Nica road trip

Granada, Masaya, Managua, Leon and back. We were getting ansy in our little beach town. We decided to recruit some friends for our road trip and rent a car to have a little more freedom. We recruited Nigel from Australia. He was a complete trooper to hang with these 3 crazy Americanos! Amy had a way of making him do the oddest hings for her photos, a fact that I did not discover until I saw here photos upon our return! I was there, however, when we made Nigel stand in a chair in the bed to try to reach the ceiling fan. We held the chair with all of our might, but the bed was not much a a stable place to set the chair....let's just say we laughed a lot that night!! That was Granada after happy hour! Our first stop after a quick stop in Rivas was Granada. It is a very different town for Nicaragua. It is a colonial town and a very pretty one at that. It was nice for about 2 hours when we arrived, but we soon had to take sanctuary in the local cathedral. There was a tower to climb, so we went up for the view of the entire city. It was very nice. Something to mention...these countries, for some reason, like to tile their sidewalks with VERY slippery tiles. I nearly kill myself on them every time it rains and this day was no exception. It does not matter how careful I am....I still slip.

I love the architecture in Nicaragua. They love to paint things in the most vibrant colors. Churches are almost always bright yellow! It is an amazing sight against the blue sky. Alas, today it was raining. Still not too bad on the eyes. There was a tour guide in this church that reminded of Pedro, as in "Vote for Pedro". We was very informative, but I was waiting for him the entire time to say, "If you vote for me, all of your wildest dreams will come true".

The next evening we visited Laguna de Apoyo. We had to take our little Toyota 4-wheeling to get there....don't tell Alamo. I am sure there was some damage to the shocks and possible the axle. It was scary....then funny. The Laguna de Apoyo is a large and very deep crater lake. It is 600 m deep. The water is crystal clear and very warm. We stayed at the Monkey Hut which had many toys to play with. We went tubing and then we went kayaking around the lake. It was very nice. But then is was time to go to Masaya, a small cultural town which is famous for its art markets. We were VERY tired and cranky on this day and we found it difficult to maneuver around this busy and hot town. We expected it to be smaller so that we could find everything faster. Eventually we found the market, but we also found it to be less authentic than we expected. After a quick twirl around the market, finding many interesting things, such as a rooster basket, we decided to go to the Volcano de Masaya instead. This was like driving to the moon. It was as short drive, but the terrain changed so quickly. The top warned to stay only 20 minutes. After 20 minutes of breathing in the sulphur, I understood why. We were also instructed to park facing away from the crater so if it blew, we could get out more quickly. NICE!

Our last stop was in Leon. There were two roads to Leon. The north road and the south road. Once we navigated our way through Managua....and after getting our windows washed 4 x while waiting at intersections...we found the southern route. We had pulled over to make sure we were on the correct road (as there are NO roadsigns in Nica) and we were told we were correct. Thing that sucks was that there a road a mile north that was paved all the way to Leon...we were on the road that was NOT paved and had the most tremendous potholes you have ever seen!It took us an extra hour to get to Leon. We arrived just before dark. We found a place to stay and we found Pupusas for dinner. We wandered around the park at night and saw some of the famous murals that are all over Leon. We had an early night as we were exhausted. When we woke up, we had a quick tour of the city, again taking sanctuary in a cathedral from the downpour. Leon has the largest cathedral in all of Central America. When we left the cathedral, the siren in the central park went off. This siren goes off at 7am and Noon. We knew then that is was noon, and we needed to get the car back to San Juan by 5pm. We had to GO! So that we did. We drove as fast as we could back to the beach. We were in Rivas by 4:15. We were dropping Nigel off at the Ometepe ferry. Then we drove the 30 minute back to San Juan, only to get stuck in an FSLN parade for the Holiday weekend where they celebrate the revolution. We got back at 5:15, ran into the rental place and were then told.....it didn't need to be back until the morning! @$#$%!!!! We could have stayed in Leon!!! Dang!! Oh well! The next 4 days in San Juan consisted of 5pm and 4am parades to celebrate the holiday and m-80's going off all day to remind the people of the revolution. I was glad when Sunday came, because everyone was tired of partying by then and the town was quiet once again!

We are now in San Salvador, El Salvador....which I will post in the coming days :)