Nicaragua

The bus ride from San Jose, Costa Rica to Granada, Nicaragua took about 8 hours. Translated into English, Nicaragua means near water. On our second day here we went on a boat tour of Lake Nicaragua, which is a huge and full of fresh water. Interestingly, it is the only place in the world that has fresh water sharks. On the boat tour we saw some local people on the lake's islands going about their every day duties like fishing and washing clothes. These islands were formed by a huge volcanic explosion that blew about 1/3 of a mountain to bits, some of which ended up in the lake. Today these islands are forested, and some have houses on them. The lake has the look and feel of a tropical paradise. We also saw and heard some howler monkeys in the tree tops. There are plenty of birds here too. In the afternoon we got a taxi to the top of an active volcano.

From a distance, as you approach the summit, the volcano looks like a bushfire burning, with light grey smoke coming from the top of the hill. At the summit are a couple of huge, deep craters. The smoke is so thick that you can't the bottom of the craters. The smoke smells sulphury and occasionally you get to taste the sulphur in your throat. The signage warns you to park your car facing the exit, no doubt to help you get away fast, as well as to hide under your car if rocks start hailing down on you. Thankfully, there was no real action when we were here.

We stayed in Granada, which is a beautiful, historic city of about 150 000 people. Most of the buildings are pretty old and painted in contrasting colours which look really good. The streets are narrow and horses and carriages cart tourists around. It reminded us of Cartagena in Colombia.

Granada used to be one of the biggest cities in Central America, because it was once a major stop-over on a freight route through Lake Nicaragua in transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This is how freight was moved before the Panamá Canal opened. There are many American tourists here too, some of which are looking to buy properties to retire in.

We went out a few times and had our meals in a street dining restaurants. While eating you get approached by people trying to sell you stuff. We have been looking for hammocks for a while and one night we were approached by a bloke selling hammocks for about $7. He was a nice bloke so we ended buying two for $10. Later he came back and showed us his deluxe model, which was more like solid material than stringy like the ones we already had. So we reluctantly bought a third hammock. I offered to buy him a beer and he sat with us for a while. He said that he made the hammocks himself and it was his only job. Later in the night another bloke came along selling hammocks only these were much stronger looking than the stringy ones we had purchased. We ended up buying one of these as well, so that now meant we now had four hammocks. Next thing the first bloke came back and offered us one of the stronger hammocks. We told him that five hammocks would really be overdoing it but he persisted. Finally I made a deal with him to swap his deluxe model with one of the stronger stringy ones. So in the end we went came home with four hammocks, more than enough. It is so hard to say no to people sometimes.

After Granada we headed to an large island in Lake Nicaragua called Ometepe. Ometepe is big enough to support a population of 40 000 people and has two volcanoes on it, one of them is active. Even though there are so many people living there it still feels pretty rural and small, so the island is pretty big. That puts the size of the lake into some perspective.

When we arrived at the wharf where the ferries were, it appeared that we would have to wait for a few hours for the next boat, or chance taking an old wooden hulk across the lake to the island. With all our luggage and the heat it wasn't worth waiting so we got on the old boat. That was a bit of an experience. As the boat lurched through the waves water was coming inside and splashing up on our legs. Kim and Mikayla were not that impressed.

When we arrived at the island we were hounded by people wanting us to get a taxi and we kept telling them that we were OK, but one of these people persisted and kept following us and talking to us. He turned out to be a self-employed tourist operator and was really helpful. We had to use his phone to contact our accommodation that somehow had lost our booking, so our new friend recommended another place which was really good, drove us there, carried our bags and was really nice to us. I thought at first that this might have been a scam of some sort, but it turns out his only hidden agenda was that he did tours for $50 US so we took him up on it the next day. The tour itself was pretty average, visiting a pretty dodgy museum, a swimming pool built into a river and a restaurant on a beach. We drove around in his old, beaten up 4 wd over some really rough roads, but still, it was an interesting experience.

After 3 days we headed back to the 'mainland'. I went back to Granada and Kim and Mikayla went to San Juan del Sur. In Granada I managed to go on one of those horse-driven coach tours and took a few photos.

Nicaragua has had some issues with political instability, and these continue today. Possibly you might remember hearing of the Sandanistas and the Contra Rebels from news stories back in the 1980s. Even while were we here there were massive protests in Managua the capital city (we weren't there). The protests are basically the about the old communist-capitalist debate, where both sides hold very strong views. There was a civil war in Nicaragua over these issues in the 1980s and many people died defending these views. Today, other than the protests and some graffiti, there aren't any obvious signs of this conflict and Nicaragua feels like a safe place, if not, a tropical paradise.