Greetings, blog readers. This is Rebecca writing, and do I ever feel the pressure. I can’t promise that this will be witty, but I can promise fewer stories about cheese. Also, no Dutch here, so you’ll have to settle for legalese.
First of all, every foreigner here is either a missionary, with floor length skirts, shaky geography, and cross-stitched crucifixes, or a surfer, who unironically says things like “right on” and “ten cervezas por favor,” despite not being able to stand on his/her board on one (1) foot high waves. It is very strange to be a tourist in a place that seems sort of ambivalent about tourists…there are amazing attractions, but often not much infrastructure, and (maybe because of that) tourist sites are often quasi-deserted, which I guess makes them more “real” but it also kind of always makes you think you’re in the wrong place. (Except in San Juan, where we had delicious yogurt and granola, and a massive glass of orange juice, and the waiter didn’t even want to speak Spanish to us, he just came by and said “Delicious?” and it was. As you will see shortly, I loved San Juan.)
San Juan was beautiful and the place we were staying at had an awesome restaurant where we ate swordfish and homemade nachos and sat in hammocks. Except for the five surfers who know about this place, the beaches are weirdly empty: like, white sand, reasonably warm water, great weather, and 2 people lying on the beach. Weird. It may have something to do with the machine of death we took to get there, a truck with bars around it like we were cattle being transported to the slaughter or something, or maybe it was the territorial Pelicans (who were AWESOME) and who dove into the water from super high up to catch fish. We asked the owner of the place where we were staying what was going on on the top of a hill where there was a giant crucifix and half of a statue, and he told us “Um, they’re building….Jesus.” Apparently he’s going to be bigger here than in Rio. Vince is convinced he is going to fall over. Vince also ferociously battled a cockroach here; it was close, but Vince won.
From there we took a “chicken bus” (no one can tell me why they call it that) to Granada, successfully fending off vendors selling food products we had never heard of. Many, many taxi drivers offered to take us to Granada. If you need a taxi here, there are always four or five willing to take you anywhere, so long as you have money and don’t mind cars without seatbelts or working speedometers. Also, just so you know: if you are driving a taxi in Nicaragua and you fly through a school zone way above even the regular speed limit while no one in your car is wearing a seatbelt, a police officer on the side of the road may give you the non-verbal equivalent of, “Hey, come on, man.” Also, buses here are kind of awesome; they’ll totally stop random places for you to get on or off, and the attendant hangs out the door (or worse, stands on the roof with the bags tied down) on the highway, looking for people to grab. I love it; we should have bus attendants in Canada. But imagine the lawsuits. I kept telling Vince “they don’t even let firefighters do that anymore” because I guess that’s my reference point for people hanging out of trucks, but really, if firefighters can’t do it, you know it’s not safe! Incidentally, you can add “evangelism” to the list of services you can expect to get from random solicitors on buses.
We stayed on the edge of a lake in the crater of a Volcano near Granada, which was creepy in the sense that the water was really wavy and you couldn’t see in it, and no one really knows how deep it is, so I kept expecting a shark to come kill us. Our first day there we went to Masaya, which has two markets, one with butchers and one for tourists, where we were pretty much the only customers. We also went to see an active volcano with noxious gases coming up from it (we were supposed to leave when “gases start to affect”…us, we assumed) complete with its own bat cave where we saw a couple of fruit bats and one vampire bat who was much too cool to acknowledge our presence. (I asked the guide if he was dangerous while we were standing about one (1) foot away from it, and he goes, “Oh, yes.”)
The next day was our Granada day, which was awesome – we climbed up a church tower and Vince had his Spanish mocked by a worker at the cathedral, and we lit a candle and went to a market and had a great lunch. At around 3:30, however, Granada suddenly got weird and creepy and either super busy in certain places or strangely deserted in others, and the day only redeemed itself with break dancing boy scouts in front of a church and a delicious pizza covered in parsley. While we were sitting there, two massive American (I assume) dudes stalked in with their Nicaragua travel book in hand all nonchalantly (it was the same as ours, and the reason both of us presumably went to that restaurant, but we only take ours out of the bag secretively when no one’s around, although Vince constantly points out that we stand out quite obviously anyway). Anyway, the dudes tried to ask the waiter (first in English, then in what Vince described as “painful” Spanish) whether the Calzones were baked or fried. So Vince had to intervene and translate; it was all kinds of epic. The large men were humbled by the mighty Vicente.
This morning we went on a hike, expecting to see glimpses of monkeys in the distance if we were sneaky, instead we totally saw groups of them up close, which appeared to make them angry (they howled, as howlers will do) but not enough for them to move. Sadly, no toucans and no turtles.
All in all, I’m kind of surprised I’m not dead for a number of reasons, I’m glad I didn’t bring The God Delusion on the plane or on the trip at all, I have a new love of swordfish and 80s pop songs and lite beer, a new appreciation for pelicans and the Planet Earth cameramen, and I highly, highly recommend the Best Western across the road from the Managua airport because you’re allowed to flush the toilet there and there’s A/C and hot water in the shower. I also highly recommend travelling with Vicente, because if you’re nice to him (and even if you’re not) he’ll carry the bag and buy you Pringles and set up the mosquito net and translate for you; the only thing you need worry about is that he may mistake you for a giant insect at night and try to bludgeon you with his pillow. But still, a pretty good trade off.
First of all, every foreigner here is either a missionary, with floor length skirts, shaky geography, and cross-stitched crucifixes, or a surfer, who unironically says things like “right on” and “ten cervezas por favor,” despite not being able to stand on his/her board on one (1) foot high waves. It is very strange to be a tourist in a place that seems sort of ambivalent about tourists…there are amazing attractions, but often not much infrastructure, and (maybe because of that) tourist sites are often quasi-deserted, which I guess makes them more “real” but it also kind of always makes you think you’re in the wrong place. (Except in San Juan, where we had delicious yogurt and granola, and a massive glass of orange juice, and the waiter didn’t even want to speak Spanish to us, he just came by and said “Delicious?” and it was. As you will see shortly, I loved San Juan.)
San Juan was beautiful and the place we were staying at had an awesome restaurant where we ate swordfish and homemade nachos and sat in hammocks. Except for the five surfers who know about this place, the beaches are weirdly empty: like, white sand, reasonably warm water, great weather, and 2 people lying on the beach. Weird. It may have something to do with the machine of death we took to get there, a truck with bars around it like we were cattle being transported to the slaughter or something, or maybe it was the territorial Pelicans (who were AWESOME) and who dove into the water from super high up to catch fish. We asked the owner of the place where we were staying what was going on on the top of a hill where there was a giant crucifix and half of a statue, and he told us “Um, they’re building….Jesus.” Apparently he’s going to be bigger here than in Rio. Vince is convinced he is going to fall over. Vince also ferociously battled a cockroach here; it was close, but Vince won.
From there we took a “chicken bus” (no one can tell me why they call it that) to Granada, successfully fending off vendors selling food products we had never heard of. Many, many taxi drivers offered to take us to Granada. If you need a taxi here, there are always four or five willing to take you anywhere, so long as you have money and don’t mind cars without seatbelts or working speedometers. Also, just so you know: if you are driving a taxi in Nicaragua and you fly through a school zone way above even the regular speed limit while no one in your car is wearing a seatbelt, a police officer on the side of the road may give you the non-verbal equivalent of, “Hey, come on, man.” Also, buses here are kind of awesome; they’ll totally stop random places for you to get on or off, and the attendant hangs out the door (or worse, stands on the roof with the bags tied down) on the highway, looking for people to grab. I love it; we should have bus attendants in Canada. But imagine the lawsuits. I kept telling Vince “they don’t even let firefighters do that anymore” because I guess that’s my reference point for people hanging out of trucks, but really, if firefighters can’t do it, you know it’s not safe! Incidentally, you can add “evangelism” to the list of services you can expect to get from random solicitors on buses.
We stayed on the edge of a lake in the crater of a Volcano near Granada, which was creepy in the sense that the water was really wavy and you couldn’t see in it, and no one really knows how deep it is, so I kept expecting a shark to come kill us. Our first day there we went to Masaya, which has two markets, one with butchers and one for tourists, where we were pretty much the only customers. We also went to see an active volcano with noxious gases coming up from it (we were supposed to leave when “gases start to affect”…us, we assumed) complete with its own bat cave where we saw a couple of fruit bats and one vampire bat who was much too cool to acknowledge our presence. (I asked the guide if he was dangerous while we were standing about one (1) foot away from it, and he goes, “Oh, yes.”)
The next day was our Granada day, which was awesome – we climbed up a church tower and Vince had his Spanish mocked by a worker at the cathedral, and we lit a candle and went to a market and had a great lunch. At around 3:30, however, Granada suddenly got weird and creepy and either super busy in certain places or strangely deserted in others, and the day only redeemed itself with break dancing boy scouts in front of a church and a delicious pizza covered in parsley. While we were sitting there, two massive American (I assume) dudes stalked in with their Nicaragua travel book in hand all nonchalantly (it was the same as ours, and the reason both of us presumably went to that restaurant, but we only take ours out of the bag secretively when no one’s around, although Vince constantly points out that we stand out quite obviously anyway). Anyway, the dudes tried to ask the waiter (first in English, then in what Vince described as “painful” Spanish) whether the Calzones were baked or fried. So Vince had to intervene and translate; it was all kinds of epic. The large men were humbled by the mighty Vicente.
This morning we went on a hike, expecting to see glimpses of monkeys in the distance if we were sneaky, instead we totally saw groups of them up close, which appeared to make them angry (they howled, as howlers will do) but not enough for them to move. Sadly, no toucans and no turtles.
All in all, I’m kind of surprised I’m not dead for a number of reasons, I’m glad I didn’t bring The God Delusion on the plane or on the trip at all, I have a new love of swordfish and 80s pop songs and lite beer, a new appreciation for pelicans and the Planet Earth cameramen, and I highly, highly recommend the Best Western across the road from the Managua airport because you’re allowed to flush the toilet there and there’s A/C and hot water in the shower. I also highly recommend travelling with Vicente, because if you’re nice to him (and even if you’re not) he’ll carry the bag and buy you Pringles and set up the mosquito net and translate for you; the only thing you need worry about is that he may mistake you for a giant insect at night and try to bludgeon you with his pillow. But still, a pretty good trade off.
Hello you,Vince and Rebecca
ReplyDeleteNice (long) stories!!
And you have seen a lot and a lot of things happened in Nicaragua!!
Good luck in all!
Greetings from Haelen!!