Monday, July 19, 2010

Leaving Granada


We had a nice enough time in Granada but were happy when it was time to leave. It’s a pretty colonial bustling city and we got our shopping done, we arrived in Granada with 3 pairs of shoes and left with 8 pairs!! I only bought two pairs and Alex bought one, the rest are for others. We now have matching flip flops. Awwww how cuuuute! Hehehe….

Any way, we went to catch the bus to Rivas to take us to San Juan del Sur at 12pm. We, of course were running a little late so we approached the bus stop at about 11:55. Then some guy in a school bus starts yelling to us so we started running towards him. I couldn’t understand anything he said but thankfully Alex was there, although he told me later he didn’t understand much either. (heavy Nicaraguan accent) Anyway we got the point that we needed to switch buses to get to Rivas cause the normal bus wasn’t running because it was Sunday. Now we’re on this super duper packed bus with just enough standing space and every one assured us they’d tell us where to get off. I thought we’d get left off at another bus station. In reality they left us off at the side of the road and said cross the road and wait at that truck over there for the bus. We were literally in the middle of nowhere and it was starting to rain and we had a ton of stuff with us. About 5 minutes later, sure enough came along a bus to Rivas. We flagged it down and it picked us up. Again it was super packed but better than the first one. We couldn’t get my pack to fit so the guy was like here give it to me! And we were like okay… and he went around and brought it back on the bus through the back. It worked out rather nicely.

The buses here in Nicaragua are really fun cause every time it stops people come on and sell food and drinks, it’s just a fun cultural expereience. We asked a police officer where to get off and he told us where the bus to San Juan del Sur was. The bus station in Rivas is kinda dirty and there are people selling and yelling all over the place. We then got approached by a real sketchy guy asking for a taxi and we just kept ignoring him. Then another guy came up and said $10 to San Juan. This time he actually had a car marked “taxi”, so we felt good about it. It definitely made the rest of the journey faster and more comfortable, I think we only would’ve saved like 6 bucks on the bus.

We decided that we had a lot of luck in our travels thus far, especially on this day. And to top it off when we got to San Juan del Sur we went to a hotel I had read about and it was $20 a night but it was full. We decided to walk to another one that I had read about and on the way we bumped into this guy who owns Hostel Sunrise which is located about half a block from the ocean and was $15 a night with free internet. The other one was really far away also. So now we’re here and it’s beautiful and relaxing and we don’t know why we didn’t come here sooner! Let’s hope the rest of our journey comes with as much luck as this part did!

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