Another Adventure - Granada & Mombacho

We took it pretty easy yesterday because of the toll Friday’s adventures took on our feet and energy levels – smoothies, naps, a quick visit to the fire station and a lot of lazing around. Although the day was pretty uneventful, I did take quite a few photos that you can see here.

Because we spent yesterday recuperating, we were up bright and early this morning for our day trip to Granada. Jason’s firefighting recruits had their final exams today so he couldn’t come with us but he did join us for breakfast at Terry’s Diner. The owner – Terry, in case you couldn’t guess – is a man from California who’s made it his personal mission to provide American-style food in Jinotepe to those who are missing it. His menu has chicken wings, burgers, homestyle potatoes and two pages of breakfasts, which is why we were really there. Jenny had the strawberry waffles that could have come directly out of the kitchen at Smitty’s, but I decided on the banana pancakes because the bananas here are incredibly sweet and delicious. Who knew bananas had so much flavour?! The short stack was amazing, though impossible to finish.

After our hearty breakfast, we set out to Granada on the minibus. It was our first adventure without José or Margui but I think we did okay! Granada is supposed to be the oldest [continuously inhabited] city in the [new] world [that’s still in its original location]. It was founded in 1524 used to be one of the wealthiest cities in the Americas because it’s connected to the Atlantic via its enormous lake (Lago de Nicaragua) and the Rio San Juan. Apparently, this also made it attractive to pirates, who pillaged it several times in the 1600s. Because of the pirates, nationalist uprisings in the 1800s and fights between Granada and Léon, the city has been rebuilt a few times. It’s known for its beautiful colonial-style buildings, lively atmosphere and majestic churches, though Léon is the city that’s really famous for those.

We didn’t start in Granada, though; we asked the minibus to drop us off near Mombacho Volcano. There are two volcanos in our area and Mombacho is the inactive one, so we didn’t want to spend our money hiking all over it when we’re going to be seeing lava at Masaya Volcano soon. Instead, we were there to go flying through the jungle on ziplines! I forget to get a brochure from the place we went to, but they had something like eleven ziplines in their canopy tour, the highest one of which was something like 150 meters up. Our guides were super friendly and all of the equipment was in really good shape, so we got to relax and focus on being “Superchicas”!

After the canopy tour, we were determined to find Café Luna, which – according to Jason – is on an organic coffee farm where we could get free samples. After asking a few times at the canopy tour place, we finally discovered that Jason had mixed his names up and we actually wanted to go two kilometers up the road to Café Las flores.

Two kilometers, my foot. We walked straight up the steepest cobblestone road I’ve ever seen for at least half an hour in the scorching heat because we wanted some of the outstanding coffee and we figured it had to be just around the corner… When it started misting, we were appreciative at first because it made the hike more bearable; when the torrential downpour began and a pickup came up behind us, we didn’t think twice about jumping in the back! We’re pretty sure we never would have made it to the coffee place on our own steam because we rode for at least ten minutes in the back of that truck, and the incline was enough to make the engine whine all the way up.

We did eventually get to the top, albeit completely drenched. The coffee was everything we thought it would be and there were tons of flowers for me to take pictures of. (I actually made a whole album of plant photos, which you can check out here.) We met some people from Texas there who said that they’d gone on a boat tour on the lake (known as el Mar Dulce, the freshwater sea) and seen a whole bunch of monkeys! One of the guys showed us a video on his iPhone where one of the monkeys actually hopped into the boat and sat on a woman’s lap, which was jarring because there was a monkey hanging out with people but also because I haven’t even seen an iPhone in weeks. I kind of miss mine…

Some incredibly kind Spaniards let us hitch a ride back down the hill in the back of their pickup and we arrived at the main road just as a school bus headed to Granada pulled up. All in all, the trip between Jinotepe and Granada cost just us over a dollar.

Once in Granada, we mostly just wandered and took a whole bunch of photos. The city really is gorgeous; those Spanish Conquistadors really knew how to build things. The churches, though a little run down, are breathtaking and the people were also really friendly. One of the things I love most about Jinotepe is how colourful the buildings are, but they’re truly incredible in Granada! I love the way that the entire block is actually one block of buildings, stuck together and painted in the wildest colours. We weren’t sure if we’d be able to see the city properly in the time we had if we walked, so we went on a little carriage ride. Our guide, who said he’s studying history, was really wonderful. He told us about some of the churches, the 1991 earthquake that destroyed the hospital and even the soap factory owned by relatives of the people who founded the Conservative Party. He even dropped us off at the minibus station so we could catch one back to Jinotepe in time to make some of Jenny’s Korean rice concoctions for supper!