Third Country in a Week

  Granada, Granada, Nicaragua
Saturday, April 26, 2008

We got a private van to take us to Granada today, which is much preferred to the public buses. Our last bus wasn´t even one of the infamous central American chicken buses, but it is still nowhere near as comfortable as a private van just for our group. It also shortened the journey greatly.

Had dinner last night at a South American BBQ style place. Pretty cheap, but rather skimpy on the presentation. They slap down whatever meat combo you choose with a heap of fried beans and half a plantain. Everyone´s plate was a uniform ugly brown color.

Granada, by contrast, is a very colorful city with brightly painted buildings and a nice public square.

Colorful Granada Architecture

I´ll take a brief walk around this afternoon before meeting our group back at 6 to hear about the available activities and then go to dinner.

Sunday update--

Had a wonderful day today. We went to the travel agency last night before dinner to plan out activities for the day. Eight of us went for the full day experience, from 9 am to 8 pm. The other five did just the evening activities.

In the morning, we went to a famous pottery town, where I was actually persuaded to buy two items. For a total of $10, I couldn´t really resist. Toting them around for the next couple weeks will be a pain. Hope they make it back home intact.

After a few hours of shopping, swimming in the Masaya lagoon,

View of the Lagoon

lunch, and a tour of the fortress, the evening was the real highlight of the day. We went to the Masaya volcano around 5 pm. You can smell the sulphur and see the smoke rising from the craters. Left aligned photo tag:

Volcano

Afterward, we toured a bat cave, which was incredible. The flash in my camera is amazing. We had to use flashlights to navigate through the nearly pitch black cave, but my photos came out clear as day.

Bats

The coolest sight (which I got a picture of!) was a boa constrictor hanging down from a rock, swallowing a bat, with a few of his speciesmates flying around bemoaning his fate, while simultaneously thanking their good fortunes at having avoided it themselves (or maybe just trying to avoid flying into each other--it´s tough to tell what bats are thinking). The great photo:

Snake

We closed with a view of an active magma field before returning to Granada at 8.

I have nothing planned yet for tomorrow, but I´ll probably take a city tour at least for a couple hours.

And, as final good news, my sunburn is feeling much better, as it cracks, peels, and blisters its way off my body. Not a pretty sight, but a wonderful feeling.