Granada, Nicaragua

Granada. One of the former capitals of Nicaragua and also one of the oldest cities of the New World, founded in 1524 by the Spanish. It's another colonial city, situated on Lago de Nicaragua, which is huge by the way - it honestly looks like it makes up about a quarter of the country on a map. This made Granada a valuable trade centre and a rich city, especially after the Spanish realised that it was possible to access the Caribbean by a river joined to the lake. Things weren't all positive though as this meant that Granada was vulnerable and subsequently it was attacked by pirates three times in the late 1660s. Then in the 1850s it was involved in a civil war when tensions rose about potentially changing the capital city to León after independence from the Spanish. It's a city that has therefore rebuilt itself many times.

Today there are many colourful colonial streets, lined with shops, cafes, restaurants and bars, mostly set up for tourists it seems - but sometimes the streets feel empty. Just a couple of streets over and it can be a completely different story - the hustle and bustle of the local markets are chaotic. People everywhere selling food, clothes, electronics on the street, all whilst cars and buses are still trying to get through. Even a lady trying to keep a huge pig under control amongst all the madness. Then there's the streets lined with corrugated iron and concrete housing belonging to the locals. It was common to see them sitting on the streets outside their homes in wooden rocking chairs, something Granada is known for. The most popular sport in Nicaragua is actually baseball so often there are people practicing throwing and catching with a glove and of course the usual playing football on makeshift fields in the streets too. It was a somewhat striking contrast sometimes between some of the streets, especially as it felt like there were never many locals around in the city centre. It makes it hard in some ways to find a city authentic and not focussed on tourists when this is the case, but we did our best to explore the place!

The second bus from León dropped us off just near the main square which houses the spectacular Catedral de Granada. It looks as though it's been freshly painted - golden yellow and maroon with white trimming, sounds horrific but it looked stunning. It must definitely give León's cathedral a run for its money in terms of size, but unfortunately it's not possible to walk the roof of this one. The cathedral is definitely an asset to Granada's skyline though and it's a useful landmark to orientate yourself when walking around the city as it's almost always possible to see above other buildings.

Our base for three nights was GM Hostel, a wee bit out of the main centre but it was a well looked after place run by an Australian and Canadian couple. Best of all it had a swimming pool. Yes, Granada is situated on a lake but it doesn't look overly inviting for swimming and the city is strangely close but not that close, to the lakefront. We're still battling with the heat with mid 30s every day and then it doesn't really get below the late 20s even at night. It's now the norm to sweat all the time, even whilst eating dinner. It's ridiculous. It means we're not sleeping overly well either, especially considering we've had two fans on full blast that sound like spaceships that are about to take off. Definitely missing that A/C we had in León. We did have some animal pals to keep us company here though - one being a bat which got stuck in the swimming pool one night until Mike came to the rescue, then we had the resident turtles who lived in a pond in the courtyard of the hostel. The turtles provided a daily source of entertainment as they tried to escape, surprisingly strong wee critters!

One morning Cat and Rich headed to a local bar to watch Scotland get pummelled by England in Six Nations Rugby while Mike and I roamed the streets, popping into churches and a couple of art galleries along the way. That afternoon we headed out for an excursion to Las Isletas, which are 365 small islands within Lago de Nicaragua. These islands were formed when Volcán Mombacho erupted some 10,000 years ago. Some of these islands are privately owned and have houses on them, usually just one or two. There's also some huge houses here, some of which that would fit in back in New Zealand. These are owned by either expats or some of Nicaragua's richest families, including the owners of Nicaragua's local rum, Flor de Cañas. Other islands have houses which are the complete opposite, as these islands were once the poorest neighbourhoods in Granada.

Thinking that it would be a bit ambitious to kayak this area, we opted for what we thought was a two-hour boat tour of some of the islands. We organised one from the main square which included transport down to the lake. "Tour" was obviously a very loose term used in this case however, as we only toured the islands for 45 minutes at best. Then the rest of the two hours (and some) was spent on one of the islands which was entirely taken up by a restaurant. After some miscommunications with the guide as we tried to figure out why that was it, we were left for about an hour and a half, not knowing when he or the boat was coming back. It's fair to say that the four of us were pretty irritated by the time the boat returned and we got back to the mainland. Our complaints in broken Spanish fell on deaf ears as we were basically told that the original guy who sold us the tour, had clearly misinformed us as to what we would be doing. Considering we hadn't paid yet, we were hoping to bargain the price down because of this but unfortunately they weren't having a bar of it! Defeated, we had to suck it up and move on. You win some, you lose some I guess.

Back in the city, we headed to Iglesia de Merced which has a bell tower you can climb for views over Granada. Somehow we timed our visit to the top for exactly when the bells were rung by hand. Almost blew the old ear drums that one, but at least the views were nice of the city with the odd churches peeping out above the rest of the buildings.

Some respite for our earlier anger was found in the form of surprisingly good mojitos for 50cordoba (£1.40/$2.40NZD) a pop during "happy hour" which seems to last for the best part of the day along one of the main streets lined with bars and restaurants, followed by some tex mex for dinner. Eating out has been surprisingly expensive in Nicaragua compared to other countries and not always particularly great food either. We cooked a couple of our own meals in Granada to lessen the blow to the budget thanks to a semi-decent hostel kitchen.

The other adventure from Granada was to Laguna de Apoyo, another lake located just 20minutes drive from the city. We paid for a day pass to one of the hostels there which allowed use of the beach, beach chairs, kayaks and tubes. We all had a much needed lazy day, spent reading, tanning, swimming and using the kayaks. As weird as it sounds, sometimes you just need a holiday from your holiday!

Next stop is Isla Ometepe, the last for Mike and I in our short trip to Nicaragua. It's a big island down in the south of this same lake we've been at the last few days. There used to be a ferry that went directly to Ometepe from Granada but supposedly the water levels are too low at the moment for said ferry, (who knows) so we are chicken bussing further south and then catching a shorter ferry instead.

Onto the next!Read more