Granada & Ometepe
After our exciting ferry journey over from Utila to La Ceiba it was on the bus for us. Down to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, and then the following day over the border into Nicaragua and Granada.
Tegucigalpa is a dump, we got there at about 6pm, found a hotel room and wandered to the Parque Central, nothing special here. It felt dirty and not particularly safe. We weren’t there for long though as we had to be at the bus terminal at 5.30am to buy a ticket to Managua (the capital of Nicaragua) on a Trans Nica bus that left at 6am. We were slightly worried about being able to get a ticket as we knew the later Tica bus was full, but there was lots of room & it was a painless journey.
Finally arrived in Managua at around 12.30pm and headed straight for the collectivo minibuses to Granada – didn’t want to hang around in Managua, very like Teguicigalpa – to be avoided unless absolutely necessary!
Granada is another colonial town, that a lot of people rave about. We were disappointed, it seemed dirty and uncared for, but then we were comparing it to Antigua, which we had enjoyed. I guess it was more real, but we were, at that point, regretting having left Utila and wished we were still diving. We were so taken by the place that we didn’t even take a single photo!
I think we were feeling down due to the fact we only had four days left before our flight to Madrid and then onto home. We weren’t travelling on the local buses, only the speed-through the country expensive buses and didn’t have time to see the real country, just a quick stop in gringo hangouts.
Having said that, we felt better the next morning as we headed to Moyogalpa on Isla de Ometepe (volcanic island on Lago Nicaragua – the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world), sitting on a chicken bus which wasn’t going anywhere fast.
Ometepe is described as an “ecologicial jewel” – we didn’t really see it that way. It is bascially an easy way to see rural Nicaraguan life. There is supposed to be a lot of wildlife around, but, apart from hearing a distant howler monkey & seeing a couple of birds we didn’t see anything at all. I think they have moved away from the busy, populated, areas (who blames them!)
We took a local bus around the island and went up to San Ramon waterfall, which was a nice (if very hot and humid) walk. The walk to the waterfall took us up part of the smaller volcano making up the island. We weren’t inspired to climb to the top of either of the two volcanoes – they were covered in cloud the whole time and, having spoken to someone who did climb, there was no view at the top either, just lots of cloud! After feeling down in Granada, we felt more positive leaving Ometepe, and were glad we went, as we headed towards Costa Rica and ever closer to our flight home.
Tags: Granada, Holidays, Nicaragua, Travel, Travel
Jenni
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