Granada, Nicaragua

  Granada, Nicaragua
Monday, February 5, 2007

There ´s somethin special about being on the road again... out on yer own, being able to go where ya want and do what ya want!

When we left Cofradia, we headed to San Pedro Dump Sula and got ourselves a bus to the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. The idea was to stay there for 2 nights and send stuff home and try and get a bit of a rest. However... the place was a kip, admittedly we did stay near the bus stations, which are in the "not so nice area of town". To put it in perspective, we went for a Chinese takeway and the door to the takeaway was protected by two guards with pump action shotguns.... "you no steel my chikin fry rye... I shoot you". Maybe that is an idea for some of the Chinese takeaways in parts of Cork.... pump action shotguns!!!!!

From Tegucigalpa, we got a 9.15am bus and travelled straight into Nicaraguas capital of Managua. There is not much to see there so we left immediately and got a expresso bus (US$1) to the tourist capital of Nicaragua, Granada.

01 The Honduras/Nicaragua Border

Granada is a nice ole colonial town. For the first time in a long time we had a bit of a problem in finding ourselves some accommodation, eventually at about 7.30pm we were successfull. The room was fine, even if it did have loads of dead bugs in the screen on the window, no ventilation in the bog and a tree growing into the room... it did the job!!

We didn´t do much in Granada really, went for walkies around the town, got a bit of hassle from Ronald the fruit seller down by the lakeside because we weren´t in the mood for a mandarin or a banana or a papaya or an orange or a mango or an apple! There was a big Poetry festival on whilst we were in the town. They had poets from all over the world reading out their poetry to the crowd that gathered next to the Parque Central. We listened to an English poet read out one of his poems in English.... it went something like...
            "Today is the pianos birthday
            He is a happy piano
            Today really is the pianos birthday
            The children play with him
            So do the adults
            It is the pianos birthday today"

It really was edge of the seat stuff (please note severe sarcasm)!! We could have done with Ronald the fruit seller then I tell ya... just to throw some rotten fruit at the goddamn piano whose birthday it was!

06 "See Mike.... I CAN imitate a lampost"

The only other thing of note was when we paid a visit to Masaya market up the road from Granada. The market was supposed to be HUGE, to be honest we´ve seen better ones and it wasn´t that BIG. However, they did have some of the wierdest souvenirs... dead animal souvenirs to be exact!!!! Yup, they had stuff like "dead crocodiles standing up holding ashtrays"  to "dead turtles playing the marimba"... sick or wha !!

In total we spent 3 days in Granada, eating delicious dinners for feck all and havin a good few beers too.

Next up... a volcanic island in the middle of a lake