When David and I left Bluefields we headed immediately to the gorgeous colonial city of Granada to spend our one year anniversary together. I'd heard so much about Granada- one of Nicaragua's hottest tourist destinations due to the well-maintained colonial architecture and relative prosperity of the city, in addition to the nearby lakes and volcanoes- and desperately wanted to visit it before leaving the country because it is so different in just about every way from Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast, and I was admittedly ready for a change. Costa Rica has no comparable cities either, so Granada was a must-see.
When we arrived in Granada ready for a relaxing couple of days of wandering around the area before heading south to Costa Rica, we found ourselves in the midst of a wild and crazy party (I believe it was the city's Fiestas Patronales) that included a parade with lots of horses, floats, blaring music, and scantily clad bleach bottle blond Nica women, in addition to thousands of people decked out in cowboy gear with Cerveza Tona in hand. We spent one rather overwhelming day watching the parade and drinking beers in the central park, but decided to take off the next day for an adventure outside of town and away from the chaos and crowds. We rented a pair of bikes and made our way down a rough dirt road to Laguna de Apoyo, which is a crystal clear lake in the crater of a volcano, surrounded by jungle. It was amazing! The water was so warm, so clear, and the sounds and colors of the jungle so vibrant and beautiful. Having gone on bikes rather than taxi, we ended up on a side of the lake that we had completely to ourselves. We spent hours soaking in the lake and did some hiking around in search of monkeys, toucans and the like, which I heard but never spotted. However, on our bike ride back into town, we did see a group of at least two dozen large green parrots fly over us squawking their heads off.
When we arrived back at our hotel in Granada we both had sore butts and sunburns, but felt great- exhilarated and happy. Being our anniversary and all, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner out on the town. We were sure we'd picked out one of the nicest restaurants in Granda, but were pretty disappointed (thanks a lot Moon Handbooks!). The whole experience was at least entertaining. We had typical Nicaraguan food masquerading as Spanish cuisine, while serenaded by a band that included one extremely out of tune guitar and a lead singer with a penchant for cheesy renditions of Latin pop songs. After a bottle of wine we could do nothing but laugh at the situation. Ahhh...Nicaragua. Such a special place. You really never know what to expect.
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