1st of august

after a few days in leon it was high time to head to granada, another colonial jewel of nicaragua.

travelling with those backpacks is always a stressful business. this time there was just no room for our stuff in the minibus and so all the way from leon to managua our precious backpacks (the most precious obviously being the souvenirs from copan, honduras and not the dirty stinky clothes) had to travel on the roof of that minibus. quite stressful for us, not for them obviously. any time we sort of expected an 18kg backpack to fall of that roof and hence were ready to scream any given moment to the bus driver that it was necessary to stop and pick up our stuff. luckily we all made it to managua and were safely thrown into the next minibus to granada. once here it was time to relax though and discover the new city.

granada is just lovely. it is richer (and less politically extreme it seems) than leon and it also shows. the houses are in better shape, the streets are cleaner and in general the atmosphere is very friendly. granada is definitely the most attractive town we`ve seen so far and spending four days is not going to feel like a waste of time. marianne and i even made it to the near-by village of catarina today to admire the amazing view over the volcano crater filled with water, forming the lagoon of apoyo. behind it one could even see the edge of the magnificent lake cocibolca, a.k.a. lake nicaragua. spending 2h just gazing into the water didn´t feel like 2h at all because of the most breath-taking landscape. there are also two active volcanoes next to the lagoon, however no smoke was perceived this time :D

people here are very chatty, they love to talk and especially if they get a chance to express their political views to the strangers. unlike honduras where we mainly had discussions about "novios", well everyone´s love life that is and religion related questions with our hostfamilies and other people, here we tend to hear a lot about politics (especially leftist politics) and even about anarchism. a young man last night very eagerly explained to us how he is fascinated by ricardo´s theory and how anarchism is the only right solution for nicaragua. we were quite stunned but kept eating our grilled pork in a honey sauce without actively disputing with him over this matter. unfortunately discussing pro´s and con´s of anarchy is not very common at hanken, hence our knowledge on the subject was rather limited. the young man soon lost his interest in us and so we got to continue our evening at another place. good start.