Day 76 San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

Day 76 San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

Today is a tender port into the bay of San Juan Del Sur. On the high bluff in the bay, a Jesus statue points to the world's second largest fresh water lake, Lake Nicaragua. The tender boats ferry us from the ship, almost under the gaze of this sculpture.

Although we are about 2 hours from the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, there is a definite difference in the each country's economies. We notice the effects of decades of civil wars and recent Hurricane Mitch, as our bus travels through the countryside to first Rivas, Masaya then to the capital city of Granada. We are a group of 19 this time, in the same size bus as yesterday, but of course we now share our double seats.

We drive along the highway which starts in the most southerly section of South America and ends in Alaska. As we travel this road we see many forms of transport from horse drawn carts, tut tuts, bicycles, trishaws, cars, trucks and buses. The bus stops at the flea market in Masaya where we wonder around the stalls. A lot of local craft and products are on sale here inside the walls. To get inside the walls we need to run the gauntlet of hawkers who intercept us between the bus and the market, peddling their wares. Of course Paul ended up with 2 bags of expensive cashews!

In Granada we see quite a few Catholic churches have been abandoned. I asked our guide what the black marks were on the usually white walls. She explained during the last civil war in 1979, many buildings, including churches, had been set on fire and made unsafe.  The country is slowly recovering. We stopped off at the central square in Granada and walk through it and down a tree lined, paved boulevard. Restaurants and hotels faced onto this boulevard but when we were there it must have been siesta time as most buildings were closed.  We did see into the internal courtyards of a couple of hotels which were open and saw beautiful patio gardens, usually housing a waterfall.

Lunch was in a similar Spanish style building which we found quaint. As we sat in the restaurant we noticed how warm the day had become. Unfortunately the power was off, apparently a usual occurrence for this country, the ceiling fans were still. The question we asked each other was how will our meal be prepared?

On the way back to the ship we stopped off to see the two volcanos in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, one of which is smoking. On the shores of the lake we could see young boys jumping off rocks into the water whilst two adults performed their ablutions.