Granada is a grand old dame of a town – colonial architecture; multitudes of outdoor activities (including ziplining!) to keep any traveller enticed; a thriving dining scene; and a lava filled volcano – what more could we ask for?
We arrived to Granada via a shuttle organised through Bigfoot Hostel, the same group we had done our volcano boarding through, and the relatively short ride was easy and not a drama. I could get used to these short transit times – two hours versus the 10+ hour ones we had been getting accustomed to. We even got delivered right to the front door of the accommodation we had booked – a perfect little bed and breakfast.
Casa Silas B&B
Casa Silas B&B was the first sign that we were going to adore Granada – Rob, the Canadian owner greeted us like we were old friends into his beautiful home. The B&B was small and built around a lovely open courtyard with a refreshingly blue plunge pool.
It only had two bedrooms (besides Rob’s private spaces) but each bedroom was HUGE, with a beautiful ensuite bathroom, modern flushable toilet (not something we had seen very often!), and a lovely big plush bed with a super dooper air-conditioning unit.
We made good use (I am talking 3-4 times a day!) of the pool – pretty much when we woke up, when we were home in between sightseeing, when we got home from sightseeing, and even before bed most nights. We felt incredibly spoilt! Playing with the B&B’s three friendly dogs was also great fun – I am not normally a dog person, but those three little guys captured my heart with their big beautiful eyes and playfulness.
Rob’s breakfasts were also something we looked forward to each morning – breakfast burritos, French toast, frittata – a variety of delectable offerings would greet us each morning, along with fresh fruit, juice and a freshly roasted pot of coffee. We were in breakfast heaven! And it was a good thing the breakfasts were so hearty as we were pretty much on the go the entire time we were in Granada – lucky we had had our couple of days rest in Las Peñitas!
Granada Sightseeing
We spent a good day and a half getting to know the town itself by walking around, and set ourselves the challenge of visiting the four main churches on one day – I am not going to lie, Dave may have taken some convincing this was a ‘fun activity’ to do, and even then I still don’t think he entirely agreed it needed to be done! Haha.
There were two highlight moments of the churches though. At the first one, Iglesia La Merced, we paid a nominal amount (I think a dollar or so each) to climb a steep staircase to get to the roof where the bells hung. From there we had a fabulous 360 degree view of the whole town of Granada, right up to the Mombacho Volcano (where we would later zipline), and across town to the stunning yellow, red and orange Cathedral of Granada.
Iglesia la Merced
The Cathedral of Granda was the second church moment we loved – the Cathedral’s colours were so bright, we completely understood why the Granadians are so proud of this church, and why they ensure it remains in pristine condition. It is the symbol of Granada and if you were to randomly google image Granada, you would probably see photos of this beautiful church straight away.
The Cathedral of Granada
We also saw two other churches, one which was a decent thirty minute walk away from the centre of town in the sweltering heat… here are the other two churches – Guadalupe Church and San Francisco Convent as well as Dave taking a quick break while I wandered around taking photos of the local kids playing soccer out the front of the church.
Streetscapes of Granada
Granada reminded us immensely of Antigua – the same beautifully coloured pastel homes lining cobblestoned streets, beautiful churches scattered around, lots of friendly faces smiling at us, the locals going about their business, and plenty of fabulous restaurants for us to scope out.
Right out the front of the Cathedral there was a pretty little square where the locals would meet for lunch and socialising called Parque Central, and there were horse-driven carriages waiting to give tourists a tour of the town.
We considered doing this, but after all of our continual indulging, we thought the walk would do us good. It did look like great fun though, and on the whole, the horses looked well cared for and happy.
Parque Central
Lago de Apoyo
One of the things we loved most about Granada was that there was no shortage of things to do – we had four nights there and our days were full of fun and adventure. One of the days we caught a taxi (US$10) out to a freshwater lake called Lago de Apoyo, which is about a half hour drive from Granada.
This tranquil lake was formed thousands of years ago when a volcano blew its top, and a crater lake was left behind. Over time, the area has flourished into a crystal
clear lake lined with lush forest and a few eco resorts doted along its shores.
Although you can actually stay at one of these eco resorts, we were happy just going out for a daytrip, and the resorts cater for the daytripper crowd pretty well. At the resort Rob recommended (which is where our taxi took us), for just US$5 per person, we were welcome to use the resort’s facilities for as long as we wanted – including lakefront deckchairs, hammocks, floating tubes, kayaks, snorkelling gear, the list goes on!
Lucky for us, given it was the low season, we were the ONLY people at the resort so it felt like we were on our own private resort. We set up in the best deckchairs, laid out our towels, cracked open our books, ordered an icy cold beer, then looked at each other in amazement.
How do places like this exist?! It was so beautiful, so peaceful, and we had it all to ourselves!
We spent the rest of the day rotating between reading/napping in our deckchairs and hammocks; kayaking into the middle of the lake; swimming in the crystal clear water (they don’t even know how deep the lake goes, but at least a couple of hundred metres – so, pretty deep!); and feasting on a lunch made to order which we enjoyed with some more cold cervezas. Perfection.
Isletas
On one of the afternoons following our Granada-strolling, we booked a sunset tour through the hundreds of tiny (and not so tiny) islands on Lake Nicaragua right near Granada, colloquially called the “Isletas”.
We negotiated the tour agency down from US$25 per person to US$10 per person, and for a 2.5-hour tour, we thought this was about right. We met in Granada town, boarded a minivan with our fellow tourists and within 10 minutes were boarding our little cruiser boat with our lifejackets on.
The Isletas are interesting – they are a mixture of inhabited and uninhabited islands that dot the shore of Lake Nicaragua. The saying goes that there are actually 365 of the islands, one for every day of the year – but that just sounds a bit too much of a marketer’s dream and I am not sure I believe them entirely!
Regardless, the islands were pretty to cruise through, and our guide did a great job of explaining the way of life for the inhabitants of the islands – which included a mix of Nicaragua’s wealthiest and probably some of her poorest.
We learn that the family that own Toña beer (the national Nicaraguan been) have their home here, with private helicopter pad and all. Also, Nicaragua’s ex-President (a female in fact, take note my US friends!) is currently building a mansion on another isleta. So it attracts a prestigious crowd!
We stopped at an apparently vacant island, although it was covered in palm trees and jungle. It wasn’t too large, maybe 100m in diameter, maybe less. As we approached the island, our guide started handing out lollies and sweet foods to people and said we could feed them to the monkeys who live on the island… I have to admit, I was not that impressed by this. Monkeys are wild, and it was pretty obvious they shouldn’t be eating crap like sweet breads and cakes, which can only make them sick.
When we queried how long the monkeys had been there and how they got there, the guide would only say they had been there about 16 years and there was just the one large family of monkeys inhabiting the island. So let’s think about this.
A family of monkeys (or maybe just one or two monkeys) were put on a tiny island 16 years ago where they have limited food, limited space, and zero opportunity to interact in a normal way with other monkey families (tribes?), and why? Purely for the tourism factor.
As Dave and I talked this through, we both felt disgusted that the Nicaraguan Government (who own the island) would put the health and well-being of these monkeys so low, that they not only risk, but also essentially, encourage inbreeding of these monkeys, which can only enhance the potential risk to the human tourists who stupidly hand feed these animals? What a crazy, roundabout, backward way of thinking.
Sure, it might look cool in your photos to be handfeeding a wild monkey, but at what cost? I admit I did take photos, and I include a couple below, but not to gloat about the fact that we saw them, but instead to raise awareness of the stupidity that I believe this aspect of the tour encourages and promotes.
I did provide this feedback to the tour operator and maybe if enough people challenge them on their tours, and in their reviews, they might rehouse the monkeys somewhere else and people can go back to enjoying the beautiful, serenity and amazing sunsets that the isletas otherwise has to offer.
Right. Enough seriousness, and onto the beautiful photos of the isletas and their people.
We stopped off at another one of the isletas, this time one that is inhabited by a couple of families who have made a thriving business by hosting tourists for lunch, dinner and drinks.
We ordered a couple of beers and watched the world go by for the next hour or so – even seeing the mother of one of the families doing her washing old-school-style in the lake water!
Doing a sunset tour, we of course were there as the sun disappeared behind the mountain range, or given the fact it was quite cloudy, we saw the spectacular light changes as the sun set.
The contrasts of the backlit shadows of the evening, and the beautiful colours of the sunset were next level. It reminded me how much I wish I had done some proper photography education before embarking on this trip – my pics just don’t do what we are seeing justice.
The tour ended about 7:30pm and after being dropped back at the town centre, we grabbed a quick bite to eat before making our way home for a swim.
Ziplining Mombacho Volcano
Something that we had not even planning on doing in Granada until Rob mentioned it, was ziplining. We had half decided to look into it on Isla de Ometepe (our next stop) but when Rob mentioned the Mombacho Volcano Ziplining was loads better, we thought we owed it to ourselves to give it a crack!
Dave had ziplined previously in South Africa on a boys trip (although they jokingly referred to it as ‘man-sliding’ – so much more masculine apparently!), and he was pumped, but I have to admit, I was pretty nervous.
Having never done anything similar before and having a healthy fear of anything dangerous, I really was not sure what to expect as we drove up to the facility and met our guides for the day.
I should not have worried – our trio of guides, Tiger (because he has hiked all over Mombacho Volcano and knows it like a tiger knows its jungle), Ladybug (not sure why they call him Ladybug actually!) and Nicaragua (because his surname is that…?!), were top notch and within minutes their banter with us and with eachother had me completely at ease… mostly!
Ladybug’s job was purely to take my phone and film videos and take photos of us as we progressed around the course – cool, huh?! Tiger was the main guy talking us through the next line, and Nica was basically there as the safety guy to catch us at the end.
Rather than posting a whole bunch of photos for this, I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the actual video footage from some of our ziplines… here we go!
VIDEOS –>
- Dave upside down crazy monkey – tandem with guide
- Dave doing upside down crazy monkey – solo; watch how he almost goes head first into the tree at the end!
- Dave Tarzan Swing – where you jump from the last platform while the guys swing on the rope to make you bounce all over the place; and
- Kell Superman – Me being super scared to do the superman and finally doing it, and loving it!
- Me Tarzan Swing – after Tiger gave me a nudge off the edge of the platform cos I was too scared to jump! They took it a bit easier with me though so I didn’t get as much bounce, but I did still love it!
- Romantic zipline – Dave and I doing the ‘romantic line’ together where they wanted us to kiss… but with a zipline moving so fast between our heads, I am not sure this was actually possible!
All in all, this was a wicked fun day and more than worth the US$40 or so we paid, and I learnt a new Nicaraguan word (although I will no doubt spell it wrong!)… Yacachimba… which means “f**ken awesome!” I am sure I will find plenty of cause to use this phrase in the future!
Lava Lurking at Masaya Volcano
Masaya Volcano was one of the last items on our ‘must-do’ list for Granada was to visit Masaya Volcano – famous for its lava filled crater which tourists can actually look down in to. Sure, it is about 1.5km down into the crater chute, but lava is lava and it would be cool to see!
Unfortunately by the time we arrived in Granada, Masaya Volcano had been closed to the public for four months due to the erratic behaviour of the volcano, and the fact the lava had risen to within 700metres of the top of the crater, and it was deemed high risk.
However, on our last full day in Granada we checked in again with the guys we did the isletas tour with, and they told us that the government had literally that day given the a-ok for the volcano to be opened to the public again! So, we jumped in a minivan about 5:30pm with 10 or so other lucky travellers, drove for an hour or so to the Volcano (by this time it was dark), and then VOILA!
All of a sudden, as we were reaching the top of the crater where you park the car and get out, we could see an orange glare in the night, and as we realised this was the glow of the lava in the crater, we all kind of went silent as we thought about what we were about to witness.
I T W A S M I N D B L O W I N G .
Peering over the edge of this crater and seeing a sea of heaving, rolling lava was probably the most bizarre and awe inspiring experience of the trip this far. Despite the lava being about 77 metres down the crater chute, you could HEAR the power in the lava as the huge waves of it crashed back and forth within the bowels of the earth.
It actually felt and sounded like we were listening to the ocean in a storm, the waves and crashing was so loud! And looking down on the lava… man, I cannot explain how powerful and majestic the lava looked. It was awe-inspiring, totally freaking yacachimba!
WATCH VIDEO HERE –-> Volcan Masaya Lava Crater
I am so glad that by serendipity we got to witness the once in a lifetime opportunity to see and hear real lava in a real, true blue, active volcano… it was humbling and definitely gave me another one of those spine tingling moments where I have to punch myself that we are actually so fortunate to see everything we have seen so far on this trip.
So yep, I guess you could say that Granada delivered on a fabulous, action packed few days, and I didn’t even go into detail about the many amazing meals we had! Although I cannot resist sharing the menu from the classy little French bistro where we got a three course dinner for US$12 each… I know, right?!!
Our next stop is Isla de Ometepe, an amazing island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua formed when, you guessed it, a couple of volcanos erupted under the surface of the lake, and formed the island which now stands with two volcanos on it today! If you thought Granada had outdoor activities in spades, wait til you hear what we got up to on Ometepe!
Until then, this is PPG, signing off!