Granada - rest day

Granada - rest day

Catharine joins a 9am guru walking tour that is meant to last 2.5 hours but in fact lasts 3.5 hours so a large chunk of the rest day is gone. Very interesting tour content although the guy was very political and didn’t hold back ! He was explaining how Nicaragua got its name - 2 stories - one was that it was an indigenous way of saying that the immigrants from Mexico “travelled here and decided to stay” or it was similar to the name of an ancient ruler but the Spanish changed the ending to “agua” so it sounded more Spanish. Lake Nicaragua is just on the edge of Granada - over 100 miles long - and generates a cool breeze in Granada, which is the oldest city in the Americas.
John had a wander round the city and the local market where he was pretty much the only tourist. Overall we saw very few tourists in the city.
Catharine joined the evening tour to go see the molten stuff in the local Volcano Masaya (only place in world you can look down into crater and see the stuff) . We spent an hour in the minibus, got up there and there was a huge queue of cars. Turns out that the local administration had decided it was too unsafe to view due to cloud cover and risk of falling into the volcano, so we ended up coming back to hotel. We were told we would get $10 of our $30 trip cost refunded, but the hotel man was very difficult when I returned and basically accused me of having had the refund already, then begrudgingly gave me $10. I then discovered everyone else had received a $20 refund !(which the TDA guide then sorted for me).
We had a meal at the Garden Cafe - nice spot with the typical internal courtyard garden with big plants and a water feature that kept the place cool. The ginger, mint and chia seed juice had quite some kick to it !Read more