I now know what it's like to be a gypsy!! Living out of a suitcase and moving every couple of days!! It's the one job I hate doing...repacking my case!!
This morning we packed up again and said goodbye to a jammed packed couple of days in Leon! I'm sure we have all had our volcano fix....well at least for a couple of days that is.
The entire group opted to pay an additional $9 today so that we could get a private minivan transfer to our next destination. I know what you are thinking... We are all a pack of princesses, trust me we're not!! It's just the thought of having to catch a couple of chicken buses, plus a 20min walk with our luggage, when half of the tour group have 'stomach issues' I think you are getting my drift!! It also gave us a chance to stop in Managua the capital of Nicaragua. Our tour guide gave us a run down on Managua, and that we need to stay as a group and protect each other....so one of the guys decided to read his lonely planet guide. The first sentence for Managua...."Managua is a shambles". Okay, where the hell are we going???
So we make it to the city square and we all pile out of the van. The first thing I see is a little boy carrying around a big bag containing quite a few bottles of bottled water. He was trying to sell it. I didn't need any water, so instead I gave him my popcorn that I had bought for the volcano tour that I didn't end up eating. At least he will have something in his stomach this afternoon.
We had a look around the city square, sticking pretty close to each other!! No one was volunteering to be that one person lagging behind as bait. There were a few cops around, so that made me feel somewhat safer. We looked at a few buildings, one of which was a church that was destroyed in an earthquake. Even though it was destroyed decades ago, it's still waiting to be restored.
We then jumped on the bus again, and made our way to Granada. This is such a picturesque town. Lots of beautiful colourful colonial buildings.
We soon stopped out the front of our hotel!! Now there's no missing this hotel, as it is bright purple!! Our room is really cool!! We have a loft, with a double bed up there and two single beds down stairs. We were also lucky enough to get a bathroom door that actually closes. I think every other room has saloon style doors on the bathrooms!! At least Joyce won't be going blind on this leg of the tour!!
We quickly dropped our bags off, and got together our laundry!! Yay it's laundry day!! I start to get a bit nervous when I'm down to my second last pair of undies, even more so with the stomach bugs going around at the moment!!
We then started our orientation walk, where our tour guide pretty much just shows us where the main things in town are... Eg banks, supermarket, land marks etc. We dropped off our laundry and then a few of us girls went out for a banana smoothie!! Yummy!!!
In pretty much every town we have been to, there are alway people wanting to sell things to you, and Granada is no different. It's always different things in each town...and there's always 10 people selling the same thing. Sometimes it's bracelets other times it's whistles.....today it was sunglasses!! Which is fine, they need to make money somehow. However, every single one of us had sunglasses on our heads, and yet he was still asking if we wanted to buy sunglasses. Ok.... I don't think he's very observant!