Granada

Anna chose our breakfast: choco pots - as in the ones with little stick biscuits you dip in choc spread. Yummy but hardly nutritious!

We got the 9:30am bus to Moyogalpa (27C, 1.5 hrs), jumped in the waiting boat (35C, 1 hr, not so hot this time) and got a taxi to Rivas ($3, 10 mins). A bus soon turned up so we clambered on to get a seat but it wasn't leaving for an hour. Luckily it wasn't too hot and we wiled away the time taking advantage of the hawker's wares...2 bottles of pop to hug to keep us cool, some popcorn and some peanut bars, all for under a quid. We reached Granada at 3:30pm (1.5 hrs, 31C). The bus stopped in a muddy area, which didn't even look like a terminal but this was the end of the line - I was expecting Granada to be a bit grander! We couldn't work out our map so got a taxi for 20C for the short ride to Hostel Aryan ($30), which is essentially someone's house with rooms rented out.

We went out to explore in the remaining daylight. Granada is a beautiful, old colonial town but much less shiny and developed than others like Cartagena. We saw a few churches and the central square and then had an earlyish dinner at Pita Pita, with seats around a central courtyard with a fountain and plants. We both had the falafel plate which came with tons of salad and pitas and was amazing. Plus we had mojitos which were rubbish (700C).

We continued exploring and found a street full of al fresco dining. It being low season, there were no diners so they all wanted a piece of us. We went into a shop where we tried some chocolate (very earthy, crumbly and rich, not at all like Cadbury's) and some flavoured rums - chocolate mint was my favourite, the chili one nearly blew my brains out!

Next door, we started chatting to a Floridian couple, Mike & Melissa, who randomly came and started running a bar here: Kayuno. She was his fourth wife so she'd made him get a tattoo on his ring finger rather than a normal ring. Their chef, Steven, cooks mainly veggie food and came out with samples of food for us to try. It started to chuck it down so we went inside for a drink. Anna had Toña beer served chilled in a frosted glass so it froze as it was poured. I had coconut water in a can which was surprisingly good. Mike also gave us free samples of 12 & 18 year old Flor de Cana (local rum), Bacardi 151, a 75% rum which tasted like petrol, and Surfers on Acid (Malibu, Jaegermeister and pineapple juice). His crazy drunk friend told us he was a gold prospector and he'd found a boat from Atlantis! The rain tipped it down for a few hours turning the street into a river. Eventually it eased up a little so we trudged home in the wet. A lovely impromptu soiree.Read more