Granada

We decided to settle down for Christmas and New Years. We picked Granada because it sounded nice and we wanted to make a decision quickly. In hind sight we spent too long there. after 10 days you get pretty sick of the same tourist drag. 

We arrived in Granada on Christmas Eve, we walked around trying to find something good to do the next day and didn't really come up with anything. No one was advertising any special Christmas Activities. I decided we could celebrate Christmas in the hostel with drink and snacks so we headed to the closest supermarket. It was heaving. I suffered a bought of claustrophobia (the heat and weird smells don't help) so all I ended up getting was a watermelon and a Gatorade because I was so thirsty. Christmas wasn't looking good. In the end we had a normal nice day, we walked around the town, had a nice lunch out and ate ice-cream. 

Boxing day was a more notable day. We took a day trip to Lago de Apoyo, which is advertised at the cleanest swim in Nicaragua. It's pretty much a lake in an old volcano crater and it was beautiful. We had a great day of swimming, kayaking and relaxing here. I think it has been one of my favourite spots in Nicaragua so far. 

Lago de Apoyo

We spent a lot of time just aimlessly wandering around Granada because we had so much time. There were a lot of beautiful churches there.

We took a boat tour to visit Las Isletas - a group of about 365 islands in Lake Nicaragua. You cruise around all these different islands, some are inhabited, some aren't. Some have multi-million mansions on them some have restaurants. Some of them are for sale if you are interested. We visited one Island with a restaurant where we had coconuts and fruit. Next on the tour was Monkey Island - this weird small island with five monkeys on it (one's a baby), they were brought there by a local scientist. Last on the trip is an island with an old Spanish fort on it.  

Monkey Island

The view of Volcan Mombacho from the Boat

We visited a museum where it depicted how the locals used to entertain themselves. I genuinely thought these were methods of torture until I read the plaque.

We took the night tour to the Masaya Volcano which I found distinctly average. I really wanted to see an active volcano and Volcan Masaya is super accessible - note the carpark in the picture below. I have a theory that the top of a volcano is much more impressive if you walk up to the summit yourself, however Granada is uncomfortably hot so if I didn't have to I didn't really want to. Parrots live just inside the crater, a bit of a phenomenon due to all the poisonous gases they are surrounded by constantly. The best part of the tour was when we climbed a little higher than the active crater and had a view of both Granada and Managua. Once it was dark we got to explore a "Bat Cave" - there were only two bats. In the end we went back to the active crater to see if we could spot some lava but there was too much gas so it was a no go. 

Volcan Masaya

This doesn't make you feel super safe

New Years was a fun night of running into old friends from the road, dancing in the street and lots of random fireworks.

On our last day in Granada we finally went up the bell tower of one of the churches which we'd been meaning to do since we got there. I'm glad we didn't miss it because it offered some amazing views. We followed this with a bit of a wander around the city, catching the little bits we missed (more churches, a fort, a graveyard... and more churches).

Granada is always described as a beautiful city and I guess I can see why, there are a lot of nice buildings and some nice streets, but that all feels a bit superficial. At times it felt like the “real” parts of Granada weren’t pretty at all. There were lots of creepy locals with creepy cat calls and I think it’s been the worst place I’ve seen child begging – one kid was trying to steal food out of our friend’s hands and was angry when Alex tried to stop him. So upon leaving, we have mixed emotions about the “beautiful city” that is Granada.