Granada, Nicaragua: On the Road Again

Well, as it turns out, I had a really interesting trip from Belize down here to Nicaragua. Since my plans were to head down into South America, my trip to Belize took me a few hundred miles in the wrong direction (although it was well worth it!). So I decided to really blaze my way down as far as I could on the bus to make up for lost time. This meant back tracking all the way from Belize down to Guatemala City, and then heading into El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. I figured that I would try and stop in each country, and if I liked it, I would stay for a few days, and if not, I’d move on to the next place. I actually had a pretty brutal bus schedule for my return. It was as follows:

4 hours from Belize City to Flores, Guatemala

9 hours overnight from Flores to Guate (Guatemala City)

6 hours from Guate to San Salvador, El Salvador

10 hours from San Salvador to Managua, Nicaragua

I wanted to knock out the whole trip back to Guate in one fell swoop, so last Saturday morning I boarded the water taxi on Caye Caulker totally hung over from a Friday night of rum and lobster, and head for the la frontera. It’s funny because as I remember it, our motto for the last night in Belize (a bunch of people that I was hanging out with on the island were all leaving on Saturday as well) was “hey, we might as well be hung over on the way home…whooo!!!” It seemed to make perfect sense at the time to keep drinking, as do many “drunk ideas”, so true to our motto, all of us were pretty haggard as we left the island the next day.

I had arrived in Flores, Guatemala 4 hours later and had a 6 hour lay over until my over night bus to Guate. Being in Flores hungover with my huge backpack, laptop, and basically everything I owned, and with nothing to do on top of that, was not the most relaxing experience. However, I decided to make the best of it and met a few cool people in a very short period of time. I ended up sitting at a little restaurant right on the shores of Lago Peten Itza nursing a beer for a few hours and talking with a fellow traveler about our experiences in Guatemala. It was really great to hear her stories about learning Spanish as she traveled through Guatemala, because she seemed to go through a similar experience as I did, where she totally withdrew from talking in English, and actually avoided people who spoke English for a period of time. I had actually done the same thing in Antigua when I was learning Spanish and I could totally understand where she was coming from, because when you’re learning Spanish it is way too easy to revert back to using English when talking to people, and therefore you really make no progress in learning the language. It really is a double edged sword though, because if you are avoiding other travelers because you strictly want to stick to your Spanish, you’re also going to miss out on talking to a lot of cool people.

After we parted ways, I boarded the over night bus to Guate. The over night buses are great because you can sleep pretty much the whole time and when you wake up your where your supposed to be. The one huge disadvantage though is that you get to your destination at some weird hours sometimes. So I had arrived in Guate at 4:30am, which is not the best time to be arriving in one of the most dangerous cities in Central America, if not the entire world. I mean, you know you’re in a really bad neighborhood when there are guys with shot guns guarding the passengers as they get off the buses. Not to mention that I was half asleep and just barely caught some guy trying to walk off with my backpack, which was stored underneath the bus. So given the situation, I thought it would be best to hop in a cab right away and get somewhere safe, where I could sleep. One of my friends had told me that there was a Holiday Inn in Guate, so I figured given the hour and the danger factor, the Holiday Inn would be a good choice. So I ended up staying at the Holiday Inn for a night, which totally screwed my budget because I ended up having to pay over $200 for the day and a half I was there. Now I knew it would be an expensive stay, but $200…shit! When I was checking out I was seriously thinking, “I just came back from Belize where I lived in a shack for $15 a night on the beach, and now I’m paying $200 for a one nights stay Guate… Yep, I’m a moron”. But hey, everyone makes bad decisions sometimes during a trip, especially when you are half asleep and don’t know what the hell you are thinking…LOL.

I arrived in San Salvador the following day and had about 3 or 4 hours of daylight left to walk around and check things out. San Salvador actually reminded me of parts of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel valley where my grandfather lives. I was staying in this little neighborhood, and walked around and there really wasn’t much there except a few little parks so I decided to make my way onto Nicaragua the next morning at 5am. So that night, I headed out to Zona Rosa, which according to my guide book is supposed to be the place to “see and be seen” in San Salvador, and had dinner. It was really interesting because I went to this really fancy restaurant and the waiter walked up to me and brought over a plate with some flowers laying on it. The flowers were about 3 or 4 inches long and still attached to the stem and were closed (like they do when the sleep for the night) and he was telling me that the flowers were really special in El Salvador and was having me smell them and inspect them and everything, kind of like you do with a glass of fine wine, and I’m thinking, “Ok this is weird, why is this guy having me smell a plate full of flowers?” So, I told him that they smelled great and this and that, and then he takes them away, only to return a few minutes later with the plate of flowers but this time they were cooked and drizzled with olive oil! Now I had never really eaten actual flowers before that looked like they were straight from mom’s garden, but they were really good!! They had a kind of sweet taste and were really nice with the olive oil. I ended up having a great meal, as I would need it for the monster 10 hour bus ride to Managua, Nicaragua the next morning.

As I arrived in Managua, Nicaragua on the bus I flipped open my guide book and saw the most interesting phrase…”Managua is far from the world’s safest city. Theft and muggings are common, and as a tourist you look like a walking wallet.” YIKES!!!

To be continued…

*** Until then, check out some of the SICK breakdancers I filmed last night doing their thing on the streets here in Granada. I’ll be posting more on my adventures in Managua, as well as Granada soon. But these guys were seriously bad ass and I wanted to put the video up so, Enjoy!!

PS. There was a really loud band in the background playing some traditional music that unfortunately drowned out their little ghetto blaster, so I thought they could use a little MJ and helped them out in the video… ;)