Monday 19th August
Not much to say about this day as I'm writing it a long time after and it was a travel day.
We were awake at about 4am today so that we could catch the 5am bus. We were out and waiting by quarter to and it arrived right on time. We spent 2 hours on that bus before getting off at the change over. We were there 2 hours early so walked to McDonald's where we had breakfast and sat for a while before waiting outside for the next bus.
That arrived at about 9.15 and was quite organised as you have to book onto it to use it using passport details and things like that. Overall it was a nice bus, the seats were comfortable but unfortunately we were sat right at the back and the toilet stank! That and the hot air made for a bit of an uncomfortable hour to the border but it was ok.
Once at the border we weren't through the process of filling out paperwork to get across and getting our passports checked. Then it was onto the bus again to go 5 minutes up the road to go through it all again plus take all our baggage off. I'm not sure what the point was because all we did was stand in the sun for 20 minutes to be told by a guy we looked ok and to put our bags back into the bus. The whole thing took about an hour before we were back on our way. It was around an hour and a half from there to Granada. We didn't see much of the scenery due to a film being on but what I did see I liked. There were big pointy volcanoes and a very laid back kind of atmosphere, more so than what we felt in Costa Rica.
We arrived at our drop off point and caught a taxi with 2 German girls into the centre. Our hostel is really nice, a good reception desk with information, a nice courtyard and sofas with a little bar, and we have our own room with a shared bathroom outside. We spent a little while settling in, Liam skyped a friend and chatted to the owner about a few things because he was from Liverpool and then we went out for food.
It's a lovely feel to the place, quite colonial with pastel coloured buildings and nice little streets. We walked to the Main Street where there are lots of different restaurants and settled for a random one about half way down. It was the first proper food we had had in days and we really enjoyed it, the moon was out bright and full and it was just nice to watch people to by and having to say no thanks a bunch of times to people trying or sell stuff.
After that we wandered back and both had the showers we desperately needed before I attempted to write some blogs....days behind.
Tuesday 20th August
Writing this on the 4th september so might lack some details. It was very hot again in the night, first thing I did was have a shower. I seem to be having around 3 showers a day lately, all in cold water because there is no hot but cold water does me just fine in the heat. Liam is a it more tolerant of being sticky than me, plus he's a baby when it comes to the cold showers.
After we had breakfast it was good to walk round and see people's homes, they keep doors open so you can have a nosy as you walk past. They all have large open living spaces with people in rocking chairs outside. All of the houses are painted different colours, you have purples, yellows, pinks, greens. All of them look lovely with nicely oranges black iron bars across the windows and big doors. There are horse and carts all around which the locals use as taxis and the tourists use as a means to see the city. However the horses look so skinny that we would never dream of getting in one despite enjoying watching them as they trot past.
We visited the church in the main square, which is a massive building painted yellow. It was a pale green inside with big white washed arches and lovely stained glass windows. They had very bizarre tacky statues with toy sheep and stuff that you would maybe see at a primary school nativity play but without sounding too disrespectful they seem to like their tacky stuff around here. We walked up the winding stone steps all the way up to the bell tower which had a wonderful view of the square and the rest of the town. There was a couple up there who rang the bell, then asked is if we would perhaps do a yoga pose together for their album. They were yoga teachers on holiday getting people they met to do yoga poses. As we were getting into position Liam grabbed onto the bell rope but didn't ring it just for balance, and right at that moment a head popped up and started shouting at him for ringing the bell. We wernt about to go down for that so we said it wasn't us and luckily the yoga pair owned up!
We walked to another church at the other end of the town which was very run down the outside but still had a look about it that made it interesting to look at. It looked old and full of history and was actually quite nice inside with high ceilings and all the things a church tends to have for people to go and pray. Unfortunately I couldn't tell you the names of these places or any of the history.
We also visited the chocolate " museum" which was a combination of things really. It had a spa area, I think it was a b&b and it has a chocolate making workshop ( which we didn't do because it was expensive). The museum was just a series of information boards around the outer walls of the complex with the history of chocolate. We spent a long time in there reading and I took a photo of each board but I really can't be bothered to look back through the photos to find the information and put it down in this blog.
From what I can remember from the boards the earliest record of chocolate was in the Mayan time period, where it began to be cultivated form the native cocoa trees. The trees were worshipped by the maya and they think that cocoa is actually derived from Mayan words meaning god food or similar connotations which the Europeans changed from " cacao". The word chocolate is also derived from the Aztecs original name for the drink which the first Europeans couldn't pronounce properly.
The Mayans used to drink it cold with spices, but it was reserved only for the very rich people or people of high religious status. It was also used in their many ceremonies and by healers for its many healing properties. They used to trade it with the Aztecs in the north, and it began to be used as a currency and a form of tax because the beans were so highly prized. It was prized more highly than any precious metals so they would dry the beans out for massive storage or transportation.
Once the early Spanish had discovered the cocoa they too loved it and took it over to Europe where only the very rich could afford to drink it. It was only found in Spain for some time before word spread and it was being drank my high horns all over Europe. Only when the industrial revolution began did they manage to start making it into a solid, and because of the mass production it was then cheaper and easier to access- that's when the general population began to eat it. Different kinds of chocolate began to surface with different flavours, milk or condensed milk being added etc, and the demand for cocoa was greater than ever. It started to be advertised as this wonderful and magical food, and the adverts were especially aimed at women and children.
The Europeans began using slaves to farm cocoa and set up plantations in places like Africa as well to meet demands. After some time a couple of people, one of them being Cadbury if I remember rightly started advocating for fair rights and an end to slavery and thus began the fair trade kind of stuff. I also read that Hershey's chocolate is actually a product of the Quaker group movement, because of its medicinal properties the Quakers began a campaign of trying to convert alcoholics into chocoholics instead ( not worded like that in the museum but that's the basic concept), and they started their own branding which evolved into Hershey's chocolate.
I love chocolate so loved reading all about it.
At about 3pm we got picked up for the tour we had booked on to to see the islets. There were 2 other English girls on the tour as well who we spoke to for the majority of the trip.
It rained on the boat so we got soaked and couldn't really see that much! The guide wasnt very good but we were prepared for that as we had read they don't tend to be very informative here on the tours. There are something like 300 odd islands mostly inhabited by rich Nicaraguans so you get to see their expensive houses... But at the risk of sounding stuck ip they really went anything special by our standards even though the guide seemed to think they were amazing! i suppose when you've recently been to LA and seen the mansions there it becomes hard to beat. There was one called Monkey island, where the owner put a bunch of monkeys on it and goes across to feed them every day. It was a bit random and seemed odd to me but seems popular with the locals and tourists. You don't get off the boat or anything as the island is very small but you just watch them. When we asked what they're fed the guide just said "cookies" which was even weirder!
We went through areas with thousands of midges, you couldn't see there were so many sometimes, it was like an Egyptian plague but was different so not a bad thing at all. We went past little fishing boats and watched the locals going about their daily lives, hanging their washing up and catching fish which is always interesting to watch. We like waving to them, 9 times out of 10 you get a wave back.
Part of the reason we opted for the tour was due to the food included, which is advertised as a lovely restaurant with a big menu to choose from. Liam and the girls went for burgers, I decided to go for shrimp. I wish I hadn't because I was up most of the night with a very poorly tummy! I think this must be the only time I've been ill from food for the whole year so I've been lucky. Also our hostel is very nice so luckily we could sit and chill out for the evening with drinks we could buy cheap from there,reading and relaxing close to the toilet!
