May 2017 – The Traveling Wilberries

Doorways in Granada

I got a wee bit carried away taking photos of doorways and one window, in Granada.

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The morning after our final Spanish lesson, we took a tour up Volcán Mombacho. A couple of guys picked us up in a Toyota Land cruiser along with six other tourists and drove us all the way to the top of Mombacho via a paved, narrow, steep road only accessible by 4WD. We sat on two bench seats facing each other, four people on one side and four people on the other holding onto whatever was available to stop ourselves from sliding down and squashing the two people sitting at the back.

coffeeplantationmombacho — We stopped at a coffee plantation on the way up – there were howler monkeys in the mango trees

The other tourists were a family of three from Holland, the parents were visiting their son who was taking Spanish lessons in Granada before going to Southern Nicaragua to work as a Doctor, and another family of three, a mother and her son and daughter, from Granada, but now living in San Francisco. The son from Granada told us he’d walked up the volcano, from the bottom to the top, with his mates when he was about 15 years old. Great fun, possibly illegal, but what you do when you’re that age.

fisure — Walking through the fissure out to the edge of the crater

From the car park at the top, we walked for about two hours out to and around the Sendero crater. Volcan Mombacho was more of a cloud forest tour than a volcano tour. It’s still active; we saw steam vents here and there, if you kick the surface with your shoe the ground beneath is hot, and there was a fissure in a rock that we walked through that I wouldn’t have wanted to be in, in an earthquake. But, Volcán Mombacho hasn’t erupted since 1570 and we couldn’t see right into the crater for all the lovely green trees and vegetation that have grown since then. The best things about it were the great views over Granada and the Isletas, how cool and breezy it was at the top, and the troop of howler monkeys we saw on our way back out. They ignored us to start with, but after five minutes, they began viewing us with the same intensity that we were viewing them. Then they began calling to one another and I’m pretty sure they were coming up with a cunning plan that somehow involved us.

panofrommombacho — View of Laguna de Apoyo to our left, Granada in the middle and Lake Nicaragua to the right

The next morning, we took a 20 minute shuttle to Laguna de Apoyo, a lake in the crater of an extinct volcano. I’m not sure why, but I had expected long, gracious, green lawns going down to a small sandy beach with a laguna of clear water, and an enclosed dining area with air-conditioning overlooking the lawn and the laguna. In reality there were concrete steps going down to a black sand beach with deck-chairs, a laguna of cloudy green water with a swimming platform, tubes, and kayaks, and a rustic open-air restaurant overlooking it all. Laying in the sun and swimming is not our usual thing, but we really enjoyed our day there and found it as relaxing as Katya the owner of our hotel had promised.

lagunapano — Our deck chairs for the day at laguna de Apoyo

The following day was Monday the 1st of May and a public holiday in Nicaragua. Katya had organised for the owner of a lancha to pick us up in his car and drive us five minutes down the road to lake Nicaragua, where his cousin would take us out on the lancha to cruise among the Isletas. The centre of town was quiet at 10am when the lancha owner picked us up, but the lakeside was full of people enjoying the public holiday. The edge of the lake was full of people swimming, and between the lake and the road there was a 20 metre wide section of grass and dirt that stretched for a kilometre or so, where young guys were playing football, and between the grass and the road there was a line of huge trees under which families had strung up hammocks, laid out mats and chairs, and were picnicking. In the middle was a jetty that took us out to the lancha. It was an overcast day, so I don’t think we saw the isletas at their prettiest, but it was a lovely boat ride and we took about 100 photos. I won’t post all of them.

panolakenica — A panoramic of Lake Nicaragua – in reality it’s not that curved

panolakenica2 — Another panoramic, this time facing away from Lake Nicaragua towards the row of trees under which people are picnicking – and again it’s not that curved

lancha1 — All dressed up in our lifejackets

isleaboat — A yacht parked outside one of the Isletas – there was one Isleta with a helicopter parked outside, but I can’t find a photo of it

redhouseisleta — Isleta with holiday home

lakemahinapua — This part of the Isletas reminded me a little of Lake Mahinapua on the West Coast of NZ

Spanish lessons in Granada

After relaxing in the local cafes and our air-conditioned room over the weekend we were ready to get started on one of the main reasons for our visit to Granada, Spanish lessons. We had planned to visit three schools and then decide which one we liked best, but on Monday morning we wandered up the road to the first place on our list and about ten minutes later we were saying “sign us up”.

Gerard greeted us at the door and handed us over to Juan Carlos who took us through to a courtyard garden where we sat back in cane rocking chairs and he asked us who we were, where we were from and what we’d been doing in Nicaragua, in Spanish. He. spoke. slowly. and. enunciated. every. word. And we more or less understood him and answered his questions slowly but with less enunciation. It turns out that was our informal proficiency test. Juan Carlos then spoke to Gerard who told us they had a basic class, which might be suitable, but it had already started, so Julio could teach us that afternoon and then we could join the basic class the next morning at 9am. We briefly conferred and decided that would be great. So, off to the Garden Café for breakfast and my new favourite drink the LPC smoothie (lime, pineapple, coconut milk and yoghurt).

Tree in Casa Xalteva’s courtyard showing past ad present English language students

Back at the Spanish language school at 1pm we met our teacher Julio, who, to his credit, managed what our last Spanish language teachers tried and failed to do in San Cristobel De Las Casas in 1998, conducted the entire four-hour lesson in Spanish with only a few words in English. At the end of the lesson Julio suggested the basic class that was being held at 9am every morning, may be too difficult for us and that if this was the case, he would take us in the afternoon for the rest of the week.

So, the next morning we joined the basic class and when the teacher asked me a question and I only recognised about three words, I thought damn. And then she asked me another question and I recognised two words. And I persevered for about three more minutes, before I put the teacher and the other two students out of their misery, saying I thought her class was “demasiado dificil para nosotros” (too difficult for us). She was gracious and probably relieved, and spoke to Gerard who had been expecting us after having spoken to Julio about our first lesson. They didn’t have a more basic class than this one, but Julio could continue to take us for an afternoon class if that was OK with us. It was.

Julio was mostly patient with us and our efforts to learn, speak and understand Spanish. I think we frustrated him with our slow progress. he was quite bossy for a 23-year-old. On Tuesday he gave us 52 verbs to remember and on Wednesday morning when we said “no recuerdo” (I don’t remember) or “no lo sé” (I don’t know) in answer to his requests for the meaning of five or so of those verbs, he lost his cool and gave us a bit of a dressing down. I thought it was unnecessary, and that we had tried, but that trying to make 52 verbs like ‘to help’ (ayudar) or ‘to win’ (ganar) stick in my head overnight was impossible. He didn’t agree. The rest of the lesson was quieter than the first two and we both studied a little bit harder for the rest of the week. And by 5pm on Friday we knew far more than we did at the beginning of the week.

casaxalteva — Looking a bit exhausted outside Casa Xalteva after our final Spanish class

Putting together sentences with 80 or so verbs in the present tense is hard and understanding someone who can put together sentences with 100s of verbs in all the tenses at what sounds like breakneck speed is even harder. But, when you can more or less understand that a Honduran border official is telling you a joke about what El Tunco means and laugh at it, those lessons become worth every Cordoba we spent on them.

From Santa Teresa to Granada

Four days after the roosters and hen were killed and made into chicken soup, and three days after the rainy season came to Santa Teresa, we took a shuttle to Liberia, which is a small town close to the border with Nicaragua. It took about five hours and the trip was uneventful except that one passenger got left behind because she was over 30 minutes late. We overheard the driver talking to the booking office and when he found out she was still hoping to catch the shuttle and that she’d slept in, he snorted and decided it was time to leave. About 15 minutes down the road a taxi flagged us down and it was the late passenger. She’d been out partying until the early hours of the morning, woke up 20 minutes after the shuttle was supposed to leave, and despite still being a bit drunk she managed to pack her bag and find a taxi to chase after us. Actually, she said that if she hadn’t been a bit drunk she probably wouldn’t have made it.

The shuttle dropped us off at Hotel Guanacaste in Liberia. Our room was what you might call unrenovated, but it had air conditioning and a TV, which made up for it. Also, the young man at reception was lovely and helpful and confirmed the information I’d read in some obscure place on the internet that it was the bus stop for an international bus going from San Jose in Costa Rica to Managua in Nicaragua. That meant we could book our tickets at the hotel and catch the bus from out front the next day. So much easier than traipsing all over town with our board bags.

Apart from accidentally picking up a helper on our way through customs, who told us which way to go and latched onto us while we were trying to change money, which cost us US$33 because of some confusion over the new currency when we “tipped” him, our bus trip to Nicaragua was pretty good. The driver dropped us off on the side of the road on his way through Granada and we caught a taxi to the hostel we’d chosen. It turned out there were no private rooms left and when they showed us a dorm with about 15 beds and a fan on each one, we decided we weren’t that desperate and to try our chances elsewhere.

According to our guidebook there was another place just around the corner. They had a tiny private room with a shared shower and toilet available, so we took it. It was so hot and our bags were so heavy, we couldn’t bring ourselves to walk any further. The first night, we hung out in their little garden courtyard drinking toñas (a Nicaraguan beer) with the other guests. Aaron, from the States and on his first holiday in years, told crazy stories about what he’d been doing in Nicaragua for the past week. He’d got himself into and out of some bloody hairy situations and had a great time. Julio, who was traveling with his girlfriend and a box full of puppets got one of his puppets out and put on a show for us in Spanish.

If Granada hadn’t been so hot and our room so small and even hotter we might have stayed there despite the shared toilet and shower. But, I think we had heat exhaustion the next morning despite having two fans on us during the night, so we checked out after breakfast and moved up the road to a lovely little hotel with our own bathroom and toilet and more importantly, air conditioning.