Colonial cities and crater lakes

Now that you've read Matt's treatise on the differences between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, I'll fill you in on all the fun things we've been doing! After leaving Cloudbridge we made our way directly to Granada, Nicaragua, stopping only to waste some money on a hostel in San Jose (the trip was not possible in a single day...). From San Jose we elected to take the Deldu bus instead of Ticabus like we did last time. Ticabus runs between the capitals of all the Central American cities, and will take you across the border, but you then have to wait for everyone else to clear customs too. Beyond the extra time, you pay a premium for the service (especially if you book online from the states through a third party like we did for our first trip...). So, instead we hopped on the local bus to the border. It was slower (6 hours instead of 5), hotter (Ticabus was air conditioned to an arctic chill, such as you are used to Tommy), and dirtier. But, it got us to the border for only $9! We crossed the border without incident (Matt managed to avoid all mud pits), and after fending off many eager taxi drivers we found ourselves on a bus to Granada. One of the men who was trying to sell us a taxi helpfully pointed out the bus in front of us and loaded our bags for us, then demanded a tip. This bus was slower, hotter, dirtier, and more crowded than our Deldu bus, but also only cost us a dollar or so for the remainder of the trip AND they blasted dance music the whole way! All of the buses in Nicaragua are old school buses, that have been painted awesome colors and coated in decals, stickers, and rope lights. They end up being a lot more fun to ride. Somehow I haven't gotten a picture yet, but I promise I will soon!

There are at least two people working on every bus - one driving and one who squeezes his way through to collect money, and also tells the bus driver when to stop and start again. In this way the buses waste less time collecting people, all you have to do is jump on and then the bus can start again. You pay sometime in the middle of your ride. Equally, the bus doesn't like to wait for people to slowly get off. Thus, we found our bags laid on the side of the highway and ourselves pushed out the door when the driver's helper said we were at Granada. Looking up, we did not see a beautiful colonial city. Instead, we watched a herd of tiny taxis descend from all around us onto the field in front of us. "Granada! Granada!" they yelled.

We squeezed into one (the driver held my backpack inside the taxi with one leg), and proceeded the remaining 20 km to Granada. 

Granada was lovely. We stayed almost a week, wandering around and looking at old churches, sipping cold drinks and people watching, and generally enjoying ourselves at a slow pace. We climbed up bell towers and looked over the city (and saw the volcano we climbed on Ometepe! It's huge!),

and took a day trip to Masaya, where we breezed through the big tourist market and walked along the "delightfully crumbling" waterfront,

 and took a boat tour of las isletas. Supposedly there are 365 of these small islands, thrown into Lake Nicaragua by a volcanic eruption 2,000 years ago. Now they are mainly private islands of the wealthy, though there is one island with 4 monkeys on it!

Our guide gallantly picked me beautiful flowers, but after some time in the heat they (and I) wilted.

Eventually we left, and made our way to Laguna de Apoyo. The lagoon is also delightful, with beautifully clear blue waters warmed by underwater vents from the crater. We spent two nights there, and it was a little like summer camp - we swam to a floating dock and dove off of it, then took out kayaks to paddle around, and then when bored of both kayaks and the dock we took inner tubes and lazed on the lake. Rinse and repeat.

Now we are in Leon, and looking forward to exploring another colonial town!