After a few days of fun on Ometepe island we were keen to get to Granada, famed for it’s old Colonial centre. We’d booked three nights in one of the largest and most well established hostels, and were looking forward to the facilities of a city after being in small towns or villages for a few weeks. First however, we had to get there.
I’d organised for the taxi driver who dropped us at our accommodation on Ometepe to pick us up and ferry us back to the port and, although this was not a cheap way to travel, the public buses from a remote village on a Nicaraguan island aren’t great. After the taxi it was a short wait at the port and then we were on the boat where we met a nice German couple who’d been travelling for three years! Their travel stories and recommendations made light work of the boat ride and soon we were at the port. We needed to get from the port of San Jorge to the roundabout in Rivas where we’d be able to catch a bus going North and, avoiding the taxis, we spotted a bus which I don’t think was actually in service but was going in the right direction. Unfortunately the fare we paid wasn’t much less than the taxi, but they did helpfully point out where to go once we reached the roundabout!
As we walked over to find the bus stop Alex tripped over on a pole sticking out of the ground and went flying. I had taken a slightly different (and in my opinion safer) route so I didn’t see this happen and didn’t realise until I asked Alex why she was inexplicably angry. Unfortunately she’d fallen on her arm and was immediately developing an alarming bruise and lump, but nothing appeared to be broken so we continued to the bus stop.
As soon as we approached the bus stop a local asked us where we were going and told us that there would be a direct bus in 20 minutes. About 15 minutes later, a bus appeared which all of the locals piled onto and, when we didn’t, we were questioned and encouraged to get on. It turned out we’d misunderstood the original instructions and we’d actually need to take an indirect route.
The conductor of this bus wasn’t particularly friendly compared to what we’d previously experienced and, while we always pay a bit of a tourist tax for our bags this guy definitely pushed it a little. An hour later though when we knew we were getting close to our stop he still beckoned me forward, and made sure that both we and our bags got off the bus safely. It was now just a short hop to the centre of town and a pile of rickshaws was waiting to take us. Since there were many rickshaws and no custom we were able to negotiate the price to the point where it made no sense to wait for the bus and soon enough we outside our hostel.
This was definitely one of our more complex journeys so far consisting of taxi, ferry, bus, bus, rickshaw and cost us a total of $51 with the taxi making up the first $30 of this. This is still by far the cheapest way of making this journey. From talking to other travellers there seems to be a split between people who’ll take local buses versus tourist shuttles at 3-5 times the cost. For us the local buses, while sometimes a little stressful, are an intrinsic part of the travel experience and the money saved helps our budget extend to eating good food at our destinations.
Anyway we were now in Granada safe in the Oasis hostel which was, depending on how you view hostels, the best or worst of hostel culture. Our room was nice, clean and comfortable with aircon, and the price included breakfast and three free drinks between 6 and 7 every evening! With organised activities every evening and plenty of food and drink, you barely even needed to leave the hostel or use a word of Spanish, which is the downside of hostel culture.
We were tired from a day of travel so headed out for a short walk around the town, finishing at Burrocks, a reasonably priced Mexican place that we’d seen recommended, getting an early night after our free drinks at the hostel.
Then next morning we took advantage of the nice hostel, and crucially the fast internet, to catch up with the blog before heading out to explore the city.
Granada doesn’t have a huge amount of attractions except for just being a pretty colonial city, and our plan was to wander around, exploring the grandest buildings in the town, the churches. Walking around Granada it really felt like there wasn’t a lot of tourism, except for the backpackers who we didn’t see much of outside of the hostel. Near to our hostel was a market so we walked through on our way to see the main churches in the city. The first church had been recommended by the Lonely Planet and for a dollar you can climb the tower for a good view of the city. From this tower we could see an equally impressive church tower a few blocks away, so we headed over and for another dollar we climbed this one. It was another great view of the city, and from this tower we could see a large old abandoned building which according to a map was the old hospital. It was only a few blocks away so we decided to wander over. Before we could set off, an ornate, black painted carriage arrived pulled by a black horse and followed by a procession. It was a funeral arriving so, not wanting to intrude, we pressed on.
The abandoned hospital was a beautiful old early 1900s building that was slowly decaying. There was evidence that some efforts had been taken to preserve it using props, and the garden at the front looked maintained, but mostly it was just quietly decaying. Unfortunately it was secured with a fence so we couldn’t get any closer, but it still made for a few nice photos.
The colonial architecture of Granada leaves most streets as continual high walls punctuated by doors and a few windows. We could see from the church towers that every block had an interior courtyard and most of these were in fact beautiful gardens, so our next stop was to try to find one. Walking past the main square we found a pedestrianised street, and on it Nectar cafe. We wandered in and took a seat under the shaded veranda that looks out into the inner courtyard garden. It was happy hour so we sat, drinking local craft beer and eating Mexican tapas. After enjoying happy hour we decided to head back to the hostel for the three free drinks that came with our room and cooked a light meal of pasta with pesto while talking to some eighteen year old British girls also in the kitchen. We were surprisingly exhausted so got an early night ready for another day exploring the city.
The next day after a hearty breakfast at the hostel we popped out for supplies and then headed to the San Francisco Convent museum. When we arrived they appeared to have closed for lunch, but eventually we were able to enter and explore this museum that featured an eclectic mix including recreations of local customs, naive art, indigenous statues discovered on a local island and a room filled with a huge recreation of the whole city that was either the biggest model I’ve ever seen or the smallest scale model village! For most of the time there we were the only people in the museum and once we were finished we headed back out into the town.
Granada is hot and we were slowly dying under the early afternoon sun so we sought out some shade and a cool drink at the Gaia Forest cafe. Once again our Spanish proved useful as the waiter advised us to go to the back of the courtyard for the freshest breeze!
Feeling revived we headed out to the main Cathedral, somewhere we’d already tried to visit but failed as it was closed. The interior of the cathedral is like many of the other cathedrals we’ve seen in Central America, impressive from the outside and often relatively simple inside. At this cathedral they’d obviously decided to jazz it up a bit and were in the process of painting huge murals across the ceiling. One featured Noah’s arc with a fantastical selection of animals, and another featured Adam and Eve being caught by God munching on an apple. The style however was interesting, something I can really only describe as somewhat like Disney but a bit sexier with a lot of effort having obviously gone into Adam and Eve’s well defined muscles.
After the gallery we took a walk down a pedestrianised street and found an Art gallery. We’d previously seen some fantastic art in Costa Rica but it was well outside of our budget. Here however we found an artist at work in a studio featuring some great art by a few local artists. We like buying original art in foreign countries, but finding the sweet spot of art that isn’t just mass produced for tourists and at prices we can afford is not always easy. We found a large painting of a typical front door in Granada, in abstract colours that we think will look great in our new extension at home, and before we knew it we were walking out of the shop with it tightly rolled up and ready to go in our backpacks.
After a pizza at the most authentic looking pizzeria in Granada, followed by a game of pool at the hostel, we were ready for bed and ready to move on from Granada to Leon. The next morning we had one more thing to do. I hadn’t spoken to either of my parents since leaving home and our internet connection, although fairly constant, often hasn’t been great, however in Granada it had been pretty stable so I took advantage of it the next morning before we checked out, calling both Dad and then Mum from the roof terrace of the hostel which was a nice reminder of home!
So after 2 days and 3 nights in Granada what did we think? It’s not a polished colonial city like Cartagena in Colombia, or even as stylish as Casco Viejo in Panamá City, but it has a certain charm despite being very poor and pretty run down in parts. This is something that we’ve noticed in Nicaragua, especially as we’ve headed north. Nicaragua is noticeably poorer than either Panama or Costa Rica with tourism much more restricted to backpackers, and the infrastructure, whether it’s water, reliable power, or internet, or even paved roads, being more limited than the countries we’ve been to so far. It definitely took 24 hours to grow on us which I think was mostly culture shock, but once we started to understand it we really enjoyed our stay in Granada.