Ashore – San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

Here I am, playing catch-up again. Only about 2 weeks behind at the mo’.

So this stop was the first on which we’d booked a group tour with the cruise line.   We’d  opted for a tour of the town of Granada by way of Lake Nicaragua. It was broadly as expected in that we were ferried about on a coach and given a brief tour and 20 minutes on our own to look around.

Pictured: The volcano “Conception” and a moody-looking horse.

Our tour guide, José, was enthusiastic and informed.  He’d spent his high school years in the US, as he and many of his countrymen fled the fighting that affected the country during the 80s.   He was rather sanguine about the whole affair, and –as far as my limited knowledge of Nicaraguan history extends- was rather objective as he detailed the war and the various foreign influences.

 We were shown the convent, which serves as a museum for statues and artefacts dating back 900-1500 years or so.   I did raise an eyebrow at how there was nothing stopping anyone from touching these, very erodible statues.  Any specimens shipped of to museums abroad would be supervised in environmentally-controlled rooms, but there you go.

 
Rub my leopard face for good luck

We wandered into town, where some very indifferent-looking kids performed some of the local dances for us. 

 
Meh

We were then left to our own devices for a half hour or so to fend off the locals trying to sell us cashew nuts and the locally made artefacts - which seemed to be of a decent quality, to be fair, but our nomadic status prevents us from picking up gourd-based fruit bowls.   Chan and I went into a local cafe and grabbed a sandwich and a beer. We were running a bit late (I told you we don;t play well within other people’s schedules) so I picked the sandwich (a monstrous thing made up seemingly of 6 sub-rolls connected side-by-side) up and took it back with us.  I ended up sharing it with a local urchin while we all reconvened.

On the way back we caught the most of the social commentary.  It’s a country getting back on its feet after the battering of the 80s (losing 100,000 of your population will take the wind out of your sails), but it seems to be getting there with the help of some directed foreign aid.  The Japanese are apparently responsible for much of the infrastructure development, which is nice of them.

It’s a pleasant enough place, with the lowest crime rate in Central America (no dramas with the cartels here) despite also being the poorest.  The cruise excursion schedule was irksome, as I think I would’ve sooner had more time to wander about unaccosted (someone had leaked the cruise schedules to the local hawkers, so they were out in force), but it was nice enough. 

And obviously they think the coffee here is the best coffee – I might hear that one or two times more.

   

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir gingen in Nicaragua. Es war angenehm, aber unsere Tour war ein bisschen gehetzt, denn wir gingen mit der offiziellen Exkursion.