Like this:

It’s a hot summer day. The air is thick as, and every movement is exhausting. The radio of the cab plays old love songs and the ticket for the bus is in the bag. Nicaragua, we’re coming!

The bus from San José left at midday on Sunday, the 5th of April 09. It was a long long ride to Nicaragua. After five hours we had the first break at the border of Costa Rica and our destination country. We had to wait an hour until everything was checked. But there was a short moment, which almost made up for all the waiting: When you reached the front of the line to go through customs of the Nicaraguan boarder control, there was a yellow button, big and lonely in the middle of the table. And all the officer did was pointing at it. The excitement rose and I didn’t quite know what to expect once I tough that thing. But I dared: Hit! The red light showed green which meant: Lucky you, you don’t have to get your luggage checked! Walk on. That was it. It was fun anyway. =)

We arrived in Granada at around 9pm, tired from doing nothing all day. A good night’s sleep would help to recover our energy, hopefully.

Next morning, and we still felt kind of exhausted. The heat was not easy to handle for our bodies. We still managed to get up and get to know the city. It has got a beautiful centre with old houses in all colours one can imagine. People sell jewellery etc. at their stands in the park, and the churches attract tourists as well as locals. But Granada seemed everything else but crowded. Even on the busiest time of the day, you find many many empty streets.

To get refreshment from the heat, we took a bus (old American school bus pimped with a TV and an excellent sound system) and a cab to get to the Laguna de Apoyo to go for a swim. The water of the lake wasn’t cold, but at least it wasn’t quite as warm as ocean either. So a bit of soaking in the water really did help.

The next day, we went on a tour around the Isletas in the lake. After another ride in one of those (school) buses, we enjoyed long boat rides with short breaks on several islands. We had fresh fruit with locals on one island, a swim on or better next to the ex-dictators island and dinner on another island again. We saw islands with poor people, islands of very rich people and islands with monkeys. It was a really nice tour and the beautiful sunset was a perfect ending for the day on the lake.

And on the last two days we surrendered to the heat and just hanged around, had some ice creams and a lot of sleep.
I enjoyed these four days in Granada very much. It was interesting to see another Central American country, it showed how Costa Rica really does have quite a bit more money.

And then on the bus ride back to Costa Rica, when we were almost back in San José I realised: There wasn’t one single McDonalds, KFC, Subway or whatever fast food place you can think of in Nicaragua. Not one single one. I’m going to move to Nicaragua! =D

Hasta pronto!
Karin

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