Wednesday 21st August
Written on the 9th september. With the combination of terrible heat and my dodgy stomach I probably had about 4 hours sleep but Liam slept ok. We decided to go to the same place for breakfast,again, because Liam loved the bagels and eggs so much. After that we managed to find the “bus station” ( if that's what you can call it) and communicate where we wanted to go in our limited Spanish abilities. Limited Spanish seemed good enough though because we ended up jumping onto a rickety looking bus and going towards where we wanted to go.
Outside of the city it reminds us a bit of Cambodia because of the animals and makeshift houses everywhere. The big difference was the amount of horses everywhere, people riding them and also just standing around on the roads. A lot of them look like they need a good meal in them.
We just about managed to get off at the right place, bought our tickets and walked up to the museum. It was a nice walk up, looking out for the native birds and looking at all the lava formations just off the track.
The museum was good, with lots information about how volcanoes form, the different kinds, and why there are so many in Central America. We then went up in a car, which was a bit of a stressful 5 minutes because the man kept trying to talk to us in Spanish and we didn’t understand him. It was nothing important, just general chit chat, which was confusing because he could clearly see we had no idea, he must do it to entertain himself in a boring job! After the longest 5 minutes ever we got to the crater which was really cool. You couldn't see too far inside but all the sulphuric smoke was bellowing out and it stank! There wernt many people around at all but there were plenty of people who worked there and they were very strict how close you got, also making you wear hard hats to walk around due to it being active and occasionally spurting bits of rock out.
You could pay for a horse trek around the crater but we opted to walk, it was really good, you could see for miles and miles and see the other volcano nearby called mombacho. There were loads of dragon flies and butterflies everywhere it was like something out of a film in some parts. We could see the smoke coming from the crater from where we had been standing before, a big ominous cloud hovering over the crater.
We went the wrong way at one point, there wernt many signs and although we thought we had understood the woman who spoke to us we obviously got it a bit wrong and still went the wrong way. It began to get a bit harder to walk due to the grasses being longer and there being more rock. We got to a point where it was just clear we had gone wrong and had to turn back but I'm glad we did it, we got to see a couple more craters or what looked like them anyway, with dense bush all around and big eagles flying overhead.
When we had finished there we somehow made our way to the market on the public bus that we got onto at the side of the road, something which we had wanted to go and see. It was a total let down though unfortunately, it was a very dodgy place where we got stared at more than usual- and we get stared at a lot! The little camera bag was getting a lot of looks too so I didn't feel comfortable taking it out to take photos, and it was generally just a bit of a crappy market. It was very smelly, grim, and we didn't feel safe. It took a while trying to find our way back to the bus area through the maze of stalls and people. We didn't feel it was a good idea to ask a lot of people but we struck up the courage to ask people who seemed a bit more official looking, and tried to follow their directions in Spanish. We finally found the bus we needed and sat down to wait until it was full - they don't tend to have times here they just go when it's full. People were coming on and selling bits of food, shouting things and walking up and down the aisle. Liam bought a couple of small bags of crisps from one of the little girls for us to eat on the way back.
The travel back was good, I enjoyed watching out of the window at all the people doing what we would never dream of at home. I realised that I stopped describing a lot of stuff we see on a daily basis because to us it's normal but at home it isn't. Several people sharing bikes, carrying chairs and all sorts of furniture on their heads on bicycles, every kind of odd thing really which I get tired of spending time writing down on the ipad!
Once back to Granada were going to eat out but decided it was cheaper to eat at the hotel in the end so went straight back at about 4.30pm to eat, figure out the next plan of action and relax. It was a good job we didn't go out because my stomach was still not feeling very good most of the evening and I was erupting like the volcano we’d just been on.
