Walking tour of Granada and a boat ride

Many interesting things to see around Granada and here's a glimpse of what we saw as we walked around this morning.

The entrance to this building, which is from the 1500s, is the only thing that was saved.  The rest of the building has been renovated.

We are headed to the cathedral to climb up the cathedral tower.

We stood for a while and watched these guys lift the fruit up to the top.  They are constructing an altar for the beatification of the pope and will put up a screen where they can televise the proceedings for the people here.

Looking out at the plaza from the Cathedral tower.

Another view of Granada from up on top.

This intersection was BUSY!!!

This church looked worn on the outside, but inside it was very pretty.

It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do for a building.  And those horse and carts are used quite a bit in the city.

It seemed like this family was coming in to return bottles and maybe pick up more supplies.

Some pictures of colorful buildings

This building is waiting its turn to be given a little attention.

The blue building is our hotel - Casa San Francisco.  It is amazing how beautiful a lot of these places are when you look in their doors.  From the outside, it's hard to tell what beauty lies inside.

The picture itself didn't come out that good, but it gives you an idea.  This is how our hotel looks inside when you stand at the door looking in.  You can see the pretty gardens to the back.

We saw several women carrying big loads on their heads without using their hands.

So, that was our morning.  In the afternoon right before lunch, we took a boat ride on Lake Nicaragua, which we weren't sure if it'd be worth it or not.  We actually found a guy in the plaza who would take us on the lake this morning, but we told him if we decided to go, we'd meet up with him just a little before lunch.   When we were ready to go, we went back out to the plaza and he was there, ready to take us.  From the plaza we caught a taxi to the boat launch where we got on a boat that was COVERED!   Which was great, because the day was pretty hot.  We are glad we took this boat ride as it was very interesting.

This is the guy we met in the plaza, who was our tour guide on the boat ride.  His name is Hector.

This is how it looked as our boat was leaving the launch area.

There are over 300 islands in Lake Nicaragua.

This island is for sale - a steal at $100,000.00

Then, after people buy an island, they put rock walls all around the perimeter of their island, then fill it in with dirt so that they have a good foundation to build a home.

There are many islands with very fancy homes.

More islands....

On our way back, you could see the mountain range where the Mombacho volcano is.

A nice big Ceiba tree on the lake.

After touring the islands of Lake Nicaragua, we had a nice lunch at Kathy's Waffle House.  I had pecan waffles and Guillermo had a pastrami sandwich.

In the early evening, we went back out to the plaza to see how the altar was coming along.  It ended up looking very nice.  Hanging in front are several varieties of bananas, cacao pods, coconuts, watermelon.

As we were walking along, we noticed this girl just standing there hiding her head.  But looking at her doing that, and wondering what that was all about, made us aware of what was behind her.  Another fine example of the beauty that can be found inside the doorways of some of the homes in Granada.  The girl stayed that way long after we left!

We thought this courtyard was very pretty, it was inside a business complex.

We walked around quite a bit waiting for a restaurant we wanted to eat at to open.  We walked all the way down the pedestrian walkway and back, got to the restaurant to find it was still closed - 15 minutes after it was supposed to be open.  Some people hanging around there said it was going to open this evening at 7, instead of 6.  So we decided to go somewhere else, since we wanted to eat early.  We found ourselves, again, on the pedestrian walkway and walked practically down to the end of it - again - to eat at a pizza place.  It was ok there, the pizza was good and we had a great table outside, but there were smokers and a weird smell in the air every now and then.  

We walked back to the plaza after we ate to see what was going on there and it was so packed around that altar that we decided to not even attempt to maneuver through those crowds.  Instead, we stopped at a restaurant by our hotel and sat at another nice outside table and had an ice cream.  It was a very nice end to our stay there in Nicaragua.  A funny thing we saw twice as we were sitting there was a bus they call a Pachanga bus (party bus).  It's an old school bus with all the windows removed so that it is open air, and there's a DJ set up in the back.  You can hear that bus coming from a mile away and when it passes it is so funny to hear it and see all the people.

Granada, Nicaragua

Another early morning, because our plan today is to take a bus to Nicaragua - to the city of Granada.  The bus was scheduled to leave a nearby hotel at 8am, so we missed out on our own hotel's breakfast so that we could be there in time for the bus.  Guillermo left our hotel at 6am to return our rental car and when he got back, he stopped by a taxi place and asked a driver to come by our hotel at 7:15.

We placed our extra luggage in the hotels area where they hold luggage and at 7:15 there was no taxi driver anywhere so we decided to walk over to the hotel where we would catch our bus.  It wasn't too long of a walk but carrying our backpacks in the hot sun makes it seem like they get heavier and heavier with each step.

We got to the hotel in good time (we were supposed to be there at 7:30) and were wishing that we had at least stopped by a McDonald's or something to pick up a quick breakfast.  We got a table outside the hotel and waited.  And kept waiting.  8am came and went.  Around 8:30, one of the ladies there said she received a message that the bus is held up in traffic and will be an hour or more late.  We seized that opportunity to run over to McDonalds to get some breakfast.

The bus finally showed up around 9:45 and once it was there, it was rush rush rush - get on, get your seat and get going!!!  Which was good, really, since we had lost so much time.  Since the park where Fernando works is on the way to Nicaragua, when we passed by Santa Rosa National Park, we looked in that direction knowing that he was over there somewhere.

When we got close to the Costa Rica/Nicaragua border there was a LONG (and I do mean long) line of trucks waiting to cross the border.  They were in the right lane and I guess no one else has to wait in that line because our bus (and others) got in the left lane and started passing up those trucks.  Very dangerous move that is.  And there was one point where there was a curve and all of a sudden there was a truck barreling towards the bus!!!  It was scary, and where that truck went to maneuver around our bus I have no idea.  How we got out of that one is amazing to me.  We couldn't understand what all the trucks were doing just sitting in that right lane.  Some of the drivers were standing outside their trucks on the side of the road, some drivers were sleeping underneath their trucks right on the street, and many of the trucks have hammocks strung up underneath their trucks and we could see lots of truck drivers lounging away in their hammocks.

The border crossing was a wild mass of people from various buses trying to get clearance to leave Costa Rica.  We also had to exit the bus to deal with the authorities, but it was fairly easy for us and soon we all were back on our bus and driving the few feet across into Nicaragua, where we had to exit the bus once again.  Here is was even more confusing.  Masses of people everywhere and if it hadn't been for this one lady from the bus that befriended us while we were standing around, it wouldn't have been as easy as she made it for us.  She knew the procedure well, since she makes the trip often, so when she said to stay in place or move over here or whatever, we followed her lead.
Here is a picture of us with her, and also with Bjorn who we befriended at the hotel in Liberia where we were waiting to catch the bus.

Bjorn, Guillermo, Marta

And now me with Bjorn and Marta

Finally we were all back on the bus and continuing on our way.  The drive from the border to Granada seemed to take a very long time.  The scenery at times was very pretty - we could see Lake Nicaragua and across the lake were two very nice looking volcanoes.  But we also saw lots of trash along the highway and people living in very sad conditions.  So that wasn't pleasant.  It was nice to get to Granada and get to our nice little hotel.  Here are some pictures of it.

The walkway to our hotel room.

That's our room there on the far right.

What it looks like walking from our room back out to the front.

And now some pictures of the various scenes that we saw as we walked around Granada.

Last visit with Fernando

Fernando and his friends arrived at our hotel this afternoon and we all walked over to the nearby restaurant for lunch.  Before we left, though, we gave Fernando our cell phone, which we're not going to need anymore.  And the canvas that Guillermo bought in Boquete for his hike on Baru (which he never did go on) went to Fernando also.   We were so glad it was going to a good use!!!  Fernando will use it to cover their gear when they are out in the field.

Look at those hamburgers that Mike and Fernando got!

All of us.  Greg, Mike, Fernando, Christine, Guillermo, Vicki

So, that was it for seeing Fernando on this trip.  He'll be out in the field again for the next few days, so since there's no chance of seeing him anyway, we're going to Nicaragua tomorrow for two days.  Then the following day we'll be back in Liberia and the day after that we head to San Antonio.

We wanted to spend these last few months in Central America where Fernando was going to be anyway, hoping we'd get to see him a few times, and we are very grateful that we were able to see him as much as we did.

Rincon de la Vieja

Close to Liberia is a place called Rincon de la Vieja, which is a National Park here in Costa Rica and also the site of another volcano!  We made plans to go out there today!

We had probably driven 5 minutes towards the park when we looked at the mountains where the park is and noticed that they seemed to be getting some rain out there.  And we hadn't brought with us any rain gear or umbrellas or anything.  So, we decided it'd be worth it to turn around and go back to the hotel to get that stuff, since we hadn't gone that far yet.

It was good that we turned around because besides picking up our rain stuff, we also packed some granola bars and extra drinks to go with the water we had already packed.  Once back on the road, and as we got closer to the park, it looked like maybe we wouldn't get to hike at all because the sky really looked dark in that direction. But we got to the park, and even though the sky looked really threatening and it was thundering, it wasn't raining yet so we set out on the trail anyway.  The first part of the trail goes through some really thick forest so it was really dark in there with the weather the way it was.  We were worried it was going to start pouring and that would have been rough because it was necessary to stay focused on this trail due to all the tree roots and rocks that had to be climbed around and over.  There was lots of thunder, too, which made us think - any minute now the rain is going to start.  But we hiked the entire 3 kilometers without so much as a single drop.  It was unbelievable how lucky we were.

We found this interesting looking fruit in the forest.

There were fumaroles that you could walk to on some parts of the trail.

Standing here, my back felt a little warm.....

Making my way back up...

Made it.  When we were at these fumaroles, we had done about half of the trail and it wasn't thundering as much anymore and the sky was a lot brighter.

Towards the end of the trail, it is out in the open, and we could look over to where we had been.  That smoke is close to the fumaroles we had been standing by.

This is what the trail looks like after you get out of the thick forest.

When we left this park, the sky was still heavy with clouds and we could still hear thunder every now and then.  We also saw about 6 Toucans in a tree by the parking lot which is always exciting.

Driving back down the road, we could tell that it had rained there.  The roads and dirt along the side were actually very drenched so the storms that we heard were just a little further down from where we hiked.  It was nice driving where there had been rain and the birds were obviously liking it, too because there were lots of them flying all over the place.  We spent quite a bit of time along the side of the road at one point trying to identify some parrots in the trees.  It was quite difficult, although we had great views of them.  We identified them as Orange Fronted Parakeets.  

There was thunder and lightning all the way down to Liberia with rain falling every now and then.  We felt bad for Fernando and hoped it wasn't raining in the park because yesterday he was lamenting that it looked like it was going to start raining soon.  Well, he was right.  Rain is good, it cools things down, but it also makes it harder for them out in the field.