In Costa Rica everyone told us that Nicaragua was dangerous, and that the people were unfriendly and mean. When we asked our Tican informants (notice the plural here) why this was or which parts of the country were dangerous we were informed that Nicaragua was dangerous because there were a lot of indigenous people there. Very different from Costa Rica where the people are much lighter skinned. (at this the conversation would take a turn for the possibly more disturbing when our distressed and confused looks were interpreted as a need for further clarification, which took the form of presenting a handy body part for inspection with the assurance that without the suntan the skin is even lighter.) But I digress, Nicas, according to our sources come into Costa Rica to help with the harvests and are the reason for all that ails the country. Apparently their northern neighbors, love nothing better than to sit around drinking, robbing banks, getting in to fights and murdering poor unsuspecting Ticans that is when they aren't busy threatening to invade Costa Rica.
These qualities are so ubiquitous when it comes to Nicans that a Tican does not even have to go to Nicaragua (or know a single Nicaraguan for that matter) The concept of visiting a country "infested" with them (ie. Nicaragua) is greeted by Ticans with the same hand waving and squealing behavior displayed when you described 50 foot spider you found under your bed last night over breakfast. Really it is all quite confusing why some stupid gringo would be interested in a place after you have already told them that it is filled with indigenous people. (Did we mention that we have lighter skin than them. Yes mein fuhrer I think you might have brought that up.) Well as you might expect these pleasant discussions set off some red flags and we decided to look into it. After some research on-line we found out that Nicaragua has a "stable" democracy, a relatively high economic growth rate, and is rated the safest country in Central America by the US state department and is technically safer than the better part of the US and most of Europe. Not only that, but most of the problems are isolated to the capital, which we were not planning to visit anyway.
So we found ourselves in Granada (Nicaragua). Picture a combination of Granada (Spain), Morocco, Spanish California and OK a bit of Latin America thrown in there. Despite being one of the oldest cities in the Americas (founded in 1524 by the conquistador Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba and named after the conquistadors home town in Andalusia) Granada's colonial architecture is quite well preserved. Granada is situated on Lake Granada which is enormous. It is the 10th largest lake in the world (about half the size of Lake Ontario or the size of New York State take your pick). Lake Nicaragua is so far west that it is only separated from the Pacific Ocean by a small strip of land but it is connected to the Caribbean sea by a river which traverses the entire country. One of the things Lake Nicaragua is famous for is its fresh water bull sharks which can be up to 11 feet in length and have been shown recently to migrate from the Caribbean up the river just like salmon. (I like to picture that this amounts to Jaws crossing Central America by jumping the wrong way up Class IV's) The sharks aren't the only things to migrate up the river either. Granada has a history of getting attacked by pirates who used to sailed up into the lake from the Caribbean. Don't ask me how they then proceeded to catch the city by surprise but either I am missing something or the Granadians were quite unobservant of what was going on in the lake because the city was sacked 3 times in a relatively short amount of time. Ouch!
We spent most of our time wandering around the city looking at the buildings and trying to escape the rain by dodging into various museums. There are 6 large churches/small cathedrals in town all painted a dramatically different crayola color and in various states of repair. The city itself is spotless, almost freakishly so. And the tourist walk is lined with restaurants where you can find everything from a pesto chicken sandwich, to Mexican style burritos to Americanized nachos and buffalo wings at the American Baseball sports bar.
And there is something. Wow do the Nicaraguans love their beisbol. Walking down the streets of Granada you will find more people wearing Yankee baseball caps than you will strolling around Central Park. I think that I read somewhere that they are the only Latin American country in which baseball, not soccer, is the national sport. In contrast to the clean un-cluttered tourist walk the local market is located in a huge colonial building and is just wall to wall people with baskets on their heads selling everything from homemade cheese to socks. Very engaging, very smelly.
From Granada it is a very easy day trip to Apoya Laguna. Apoya Laguna is a lake inside the crater of an extinct volcano and filled with little floating objects which upon closer inspection you realize are actually rocks (not churches, lead, or even very small rocks just huge chunks of pumice stone). According to one source despite the best efforts of survey teams no one seems able to have been able to find the bottom of the crater. You can hang out at a beachfront hostel For US$ 5 a day a serious ripoff since US$ 8 buys you a bed there for the night! Of course for a cool US$500,000 you can just buy the whole place outright. Once you are there there is nothing much to do but kayak around the bottomless crater, read a book or just sit back and float (like a rock) in the lake.
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