Granada, Leon, Camera Shops and Capital Cities

Been a while since my last post.

After leaving Fortuna, I headed north to the border with Nicaragua.

This involved a lot of travelling and border crossing etc. It's also where I met the only rude backpackers I have met. And they were both posh English girls. Pattern?

Anyway, eventually I made it to a town called Granada.



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Granada was an interesting place. It dates back to Columbus times and so maintains a "colonial" vibe. However, it also has a turbulent history.

It was invaded by this guy called William Walker, a US pirate, in 1855. Yeah, that's right a fucking pirate. This guy basically recruited, like, 100 soldiers and just invaded Nicaragua, claiming Granada as his personal fiefdom. Can you believe that there was a time when you could just decide to get some mates together and go invade somewhere? Unbelievable.

Later, after being defeated, out of spite he burned it down. Bastard.

So, anyway, actually very little of the town is original buildings, but they've been rebuilding in that style. It's quite touristy, but very pretty.

I happened to stop there while they were performing a "running of the bulls" type ceremony. A bunch of cowboys (I mean literally Nicaraguan cowboys on horses) descended on the town with bulls. The craziest sight I saw was a cowboy pulling up his horse on a super touristy plaza to have a drink with his mates.

No photos unfortunately because I didn't have a camera.

After that, I went to the "other" Nicaraguan colonial city: Leon. I went via Managua which is the capital city of Nicaragua. I only went there to change buses and buy a new camera so I can't really comment on it.

Leon is on the surface less pretty, because unlike Granada, it never suffered total destruction. But scratch beyond that it's actually a really amazing place: one of my favourites. There is a great street vibe here: locals just sitting out on their porches watching the world go by.

There is a beautiful cathedral and I was fortunate to be there during this incredible festival where they pray to the Virgin Mary to spare their town from destruction by volcano (did I mention it's in the middle of a bunch of volcanoes?). Locals would stand at their porches and hand out sweets. It's kind of described as the Nicaraguan equivalent of Halloween.

I also did an activity called Volcano Boarding, which is exactly what it sounds like: climbing up a volcano and then tobogganing down the gravelly surface:

And now for some geckos; Mmmm. Gecko'y goodness.

Here is an example "shrine" to commemorate  the volcano festival I mentioned earlier:

Basic horse driven carts are still used here:

 Here is another shrine at the entranceway to the cathedral in Leon:

And after all that hard work, an nice night out!

After Leon, it was all about travelling...

I left with another person who was going the same way. We were both trying to get to Honduras, the country to the north. I was trying to get to the Copan Ruins - an incredible set of Mayan ruins. Unfortunately this wasn't doable in a day, so we spent the whole of the 15th August travelling to Tegucigalpa - the capital city of Honduras:



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This was a typical Central American Capital city: big and mostly unpleasant with a few gems if you can be bothered to look (we couldn't - we were only there on a stopover).

After Tegucigalpa, I tried to get to Copan Ruinas. Unfortunately, although I arrived with plenty of time, the 11am bus had mysteriously vaporised (randomised bus timetables is a common occurrence in Central America). This meant that I had to get the midday bus and so missed my connecting bus.

So, here I am stuck in an expensive (albeit nice) hotel in a city called San Pedro Sula, catching up on my blogs.



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Kind of annoying as the Copan Ruinas is the last thing I want to do in Central America before I head to USA.

Early start tomorrow hopefully...