Nicaragua - Granada

Oh, been slacking off lately, so there's a longer post about Granada and a bit about the Ometepe Island next time ;)

Now, onto the beautiful Granada, we booked a boat tour on Lake Nicaragua here. The agency was called Leo Travel or something like that. Leo is a character of his own, with his long hair, jeans, and Steve Jobs sweater :D At first, you'd think 'odd duck,' but he immediately became likable in conversation. He spoke a bit of German and showed us photos of all his travels. The guy has truly seen a lot of the world :). I couldn't help but laugh when he told us about Switzerland and showed a photo of the price of a cocktail. He just couldn't believe how expensive they are in Switzerland. Oh yes, my dear :D

On the mentioned boat tour, we visited the Isletas, which are around 365 small islands formed by a volcanic eruption. There were only four of us, so we almost had a private tour. The often promised English-speaking guide could only deliver the usual phrases, that was it :D If you wanted to know more, you had to speak Spanish. Nevertheless, it was beautiful there. I was especially excited about 'Monkey Island,' but I think I had too high expectations. It's really just a mini island where a veterinarian apparently released five monkeys. Whether that's great for them is questionable, but okay. Our guide had sliced a papaya and suddenly a monkey joined us on the boat and enjoyed eating it. We were completely unimportant to him, and as our boat started moving, he calmly rode along for a while :D It's quite fascinating when he sits so close in front of you... After the tour, Robert invited us for a beer. A really nice guy. 77 years old and from Michigan. I think he was really happy to go for drinks with us young girls and talk about the past. His stories were also truly fascinating :D We had to eventually stop him, not because he talked too much, no, he kept ordering more beer :D

The next day, we went to Masaya for the Handcraft Market and the Masaya Volcano. The market itself wasn't bad at all, but you definitely can't spend a whole day there. I didn't buy anything, the stalls become repetitive after a while :) Then, we went in search of a taxi to take us up to the volcano. Unfortunately, you can't go up the volcano on your own. You always have to be driven in case the volcano erupts, whether that will actually help is another question, but okay, safety first :) Once we reached the top, we were really excited to see the lava and take a spectacular selfie. Slowly approached the crater, looked down, and wooooooow, what a disappointment haha. You can try taking a selfie, but it'll be difficult because there's only a little bit of lava at the very bottom. Truly a shame, but let's see the positive, since we were at the volcano at noon, we only had to pay 2 instead of 10 dollars for admission :)