Little Corn" or "Rondon" seemed a bit excessive among this crowd.  I couldn't help but wonder if that's how I looked to people when I was living in Thailand.  I hope not.  Anyhow, of the handful of bars and restaurants in the village only a couple seemed to be owned by locals.  Bridget's is where we had the best lobster and she also made us a plate of Rondon which is a lobster and whole fish stew.  I hesitate to draw broad generalizations based on only a few days but to me it looks like Little Corn is on the verge of jumping the shark.  The backpacker expats have reached detente with the locals but will eventually dominate by erosion.  I'm not saying that's good or bad... I've visited plenty of beautiful places that are tourist-friendly to lesser or greater extents.  After all we would never have come to the island if it wasn't in the Lonely Planet.  I'm just letting you know what to expect.  I will freely admit that our perspective was skewed by the weather and lack of options.  Everyone kept telling us how beautiful and wonderful the island is and how disappointing that we couldn't see it that way.  As we were leaving the Lighthouse bungalows one of the owners was saying something to this effect and I said, "I'm sure we'll be back someday."  We both knew it was a lie but it's one of those things that you just silently acknowledge with a smile, say your goodbyes and move on.

Luckily there was a break in the weather on the day of our flight back to Managua.  The downside was that the panga for Big Corn Island left at 6AM and there was no shortage of stir-crazy tourists wanting to get off the island.  We arrived at 5:30 and the line was already 20+ deep.  By the time we started to board there was a mob of people on the pier including a not-too-happy few who weren't allowed on due to the 40 person limit.  Dawn squeezed into the very back row while I was stuffed one row in front of her on the very edge of the boat.  On the way to the island our boat was only half full so the front half stuck out of the water but now we were fully packed so we rode flat.  What this means apparently is that the sea spray generated from the front of the boat does not go to the side of the boat... it goes over the top of the boat.  About 5 minutes in when we picked up full speed this realization hit the 40 people aboard the panga.  A salty shower of seawater rained down on all the passengers and there was a mad scramble to unroll a plastic tarp from the front of the panga.  I grabbed on to my end, yanked back and realized that the tarp was only long enough to reach over my row.  Uh oh.  I pulled some more but there were 30 other people holding the tarp in place in the other directly.  I looked behind me and saw the look of resignation on Dawn's face as she slowly pulled the jacket completely over her head.  As we rode along for the next 40 minutes I would occasionally peek over my shoulder at Dawn's jacketed head being rained upon by salt water and wonder what was going on under there.  At the end of the ride she removed the jacket, shook her head and just said, "Let's find someplace to sleep."  We found a taxi to take us to a nice hotel and I managed to talk them into letting us have a room for a few hours until our flight back to Managua.  It was the best sleep we'd had in days.  The sun came out for about an hour.  We ate ceviche for lunch, roamed along the beachfront and decided that if we ever come back we're staying on Big Corn Island.  We flew back to Managua and stayed at a cheap hotel near the airport because of our early morning flight home the next day.  If you're ever looking for a sign that your vacation is over it's if you're at your hotel eating a "hamburger" made of unidentifiable meat on white bread and a cat walks by your leg crunching a mouse in its mouth.  Time to go home.

A few random observations we made during our trip:

• It seems like old school buses from the U.S. end up in Nicaragua, are painted a multitude of bright colors and then used for public transportation.
• Nicaragua is way more Catholic than I expected, although the Caribbean side is Evangelical.
• People drink a lot of soda.  We saw a ton of kids drinking one bottle after another.  Sheri from Finca del Sol told us that diabetes is a real problem in Nicaragua.
• It was surprisingly hard to find good coffee.  All the top stuff is exported and most Nicaraguans drink "presto" (instant coffee).
• The canal project is very controversial.  The Chinese want to build a canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean that would flow through Lake Nicaragua in order to bypass the U.S. monopoly of the Panama canal.  Everyone I asked about this, especially folks in the tourist industry near Lake Nicaragua, think this is a bad idea. They think mega tankers floating through the lake would destroy the environment and that the money for the project would only go to the rich and the government.

So that's it until next year's trip.  Thanks for reading.  Click the link below for the pictures.  Woo!  Haha!

https://goo.gl/photos/wahxG46LEHajTRVm9

Take 'er easy,

Dave

Aventuras Nicas (Primera Parte)

Hey everybody,

"So... Why Nicaragua?"  It's what Nicaraguans kept asking us while we traveled around the country.  They were legitimately curious as to exactly why we were there... like they were happy to see us but a little surprised.  It's not as if we were the only travelers, but Nicaragua seems to just be getting its tourism legs so people really want to know what drew you to their country.  They regarded us with a mixture of curiosity and puzzlement, like if you open a kitchen cabinet and find the one sock that you thought you'd lost a month ago.  You're happy to see that sock but you're also like... where did it come from?  How did it get in the kitchen?

Leon

My buddy Mauricio (a co-worker, native Nicaraguan and known communist) assured me multiple times that he would pick us up at the airport and give us a ride to Leon... until he called me the night before our flight to say he had to go to a party.  I can't fault the man's priorities but it did leave us scrambling for a ride.

Leon is the leftist, revolutionary center of Nicaragua that houses one of the country's main universities.  It was a good place to start easing our way into a new culture and adapting to the heat and humidity.  Dawn and I spent our first day wandering the city center, eating, drinking and napping.  Leon is gritty and busy, where tourists have to adapt to its environment and not the other way around.  The facades of all the buildings are in various states of decay except for the immaculately maintained cathedral.  The city center is packed with folks going on about their daily business to and from the central market and university students doing whatever it is that they do.  We visited the Museo Ortiz-Gurdian which is supposed to be the best contemporary art museum in Central America with works from Chagall, Miro and Dali.  To be honest, I preferred just walking around the grounds since the museum was built in two old hacienda-style buildings with beautiful central ponds, fountains and gardens.  We lingered around the town center for a while to watch some of the preparations related to the celebration of La Purisma, a 9-day festival dedicated to the virgin Mary.  There are processions every day through town that end up through the front doors of the cathedral.  Did I mention that Nicaraguans are super Catholic?  Part of the celebration also includes lighting fireworks and firecrackers in the streets at random times throughout the day and night.  More on that later.  The highlight of the first day, however, was our visit to the Museum of Myths and Legends that is housed in former political prison from the Somoza dictatorship.  This is a difficult place to describe.  There's no doubt that it's a prison from the high outer walls with guard turrets and barbed wire mesh.  Someone decided to repurpose the building, though, in order to tell the story of Nicaragua's various myths and legends using papier-mache statues in the various cells and communal areas of the prison. On top of that, they decided to depict vignettes of the daily lives of prisoners by painting them on the walls of all the rooms.  So you're in a prison surrounded by creepy statues and drawings of prisoners being tortured.  In one of the rooms they even set up a strobe light which gave it the cozy ambiance of one of the "Saw" films.

Let's be honest, though.  The real reason to visit Leon is not for any of that cultural stuff.  I have two words for you: volcano boarding.  Essentially, you hike to the top of a volcano with a plank of wood then hurl yourself down along the volcanic ash at a 45 degree angle.  That's right.  You're surfing down a freakin' volcano.  Armed with a board, gloves, goggles and a protective suit we headed to the Cerro Negro volcano in the national park a half hour outside of Leon.  Our guide was a young guy named Luis who explained that the last time Cerro Negro erupted was in 1999 showering the city of Leon with ash-filled rain that led to many collapsed roofs.  Cerro Negro is one of two active volcanoes left in Nicaragua and if you dig deep enough under the surface ash you can feel heat and see steam coming off the rock itself.  The hike up and elevation of the volcano gave us striking views of the surrounding countryside all the way to the city of Leon which made the steep incline down the side all the more intimidating.  That is why I "let" Dawn go first.  Once I saw that she was safely out of sight I got kitted up and followed suit down the mountain.  I'll be honest... it was not as scary as it looked.  The incline is steep but you never get quite enough speed to feel like you're in any danger.  Maybe it's because the "board" is more like the top of a shipping crate with a rope attached.  What you do get plenty of, however, is volcanic ash.  Everywhere.  In your shoes, stuck to your head, in your pockets, in your ears.  It's like you just walked out of a coal mine.

The first couple of days were also a bit of a challenge when it came to communication.  One of the things about speaking Italian is that you *think* you can speak Spanish even though you really can't speak Spanish.  Most of the time you're bullshitting your way through a conversation with random words that sound right but may or may not apply and somehow you manage to communicate just well enough to achieve a basic understanding.  That also describes communication between most Italians so maybe it's just something inherent to the language.  Or to Italians.  Anyhow, it's not usually a big deal unless you're ordering from a menu in Spanish and think you're getting tapas and shrimp but instead get a plate of olives, a hot bowl of soup and two warm shots of rum... the perfect combo when it's 90 degrees.

Coffee country

Getting cozy with my new  minibus friends

Everyone from the hotel staff to other travelers told us not to take the chicken bus to Matagalpa.  It's too slow, too hot and too crowded.  Take the minibus, they said.  It'll be nice and air-conditioned, they said.  You'll ride in comfort, they said.  I kind of liked the idea of riding in repurposed U.S. school buses painted like they belong in a Pride parade but for the purposes of expediency we opted for the minibus.  We arrived amidst the chaos of the Leon bus station at 9AM to try and catch the 9:30 minibus to Matagalpa.  The taxi driver drove into the station and dropped us off in an area where people were waiting in various lines under an awning next to various stalls selling merchandise and food.  He pointed to one line, said "Matagalpa" and drove off.  Dawn and I scrambled over with our stuff and stood in the line that the taxi driver had identified.  There were several Nicaraguans of various ages in line ahead of us and there were other lines to our right and left.  An older man seemed to be in charge of corralling all the minibus passengers to various destinations.  He made it over to our line and handed out slips of paper on the back of which were written numbers denoting your place in line.  We got 7 and 8 which gave us plenty of wiggle room for an 18 seat minibus.  As we stood there sweating 9:30 came and went, as did 10 o'clock.  The line was growing along with the impatience of the would-be passengers.  People kept walking up to the old man to ask what the hell was going on and he kept blowing them off as other destinations required his attention.  10:30 passed by.  At this point there were at least 25 people in line or lingering around the line sweating and waiting for the minibus.  Tensions were running high... at least based on my limited Spanish and the snappy chatter surrounding the old man.  Dawn and I were confident, though, because we had our numbered scrap of paper.  As the minibus approached at around 11 o'clock the line quickly degenerated into a swarm of people headed straight for the sliding door of the bus.  As the tallest person within half a mile I had a unique perspective on was going on around me and people were taking no prisoners.  Fat guys were elbowing old ladies for position, old ladies were using grandchildren as human shields to bully their way to the front... it was anarchy.  Dawn and I were holding up our "tickets" in vain as the old man was swarmed by a mob of scrap paper-wielding would-be passengers.  At that point I realized that this numbered scrap of paper system has some serious flaws, like the fact that scraps of paper are fairly easy to replicate.  I mean... you don't really "forge" a scrap of paper; you just have to make a scrap of paper and it ends up looking like every other scrap of paper.  The old man should really consider moving to a barcode-based system.  Anyhow, there were only a couple of seats left as we shoved our way to the front and I couldn't enter until I'd secured our bags on top of the van.  When I looked down I could see that Dawn had wedged herself into the entrance of the sliding door, bodily holding back a tide of angry Nicaraguans until I could fasten our bags.  As surprise mixed with admiration and concern I must have sort of frozen because Dawn was staring at me with a gaze whose unspoken significance could only be interpreted as "Hurry the fuck up you idiot".  We scrambled inside and grabbed the last two seats, which were not really seats but lawn chairs with the legs removed so they could straddle the aisle allowing for maximum contact with our fellow sweaty passengers.

As we headed toward Matagalpa we passed several industrial coffee farms along the main road.  They looked  more like internment camps; walled compounds with raised guard towers where workers were using rakes to spread out the coffee beans to dry out in the sun.  When we reached Matagalpa we switched from the minibus to a taxi to take us up into the mountains to Finca Esperanza Verde, the coffee farm lodge where we'd be spending the next couple of days.  It took about 45 minutes to travel five miles up a dirt road through a couple of small villages until we reached FEV.  The open-air lodge is located in the flat part of a mountain valley surrounded by tree-covered hills.  Our cabin was a bit of a hike up from the lodge but from our balcony we had beautiful sunset views of the forested mountain landscape.  There were only a handful of other guests staying at the Finca:  Alex the German backpacker who just quit her job and decided to travel until her money ran out, John and Lizzie who were at FEV for a month on a project to catalog bird species and migrations for a museum in Tennessee, and James and his wife who were trying to negotiate the purchase of a nearby coffee farm.  There was also Jacks the dog who spent almost the entirety of our second day acting as a trail guide and an annoying three-legged cat that decided that 6AM is a good time to plant yourself on our doorstep and start meowing. We spent the next couple of days enjoying the extensive network of hiking trails around the property surrounded by sloths, howler monkeys, migrating birds, chickens, dogs, trees, coffee, waterfalls, Ewok bridges and variably-legged cats.  There was free coffee!  We had a guided tour of the coffee farm where the coffee manager showed us the entire process from composting to planting, picking, sorting, milling and drying.  FYI, bad beans float.  Everything was done by hand except for the mill that ran on water power.  Also... there was free coffee!  The food was fantastic and the vegetables were grown onsite in the organic garden.  It was dark by 7 and we were isolated enough where all you could hear were the sounds of the forest.

On our second night we were settling in for a good night's sleep, or at least as good as you can have on a lumpy mattress under a mosquito net with a three-legged cat meowing outside,  when a renegade gnat (or mosquito) decided to pierce the idyllic peacefulness of our natural surroundings.  My rest was disrupted by a series of wild flagellations punctuated by exclamations of "ohmygodtheresabuginmyear" amid a stream of curses and weird squealy sounds. The next 15-20 minutes are kind of a blur.  I watched helplessly as Dawn windmilled around the room chanting "Itsstillbuzzingitsstillbuzzingitsstillbuzzing".  I succumbed to the clutches of panic as one thought climbed to the surface:  Vacation Over.  I began to visualize the logistics of how exactly a helicopter would land in the coffee farm to airlift us out of there.  Would we get adequate help in Managua or would Dawn insist on returning to a hospital in the US?  Somewhere in the background I heard Dawn say something about bugs laying eggs in her brain but I was too preoccupied to pay attention.  Is insect attack covered by travel insurance?  What kind of claim forms would I have to fill out?  If they had to cut out part of Dawn's brain could she go on disability?  What if they had to cut off her ear?  Ewwww. Eventually the panic gave way to grave concern so we were able to consider possible solutions.  The buzzing had stopped so either Dawn's frantic head movements had shaken the bug loose or it was dead.  We decided to go for a water flush and inspection just to be safe.  Side note:  You know you've reached a new level of intimacy in your relationship when you're probing into your partner's ear using an iPhone flashlight and a pair of tweezers.  Anyhow... it was a long night.  The next morning I went to breakfast and solicited help from some of the other guests.  John said it happened to him once and he had a bug in his ear for two days before he could get it out.  James said that one of his ex-girlfriends had a grasshopper fly directly into her earhole and get stuck, which sounds like something straight out of a cartoon.  Since the buzzing was long-gone we decided to play it safe and get some isopropyl alcohol from the staff to flush out Dawn's ear again.  Crisis averted... or was it?  I guess we won't know until the egg gestation period has safely passed.

Granada
The city of Granada seems to be the traditional, colonial counterpart to Leon.  Most of its buildings (including the b&b where we stayed) are those old haciendas with a central open-air courtyard that has either a garden or a fountain or both.  Ours even had turtles.  Our first night we wandered around the city admiring the colorful facaes and the central square that was bustling with food stall.  The main cathedral probably the tallest building in the city, immaculately maintained and facing right onto the central square.  The highlight of that first night, though, was seeing an old man successfully give his wife the Heimlich at dinner.  The unfortunate combination of Purisma fireworks and mosquitoes (who happened to have an affinity for Dawn's legs and, later, her face) combined to make it yet another rough night for sleeping.

My precioussss

On our second day we took a boat tour of Las Isletas, the chain of over 360 mostly private islands that lie just outside of Granada in Lake Nicaragua.  Our guide Vladimir navigated us through the archipelago, pointing out many different species of migratory birds as well as the usual standbys of egrets, herons, vultures and crows.  The individual islands all have power lines which extend in a webbed network from the city of Granada.  A large portion of the homeowners only use the islands as vacation spots so quite a few locals are employed to simply maintain the properties.  We saw camouflaged tree bats and visited Monkey Island where Dawn got a chance to feed Panchito the spider monkey.  On the way back we saw a couple of fishermen fishing with nets and hauling in their daily catch of bass.  In the afternoon we visited the Choco Museum, a touristy setup albeit with tasty chocolate liqueurs, and we climbed to the top of Las Maderas church for 360-degree views of the city.  The most memorable activity of the day, though, was the night tour of the Masaya volcano.  I had never seen real, actual lava flow in my life but it's something that will stick with me forever.  You can only stay at the viewing station for 15 minutes until they kick you out but I could have stared at that bubble and flow for hours.  I was like Gollum... I wanted to dive in there.  Swim in it.  The raw power of the earth, man.  That shit can be overwhelming when you're face-to-face with it.

The next day was to be, sadly, the best beach day of our vacation (more on that in the next installment).  It was a mostly uneventful day trip to Laguna de Apoyo, a freshwater lagoon that happens to be in the crater of an extinct volcano.  Other than Dawn getting harassed by construction workers on our way down we had a pretty chill day laying in the sun, swimming in the crystal-clear and oddly mineral water and kayaking around the lagoon.  When we got back to Granada we wandered around the public market so we could find a lady that made vigoron, a mixture of yucca, cabbage slaw and chicharrones served in a banana leaf that's a local specialty of Granada.  We also tried quesillos which are essentially tortillas with cheese although I'm not sure exactly how they differ from quesadillas or guirilas.  There are a lot of dishes that combine some sort of cheese with a tortilla.  Dawn also made me buy a disgusting candy apple from a street vendor that was so mealy it almost disintegrated upon contact with my mouth.  I couldn't even get a stray dog to eat it (true story).

One thing I also need to mention is that the breakfasts we had in Nicaragua were fantastic.  Seriously.  You should just visit the country to have breakfast. Nica breakfast with tortillas, pinto gallo, eggs and cheese.  I mean, the food overall and especially the seafood was great... but the breakfasts.  Damn.  Too bad the coffee mostly sucked.  All the good stuff gets exported so in-country you're mostly stuck with "presto" a.k.a. instant coffee.

So here are some pics of the first half of our trip.  In case the picture link below doesn't work try this:  https://goo.gl/photos/6feCRL4UPrPweC5B6

Aventura Nicas (p.1) photos

In the next installment:  Isla de Ometepe, San Juan del Sur, and the Corn Islands.

Take 'er easy,
Dave