Granada (Ometepe to Granada by bus)

Luis from the farm stay on Ometepe gave us a ride to the ferry port where we purchased our £1.15 ticket and boarded at 9am. The crossing was quite rough which was surprising as it is an inland volcanic lake. When I went onto the upper deck to catch some rays from the early sun, the starboard corridor was abundant with a gang of lightweights leaning over the side rail hurling their chunks into the choppy sea. After the 1h 15min crossing we disembarked and ran the gauntlet of over zealous and over inflated price wise Taxi's and walked outside the port and immediately scored a taxi into town for a $1 each. The taxi was instructed to take us to the market where we could pick up a micro bus to Granada which would be more secure and comfortable. But the taxi driver had other ideas and instead dropped us off at the same rotten dust pit that was the bus terminal in Rivas insisting that the micro buses did not exist even though we had good info they did. Greeeaaaat! Another ride on a chicken bus to Granada.

All aboard the chicken bus. Buy some popcorn for the ride of your life(flashing by) on this trip!

 We boarded, dumped our luggage all over the driver bay so we could see it and then took front  rock hard, no legroom,sweaty plastic chairs for the slow 2 hour journey to Granada. At least we had a seat this time which was a bonus and the fare was only 90p each. By the time we got off we both had numb bums and sweaty backs and bruised knees. The bus drops you on the edge of town, but we quickly found a dilapidated taxi who for the grand fee of a dollar each took us to our next hostel which was called Peace and Love, which it may have been until we got there. It was a private house and the owners rent out the rooms to backpackers.

I told her if she carried on waffling on something like this would happen.

The house was large and our room was lovely, decorated like someone actually had been living there. Again no air con which is the norm here in Nicaragua, so the room was like an oven. Once we had splattered the resident mosquitoes we headed down to the market for some supplies as the house had a big fitted kitchen so we could cook some choice nosh. When we got back it was too hot to cook so a salad was prepared and followed by some beers and some of the local rum which was only £2 for a litre and actually very tasty indeed.

Our taxi was 20% original and 80% body filler.

   Next day we set out to explore but the heat was oppressive, coupled with the fact that the rum was fighting back from the night before we settled on withdrawing money from an ATM and retiring back to base. Again we tried later to explore and managed a few well presented streets which if you have ever been to Spain, could have been any city in Spain with its architecture. It was well kept and the streets beautiful with trees and classical colonial buildings.

Granada ,Spain or Granada, Nicaragua?

 We did stumble upon a tour agency, well it's hard not to here as they are everywhere, who sold us a day trip to Apoyo Lagoon which is a volcanic crater which is filled with rainwater plus we booked a  private shuttle to to our next destination Leon. They also invited us to a party where we could have had free cocktails but as it was St Patricks day we found an Irish pub (every town has one) and celebrated in style with a beer. Do you know it was actually too hot to drink beer? So we retired back to the house to have dinner and ventured out later to a Paddy's day celebration gig which featured a Nicaraguan band knocking out a few choice American old school rock anthems which done us just dandy, although they did have a strange take on things with their local style.  We walked back to the house late at night which was a bad idea but got back without being mugged.

What the feck!

   Next day was out trip to Apoyo crater lake. We went down to the pick up point, but surprise, surprise no shuttle turned up. Our agent was locked up tight so no response there. We met another girl from Germany who was pretty cool so she hung out with us as we went to the other office of the agency and told them to sort it out. They did sort it, and our new friend tagged along in the car to our resort on the crater lake shore. Here we had access to a resort to use all their facilities, including Kayaks, rubber car inner tubes, SUP's (stand up paddle boards!) and deck chairs. We stayed here for 5 hours while the sun baked us but the cool clear water of the lake kept us cool. We did a bit of kayaking, a bit of tubing and a bit of  'just hanging out on an offshore pontoon' sort of thing until our time was up and we rekindled with our new German friend and avoided talking about anything to do with the war while we got driven back to Granada.

Cratermass. Hard to believe this is a crater of a volcano.

   We did want to do another trip to the Masaya volcano which is an active volcano where you can look into the crater and see bubbling molten lava but as we had already booked advance accommodation at our next destination Leon so could not cancel it at this late notice without penalty.