Sorry about leaving so suddenly in the middle of my last post. Mike and Shane were prodding me about going to find food before it got too late.
So we ate breakfast at the place owned by the old stoner man, then took the ferry back to the mainland. We got to sit in airconditiong (it was a great pleasure, the first time I haven´t been burning hot, let alone cold) in the past 10 days. We drove over to Granada, checked into a hostel, and went out to explore the town.
The town is beautiful! Very colonial, it´s like being on the Mediterranean in Italy or Greece. All the houses are decorated with bright colors, and it´s great architecture. Plus, a lot cheaper! We walked around town, stopped into a few cathedrals, then came back and made dinner. Before making dinner we of course had to buy it, which led us to our next great adventure--getting to the supermarket.
Pretty much any time we´ve asked directions here in Nicaragua, you get the same answer "directo." People are always saying something is just straight down one way, which becomes a problem when you run into a dead end (as we have done upon following directions) or if you run into dozens of roundabouts and forks in the road (as we have also experienced)! We eventually bought food, but got lost on our way back to the hostel, ending up on the other side of town!
Once we had actually made food, we had a few drinks and headed downtown. There, we each had a drink at O´Sheas, an Irish pub owned by a guy from Dublin. Shane and Mike found it hilarious that there was another ginger, so they took pictures.
Today we woke up early so that the boys could go to the much-anticipated Kathy´s Waffle House, and then we went to Laguna de Apoyo, the lowest point in CEntral America (supposedly). We swam in clear water, kayaked, hung out on the lagoon, and generally relaxed. Shane then left us to continue on his Latin American journey, so Mike and I are now on our own. We figured out some more stuff about what we plan to do over the 2 weeks of our remaining time here (we are heading down to Monteverde, Costa Rica tomorrow), and then sat out to wait for the bus to take us back to our hostel, where I discovered that I was sunburnt AGAIN, though this time on my legs, despite having put on SPF 50 more than once.
A friendly guy who had also been at the hostel offered us a ride in his 1955 Jeep that stalled every 5 minutes: he was taking around a friend from CA and his entire family, so we got to talk to some Americans. They dropped us off on the highway, where we took our first chicken bus!
Chicken buses are the public transportation for Nicos. They are old American school buses that honk every few minutes, and basically drive between a few towns stopping along the side of the road to pick people up. They are very brightly decorated and drive at dangerous speeds, reminding me of a very large taxi from South Africa.
Mike and I have just made dinner, him cowering as bats flew over our heads. Mike has found a great fear of bats, ducking every few seconds as they swoop over our heads. As he explains, they have rabies and will attack us. We found our first encounter with bats on the island as we ate dinner, at which point Mike and Shane refused to take their heads out of where they had hidden them in their shirts until they ran back to the room. I find it hilarious to see 2 grown men cowering and shaking with fear, though I suppose it is with (some) reason.
We plan to get up early to ride the chicken buses down to the next country, so hopefully we will have more stories to tell! Hope everything is well back home!
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