So, right now I am on a bus (not a chicken bus, but we did briefly ride on one earlier today) traveling to Roatan via Comayagua, Honduras. I thought I would write a little more on Granada. My last entry was a bit negative because I wrote about Nicaraguan politics and problems. Now that I have that out of the way, Grenada (and all of Nicaragua) was incredible.
The city of Grenada is made up of colonial buildings that line all the streets. They are very colorful, fairly tall, and all have the red tile roofs. The most amazing thing about these buildings is the courtyards in the middle of them. There is the main building, and then huge open areas exposed to the elements. Many of the homes and stores only have three walls and then open up to the courtyard. When I was talking to a lady on the street, I learned that you could easily buy one of these huge homes for less than $30,000US. After all the problems we experienced in Grenada, I'm not sure who would want to do that, but if you had power and water and a better government, I would be tempted (but then the price would be just a tad more).
Being a major city in a really poor country, many of the buildings were in ruins. In fact one of the houses next to our hotel had a wall cave in on the second day we were there. When we walked by it, we saw a downed power line and a load of rubble in the street. One of the mornings I was there, I went out at 6:00 am to take pictures of the city. Please check them out to get a better feel for Grenada.
One of the days in Grenada, we went out on the "Masaya Volcano Tour," where we saw an active volcano, went to a local artisan market, and went to a dormant volcano crater lake. Our tour guide, Bosco, was really cool. He definitely knew his stuff and worked to please our group. At all the destinations we went to, he got special favors for us, including a small hike into a lava cave where the local Indians used to choose the virgin women and children to sacrifice to the gods (really). He also told us much of the history and current political situation that I wrote about in my last entry.
As a side note our guide, Bosco, has an uncle in the US Army whom the family has not heard from in a number of years. He was wondering if I had a number he could call to find out information on where he is and what he is doing. I told him I would try to find something out. If any of the family has a number or web site where you can track down military personnel, please let me know and I will pass it on to Bosco.
Yesterday (I am writing this on day 11, 7/8/2006), I visited the local market in Grenada. Man, talk about your ghetto, Latin America market! There were literally miles of stands selling everything from bananas, to t-shirts (I picked up a Che Guevara one), to women's underwear (quite a bit of underwear, they must go through it really fast). It was incredibly crowded, and the entire time we were down there, I didn't see another white person (other than Erin and Andrew, who I went down with). While at the market, Haley spent 5 bucks on a half-hour massage.
Not to end on a bad note, but I have to get this story in about these incredibly annoying children we came across. After the market, Erin, Andrew, and I went down to the town square to play cards and have a Coke. After we sat down, three small girls, with ages between 4 and 8, came to us selling hair bands and to ask for money. When we said no, they started haggling us. At first it was just asking for money over and over again. Then it escalated to touching our arms. Then it became begging for my mango I had just bought. They when I refused them, it the oldest of the three took my mango and started tossing it around. Then when we ignored her, she gave it back. Then they started going around our table, calling us idiots and tapping us on the head. I then asked if they wanted to look and act like little babies and if their parents didn't teach them better than that. This offended the oldest and they walked away.
So, we got our cards out to play a little, thinking we were okay. A couple minutes into our game, the oldest one again got up the courage to haggle us a little more. They slipped up behind us and started bopping us on the head once again. I thought that for sure someone of their culture would stop them and make them sit down. I was now considering smacking them. It was ridiculous. I then called them babies once again and told them to get out of our faces. They left and I thought we were over our problems, so we again started to play cards. Sitting next to a stand, we decided to order our cokes. When we did so, the lady told us they didn't have any cokes, right as she was bringing some sodas out to another couple in the park. So, we didn't order anything and went on with our game. Then a couple minutes later, the couple that was able to order the sodas told us that the vendor was really mad at us and wanted us to leave. When we looked over at the vendor, we saw the most incredibly foul scowl on her face. She was staring us down with a look of death as she stabbed her knife into a block of ice to break it up. It was the most profoundly absurd experience of my life, and we have no idea what we did to anger the woman. We are almost sure there was no relationship between the girls that were bugging us and the scowling lady. We tried to order something from her, and when she didn't have anything for us, we figured it was a public park (which it was) and played cards. I still have no idea what was going on, but we are still laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
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