Just hanging out in Granada
Off to Granada, probably the most popular tourist destination in Nicaragua, which usually means the town has been, or is starting to become very westernized…1st world-ish, with coffee shops, little boutique clothing stores and the like. Most of these places are run by gringos, so it’s not even locals making money off of them. Anyway, I decided to splurge a bit on my hostel, paying $6, nearly double the going rate, just for the use of a pool. Well, they had free internet, coffee, and 10-minute phone calls to anywhere in the world as well, which was all cool. The town was cute, though I really wasn’t as impressed with it as all these people said (which is probably why…hype it up and it never lives up to it). Within Nicaragua there has always been a sort of competitive vibe between the cities of Leon and Granada (sometimes getting bloody), and it seems to have spread to the traveler scene as well (oh, I didn’t like Leon…I thought Granada was a lot nicer). Personally, I enjoyed Leon more, but these sentiments have everything to do with experiences and just however my mood was at the time. Anyway, I met some interesting people that day…some kids screaming Gringa! Gringa! at me, wanting me to take their picture. And another. ¡Un más! ¡Otro! And more and more. Another little man cracked me up by asking, while I was eating lunch “Do you want to buy some cheese?”, carefully pronounced in English. I gave a polite no thank you, but couldn’t help but wonder what this man thought I would do with this cheese, like where would I put it? What need do I have for this perishable food item in a hot, humid climate? Another woman, after asking me for money three times (first with hand gestures, then in Spanish, then in English), well, after the third time I said no, I do believe I heard her say “Fuck ’em”. And my favorite was some guy who offered me a duck. Well, maybe he offered me a duck. He said something, to which I replied no (a standard reply to someone saying something to me on the street that I didn’t understand), and he tried to hand me something. It was a little baby duck.
Anyway, I eventually ran into the Chris and Laura and Dan from Leon. They had grouped up with a pair of Irish boys (Richie and Philip, who I totally offended by asking if he was Scottish, but I really couldn’t understand a word he said, as if he was Scottish, and it all made matters worse when I told him my last name was O’Connor), a Kiwi guy Baden, and a guy from Philly, Aaron. Later on, Regina, a girl from Germany joined us. We were a good strong team, but really had lots of fun, just doing nothing, really. The Irish guys just cracked me up (Phil got over the whole Scottish thing), Baden had me rolling in fits of laughter with his repeated casual mispronounciation of Nicaragua in his Kiwi accent (Ní-ca-ra-goó-a, with a long i…is this at all funny to you?), and Aaron’s thirst for perversion could give Rukman a run for his money. We tried one day to go on a canopy tour, where you zip down this wires hung over the jungle, but it didn’t work out. That and we were nearly run off the road by a herd of bulls. Good thing we were just walking.
I went off by myself for a day, to go out to this lagoon in this old volcanic crater. I had a nice day, just kayaked around this lake, and got a little sunburned. Lee was so good to remind me that it’s in the 30’s-40’sF there in Chicago as I mentioned my sunburn…it’s hard to remember that sometimes, as the weather is consistently in the 70s and 80s, and is very humid. Maybe it gets in the 90s, too. I don’t know, but it does stay really humid. Anyway, on the way back from the lagoon, when I got on the bus, I found the whole middle aisle completely full with huge palm tree leaves that people were taking back to their village or home to be used for a roof. Since most people don’t have cars here, they rely on buses for all transport, even when having to move such large items. Although I haven’t seen any chickens, or any other animals for that matter, people load all sorts of stuff on these buses, and no one seems to mind. I mean, can you imagine if someone tried to load all the materials for their new roof on a CTA bus (be it palm tree branchs or proper shingles)? Or how about even a mattress, for that matter.
The night before we left, some of us just hung out at the hostel a bit, drinking some rum, playing cards, when two older men (travelers) joined us. These two silver-haired guys were from Utah, though the one was originally from Germany. They made it a point to let us know they weren’t mormon, and went so far as to bash the Mormons in every way. Chris deemed them to be perverts…the rest of us weren’t paying that much attention to them because we were playing cards, a game called Shithead. However, there is something perhaps a little strange about older people staying at hostels…sometimes they’re cool, but sometimes they’re a little creepy, and you just wonder what they’re all about. Anyway, Chris has an amazing knack for asking slightly oddball questions. During a lapse of silence (which didn’t bother those of us playing cards), Chris turned toward the German guy, a man of very few words, and, in her slow, drawn-out British accent asked him, “Do you play Shithead?” The rest of us just looked at each other and burst out into uncontrollable laughter. The odds that this man, probably in his 50s, maybe 60s, who’s lived the majority of his life in Germany has even heard of this utterly sophisticated game of Shithead are about zero. Anyway, I’m laughing while I write this…and I just wanted to share that with you. Perhaps you’ve found it slightly funny.
Tags: Nicaragua, Tag Index
Tania
November 22nd, 2005 at 9:27 pm
hehe
haha