December 18 - Oasis Hostel in Granada & San Juan del sur Nicaragua

We spent to days in at the Oasis Hostel in Granada Nicaragua which is a very old city which has gone through many wars with bombs and fires. It is slowly being rebuilt and it is truly an oasis for young back-packers passing through to Costa Rica. The city was dirty and raw but there were also bright spots of color teaming with life.

The first night we stayed we arrived late in the afternoon and crashed fairly early but not until walking about and seeing the beautiful Architecture much of which dates to the 1500 and 1600‘s and is quite spectacular all in various states of disrepair which can attributed to different natural disasters, wars, politicians, poverty, laziness, etc. There is a very strong retail buzz which surrounds the plaza and the church which is congested and filthy.

The hostel buzzing with back-packers from all over the world. It has lovely little pool we both enjoyed. We always opt for a double room with a private bath which is usually around $25. It’s a good way to get a cold shower and air conditioning once or twice a week which is a whole lot cheaper then heating my old colonial wooden house in New Hampshire at $50 per day.

We enjoyed a huge fruit plate for $2.00 in the morning with free sweet shortbread and tea and set out for the markets. We came back to the pool, laid low in the afternoon and then the second night we decided to tag along with 7 others from the Hostel as they went out to see the active Volcano and the views, caves, etc. I was of course the oldest there which was a new experience for me. Don’t quite know how that happened but I kept up with all those 20 some-things.

We arrived at sunset and quickly made it to the top of the Volcano which was a first for all of us. This night the walls of the crater had crumbled in on the base and smothered any hot ashes we might have hoped to see and a repulsive sulphur smell poured out which was the last thing I had ever expected - didn’t really know too much about volcanos. . . .not sure I still do.

We looked over the city of Masaya and were told they had been practicing for Disaster Evacuation drills today because they expected the Volcano to blow and the last time it went off it wiped out an entire village and closed the airport for a very long time. They were experiencing up to 400 tremors a day. We luckily had already made our own plans to leave in the morning. Why tempt fate when there’s another beach town waiting to receive us?


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After the sunset volcano tour our handsome, Latino, 27 year old guide brought us to the edge of the lake below as the lights were coming on in the city behind us. Very beautiful but then we went into these bat caves which were down a very steep set of stairs about 25 feet down. We were all instructed to turn off our flashlights and these giant bats all came rushing towards us - none of us getting hit of course because of their sonar, but man they were huge like the size of NH crows or blue jays. Very weird experience.

So then we went in this other cool cave which had a much higher roof but wicked thick roots we had to climb over. It was another strange reality based experience and all I could think about was of Indiana Jones should be there with us as we explored this awesome, deep chasm under ground. The stalactites were even spookier at night with flash-lights on them. He had us all turn out our lights again and it was black, just black - another un-nerving experience, but no bats this time.

Apparently when the National Park Service took it over they found bones of local Indians in there. There are also petroglyph which we couldn’t see but apparently could if we went in the day. It was spontaneous, a good work-out in the evening which wasn’t wicked hot and $50 well spent creating a memory with my son.

However, before we left, we met a man from the Misquito Coast of Nicaragua. Very interesting guy who just came up and welcomed us to his country and started practicing his English on us. He was a Village Leader who had come to Granada (Capital City) to have a gold tooth removed from his mouth so he could use the money for rice and bean seeds. The dentist wouldn’t do it because he said it would cause infection.

He talked to us at length about Daniel Ortega and all the awful things he did which got me thinking about my pre-conceptions of the situation. I graduated from high-school in 1976 in Framingham Massachusetts in the United States, so I know very little of the war in Nicaragua other then this was a bad place and there was no reason on earth to ever want to come here. Case closed! Boy was I ever wrong.

So we drove into San Juan del sur this afternoon which is close to the Costa Rican border which we hope to cross in the morning. It’s another surf town on a half moon bay which looked like it had crappy waves compared to the other places we had been, but Sterling assured me it was just the rental shops and that the waves were on the outside of the bay which made sense.

We enjoy walking around these towns although many are starting to blend into just another day. Enjoyed the hand made crafts the street kids were selling. Some were actually pretty awesome quality with interesting local polished stones. Since we splurged yesterday on the Maysaya Volcano National Park we decided to go easy on the pocket-book and just ordered a rum and pineapple drink and a water so we could watch the sunset and tap into internet. It’s so important to keep those fluids to us.

We just witnessed a wonderful, Christmas Fire-works display that would rival my hometown on any Fourth of July. The thing that made it so interesting was the explosions were different then those we see at home. I had never thought about the history of fireworks so I looked it up on Church Google which always sends me to wikipedia which is my other font of knowledge and found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks.

We waited a bit and went out for a walk and found a semi-professional boxing exhibition and then went across the street to the coolest, most primitive carnival you’ve ever seen. I finally found some popcorn and went back to the Peace Mobil and fell asleep to a gentle breeze from the Pacific ocean and some beautiful tunes coming from the local park. Another day in paradise but we’re moving on in the morning - Costa Rica is calling us.