El Shopping Spree
This week took us away from our normal routine of sleeping, eating, and learning Spanish. On Tuesday afternoon, we took a little tour of a nearby town with a volunteer organization called Esperanza. The organization was founded about 8 or 9 years ago to help in the schools. They provide both monetary and volunteer assistance. For example, they pay a local nurse to do weekly rounds at the schools in the poorer communities, they sponsor some kids to go to high school, they work in the schools themselves tutoring children, teaching hygiene, providing physical therapy, setting up libraries etc. Esperanza requires volunteers be here at least two months. They have a few volunteer houses where the volunteers live. I think there are about 35-40 people volunteering right now. We’re thinking about volunteering here or somewhere at some point. We walked back to Granada from the little village and were sweaty, dirty and tired, but it was a great change of pace.
On Saturday, we joined up with Femke (Dutch student) and rented a car and head out of Granada to some neighboring towns, known as los Pueblos Blancos. They used to be strikingly white from the materials they were made of, but now there is no evidence of the white. We visited Diriomo which is about 15min outside of Granada, and the birthplace of our hostess Maria Lucila. The town is know to have the best cajetas, which is a sweet paste the consistency of mashed potatos. (see photo) Cajetas are made in many different flavors, like coconut, chocolate, mango, etc. Our hostess makes and sells cajetas at our house in Granada. It is quite a long and laborious process, that involves Julio stirring a giant vat of stuff for 2-3 hours on end. Maria Lucila has the secret recipes from her grandmother from Diriomo, so she advertises that the cajetas are from Diriomo on the sign on the front of our house.
 |
| Cajeta display case at home |
The town of Diriomo is also known for their natural healers and witches. We have’t done the test to see if Maria Lucila weighs as much as a duck (tip from Monty Python) but we’re pretty sure she isn’t a witch.
After Diriomo, we went to Daria, then onto San Juan del Oriente which is a town known for its pottery. There are dozens of places that make and sell ceramics. We had a great time visiting all the craftspeoples’ houses and seeing all the different styles. Pottery isn’t exactly an easy thing to purchase when you’re a backpacker but we all picked up a few things anyway. We put San Jual del Oriente on our list of places to return to just before we leave to go home.
After the San Juan shopping spree, we headed to Catarina which is know as the place to buy garden plants. We weren’t in the market for garden plants, but there is a look-out from Catarina over a lagoon called Laguna de Apoyo (see photo).
This week took us away from our normal routine of sleeping, eating, and learning Spanish. On Tuesday afternoon, we took a little tour of a nearby town with a volunteer organization called Esperanza. The organization was founded about 8 or 9 years ago to help in the schools. They provide both monetary and volunteer assistance. For example, they pay a local nurse to do weekly rounds at the schools in the poorer communities, they sponsor some kids to go to high school, they work in the schools themselves tutoring children, teaching hygiene, providing physical therapy, setting up libraries etc. Esperanza requires volunteers be here at least two months. They have a few volunteer houses where the volunteers live. I think there are about 35-40 people volunteering right now. We’re thinking about volunteering here or somewhere at some point. We walked back to Granada from the little village and were sweaty, dirty and tired, but it was a great change of pace.
On Saturday, we joined up with Femke (Dutch student) and rented a car and head out of Granada to some neighboring towns, known as los Pueblos Blancos. They used to be strikingly white from the materials they were made of, but now there is no evidence of the white. We visited Diriomo which is about 15min outside of Granada, and the birthplace of our hostess Maria Lucila. The town is know to have the best cajetas, which is a sweet paste the consistency of mashed potatos. (see photo) Cajetas are made in many different flavors, like coconut, chocolate, mango, etc. Our hostess makes and sells cajetas at our house in Granada. It is quite a long and laborious process, that involves Julio stirring a giant vat of stuff for 2-3 hours on end. Maria Lucila has the secret recipes from her grandmother from Diriomo, so she advertises that the cajetas are from Diriomo on the sign on the front of our house.
 |
| Laguna de Apoyo (click for more photos) |
The lagoon is a great place for swimming. We had lunch at the look-out, then piled back into our air-conditioned rental and headed to another town, Masatepe. Masatepe is know as a furniture making town. We checked out a few rocking chairs just for fun and then opted to continue on to Masaya, our ultimate destination and hammock headquarters.
Masaya is a fairly large town and has a touristy marketplace with the crafts from the near-by towns. We had trouble finding the marketplace since the streets aren’t well marked. We were stopped by the police at one of their checkpoints. They were trying to convince us that we needed to pay them for some fictitious infraction. They claimed a few things, one of which was that we didn’t have a “triangle” which is the thing you put out behind your car when you breakdown so that people can see you. We pulled ours out of the trunk and refused to give them any money. They waved us on after awhile.
Femke was on a mission to find the perfect hammock. We searched the market and then decided to go to where they are made, which was just west of the market. There were about a dozen or more homes where hammocks were being made. After looking at nearly every hammock in every home, Femke found one and we also purchased one. So we ended up with two things that are not easy to travel with, pottery and a giant hammock. We are hoping that Maria Lucila will store our purchases here for us to pick up on our way back through before we leave.
We finished off the day by returning to Granada and having dinner at a bar/restaruant called Bar Bohemia run by a Danish lady named Heidi. Several of the real-estate / builders were there as well having drinks. It is a relaxed place where many expats hang-out. We had margaritas to wash down the day of shopping.
Tags: Catarina, Granada, Laguna Apoyo, Masaya, Travel
staceye