Step 1: On the Road from Antigua to Granada
Our long and winding road to the Rio San Juan started the day we left Antigua. A “pre-shuttle bus” picked us up in the morning, transferred us to a waiting stop several blocks away where a second shuttle picked us up an hour later. Who knows why. A couple more hours, and we were waiting at a bus station in Guatemala City for Ticabus – apparently the ‘luxury’ trans-Central American bus line. After several hours of quality time in that bus station, we were on our way to El Salvador for an overnight layover. An uneventful 6-hour trip complete with a dubbed Adam Sandler movie (John loved the Dave Matthews cameo). We checked in to a small hotel at the San Salvador bus station frequented solely by Ticabus passengers (for obvious reasons), and ate Salvadorian Boston Pizza with an armed guard in the parking lot. All good.
The second day of travel started off at 4:30am with some more waiting, then boarding the same bus. At about 10am we stopped at a gas station convenience store for some breakfast. Bad decision. The bus left the gas station, cleared customs and immigration leaving El Salvador, stopped…and then turned back. Apparently the drivers had to ‘fix something’ out of sight of all the passengers…and the border. Or maybe they were loading bags of illicit cargo. Whatever. An hour later, we followed the same route back, conveniently skipped the Salvadorian immigration and passed through into Honduras. On the way we passed a road stop checkpoint complete with a dozen soldiers carrying a variety of machine guns and 4 young men handcuffed and on their knees on the side of the road. A few hours later, we left Honduras and entered Nicaragua. The bus driver dealt with all the entry/exit fees and immigration officials for the passengers, so we were each $20 poorer, and he was likely about $500 richer by skimming half off the official fees.
All was pleasant enough for a long distance bus ride until about an hour outside Managua when I (Catherine) started feeling pretty sketchy. I made it into the Managua bus station to throw up my gas station breakfast, after quickly arranging for a taxi to take us another 45 minutes to Granada. That 45 minutes turned into an hour and a half, the extra time being taken up by regular stops for me to puke on the side of the road. John continued practicing his Spanish podcast compliments during the car ride with, “Eres una buena vomitora.” Not an auspicious entry into a country, but John’s Spanish is improving.
Step 2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Granada
I recovered in Granada for a couple of days while John signed up for some more Spanish classes. My parents arrived a few days later, and we all checked into Il Padrino (The Godfather), a small guesthouse run by an Italian man, his son and their dog Spot. Granada is a colonial city that had been talked up quite a bit by all those I’d spoken to who had visited. I therefore had inflated expectations. Keeping that in mind, I would divide Granada into the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good: Our hosts at Il Padrino, Stephen and Toby, were definitely a highlight. Always with a lit cigarette, they were gracious, helpful and equipped with understated humour presumably picked up during their stay in Britain. We were welcomed with mugs of beer, assisted with rides, reservations and paperwork, and enjoyed the use of a lovely little kitchen and courtyard. One evening, Stephen loaded all 9 of his guests into the back of his pickup truck and drove us up to a lookout point over the volcanic lake, which we enjoyed with a bottle of rum. Which brings me to the second good point for Granada – and Nicaragua itself: Flor de Caña rum. Cheap, delicious, plentiful…it’s enough to get you by. Sometimes it’s the only thing to get you by.
One morning, we headed off for a boat tour of the Isletas, which are a series of small islands in Lake Nicaragua just at the edge of the city. They are all quite lush and beautiful, with many species of birds and fish (despite the somewhat high contamination level of the water). Most are uninhabited, some are home to local residents who fish the waters, a few hold swanky summer homes belonging to the elite (including the owners of Flor de Caña), and one is home to exactly 4 monkeys. Billed as “the monkey island”, it is actually a tiny piece of land to which an American veterinarian brought one white-faced monkey and two spider monkeys as an experiment. The spider monkeys had a baby, so I guess the experiment is succeeding.
Another notable highlight was visiting the DoñaElba cigar factory. The factory is in fact only one room off a family home, where a few workers hand-roll high quality cigars. Sylvio, the family head, was there when we arrived, and after a little demonstration and explanation, he had us settled in beautiful wooden rocking chairs with fresh cigars and cups full of rum, which he offered to refill any time he came by. He gave us directions out to his family farm for the next day so we could see more of the growing process. We bought as many cigars as we thought feasible to smoke in the near future.
The Bad: Granada apparently put in an application a decade ago for UNESCO World Heritage Site status. They haven’t attained it yet, and from what we saw are a substantial way off. After visiting Antigua, Granada seemed like a poor cousin – it was much dirtier, there was less infrastructure, there were piles of insistent street kids and beggars, and it felt less safe overall.
Something we found throughout Nicaragua, but particularly in Granada, was that the locals were not that friendly or helpful. Everyone was a little reticent, and a little pushier then other places we have visited. Both cars and people also seemed to move at a more impatient pace. The people who ended up being the most helpful were often those who were expats – like our Italian hosts. The government-sanctioned Singapore Smile training has definitely not made it here.
Street music is usually a welcome diversion when we’re traveling, even if it’s not of the highest quality. However, most of the street music in Granada was so bad that we were debating if it would be possible to pay them to stop. Dueling pairs of out-of-tune accordions and singers took the cake for the worst ever; well, almost.
The Ugly: The worst parts of Granada were actually just the bad parts made worse by circumstance. The general lack of information and unwillingness of people to assist was quite a barrier to trying to plan the rest of our time in Nicaragua, particularly getting to the Rio San Juan. Our potential options ranged from a flight where our bags were likely going to be left behind, to an 18-hour bus ride at 20km an hour, to a trans-border trip on a bus-bus-boat combination. The Lonely Planet was several years out of date, as were the local travel agents. We settled on a 14 hr ferry boat ride, split into two parts by a stay on Ometepe Island.
The prize for the worst music in Granada actually went to the group of kids with 5-6 drums who paraded around town with a giant paper-mache doll or two. Their entertainment consisted of drumming at an ever-increasingly volume while the giant piñatas (as John called them) spun in circles. By the end of the week he was hoping for a stick large enough to break them with.
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