Granada at night - Muy Sketchito!

So thinking it was Friday night, I decided to explore about. I went and played a small ($5 entry) poker with a nice bunch of guys in the back room of the delightful Euro Cafe only to find it was thursday night. But the poker was on, and I got knocked out pretty quick. I suppose I wasn't taking $5 seriously. The cash game (the real game) was to be at a guys house down at the bottom of Liberdad street. I went back to hotel and changed up some money, and while we did it me and the hotel guy had to shoo away a sketchy looking glue sniffer. Anyway he saw the readies, and as i happened to be walking down a backstreet to the poker (with $300 in my pocket) out he came from the shadows. Well I don't know if any of you guys have been robbed in sketchy backstreets before, but you can kind of feel it before it happens. You cross the street he crosses the street etc etc. Behind me was a neighbourhood even more shady and with not so good street lighting, which I absolutely didn't want to wander into with my gringo flip flops. Scottish jokes can only go so far down here...

And ahead of me was this glue sniffing monkey who knew i had a bunch of cash on me. So. Not really knowing what to do, and knowing if I just stood there like a dick, he'd bring out his knife and relieve me of everything, I found myself treating him like a cow. I ran at him, making lot of noise clapping my hands and shouting, feigning to smack him one just before i got to him. (i had flip flops on so kicking would have been a bit lame) The poor guy didn't know what the hell was going on, so quickly i found myself on the right side of him and moving towards the safety of the main drag before he could say 'loco gringo'. Well, I guess he got someone else later that night.

But more than any place i've been to in Nicaragua, Granada seems to me the most sketchy. Street kids are everywhere, sniffing glue in the main square and begging for money. And getting peado'd on. Seems another negative side affect from the tourists.

The main drag is annoying and loud from the kids doing their show every fifteen minutes (its a cross between punch and judy and 'throw the jew down the well') with loud drums much to the annoyance of ALL the tourists except of course redneck Nicaraguans. (I saw western tourists with their fingers in their ears on numerous occasions) Anyway, the bottom line is that these kids are ruining the main street. Its great for the other places though - like Garden Cafe and its neighbour, the gringo owned (and therefor grossly overpriced- $5 a vodka) Imagine across the road from it. At least this is a safe little oasis that is one street back from the main drag, thanks to security guards, but don't wander too far off it, especially down towards the lake, you may not come back...Imagine last night was quite ok, i.e. full of gringos because of the high prices. But even the 2 dutch guys I met went out and sneaked in some alcohol from elsewhere.

At 6am this morning, for some reason outside our hotel, a group of people decided to bang drums extremely loudly and blow trumpets. For 30minutes. I have no idea why and will probably never have.

Granada, Nicaragua

So today I took a bike (its about $6 for half a day) and cycled round this (surprisingly small) city. I went around all the lovely old buildings and down to the lake. Lake Nicaragua is pretty massive and i'm surprised there isn't more use of the place as its a pretty nice backdrop to the city (together with one active volcano) and fortunately it's not filthy from pollution, like the lake at Managua (im sure the citys sewage goes in there somewhere mind you, its just that its a bigger lake!)

Yep, you guessed it -it's another messed up Church

Kinda what everyone sees on the brochures....(except for the levitating bike on the right)

I sat here for a while and considered writing a melancholy poem about the windswept lake and so on and so on but then a beggar came up to me and I kind of lost my mojo about it

Im sure these shanty town dwellers are happy that the governemnent spent the money on a statue of some General or other rather than a proper sanitation system

Down at the bottom of the main drag, you take the right along the promenade, and get to the 'centro turisco' or something like that. Like most things here, there isn't anything actually for tourists here. Its a row of restaurants and bars set in a nice lakeside park, where they in theory charge you $5 for entry (although i just cycled straight through, waving at the locals.) I cycled right along to the end, and thankfully didn't see a single white face. I had lunch in a restaurant called El Ranchero and where a boatman offered to take me round the archipeligo. He wanted to charge me $15 for an hour which included an island full of monkeys. I got him to $10 and so he took me a '45mins' trip which basically was 20mins with no monkeys. Was pleasant enough though and i got a bit of the sun today.

Where horses go when they die

Fiesta de Pederast 

I really liked this tree. Probably my favourite spot, just outside Granada (notice no white people or beggars)

The fruit pickers, here in the 14th century

Organic Food

The start of the jungle !

10mins later i was eating him

Anyway for recommendations - I'll add to this page later, but i'm staying at a well located little hotel called Hospedaje Cocibolca (not to be confused with the hotel of the same name) the rooms were clean but nothing special but it has its own kitchen you can use and w-ifi and is has nice rocking chairs downstairs for some peaceful writing when your not being noise polluted to death by Harley riding men with tiny penises. As for food, well on the main drag the food is much the same, unless you fancy something special then jump into the Dario Hotel which is the only remotely classy joint on the main street (which by the way is the street leading East down the hill towards the lake from Parque Central.)
For Brekky I went to The Garden Cafe this morning to avoid the noise - a little oasis, and of course like anything that is good here in Nicaragua sadly, foreign owned. I actually cycled round sweating like a pig and thirsty as hell trying to find a place to get a drink that didn't have any whiteys in it. But failed and ended up buying a fanta in some random local butcher shop which smelled awful.

Granada without Gringos or street kids or pointless noise

Flora and Fauna...finally....

No crappy chichichi music here...

or here....

When my beard grows longer I will move here...

And make it like this. all solar panels and fridges and stuff...

So im not finished yet with Granada. Tomorrow I'll check the market which looks quite tedious, (unless fake Abercrombie t-shirts are what i'm after) check some ruined but beautiful old building i saw on the way in (where are those NGO's when you need them?), try to find a cafe or restaurant with no white people, and play poker with some locals. I did the same in Leon in the sketchy poker club, so it will be interesting to see what its like here. I don't trust the locals here though, they've been too exposed to the gringo. White man has basically ruined this lovely city (he says as a gum chewing american walks in, drawling like a true trailer-parker)  I'm sad to say. But at least there is edible food and paved roads. Gringo is treated like a walking ATM here, just like Tallinn back in the day. A veritable festival of choices dear friend but a pandoras box nevertheless.

This is the Nicaragua I want to see more of 

Lunchtime, Nica style

The view towards town, from the Malecon. Nice and peaceful I must add

It is a great place for inspiration if you happen to be writing a post-apocolyptal novel

This is what regular Granada looks like.

Backstreets

I can just imagine some tinpot dictator strutting about here once

Highlights of the day?  Well apart from sitting down under a very attractive tree at the waters edge, with neither a white person or awful chichichi nicaraguan music (whatever it is but its involves guys with moustaches and sombreros i'm sure) anywhere to be seen not heard. Or right now, where bizzarelly the bar across the road has started playing AC/DC's highway to hell....I haven't heard that song since...the hell of the desert Marathon Des Sables where they played it every morning at the starting line ...so now for a well deserved $1 beer....

Someone just renovate these please 

Nicaraguan Funeral

Ok this is the last church for a while...

Spot the gringo! Mercado area

Thats it. Im going to pay lonely planet to tell people not to come to Nicaragua, that its dangerous and they hate Americans and North Europeans. So i can get the place to myself, finally.....

Granada first impressions - Pederasts and W*nkers on Motorbikes

Central Americans and peace and quiet are not things that go together.

Actually this happy group of pickpockets (being escorted to prison) is in Managua - they were at UCA bus station, be careful there!

However my hotel seems to have been taken over by middle aged gringo arseholes who think its funny to just sit on their motorbikes revving them up and making loud noises all night. Guys. You don't do that back home in Basingstoke, so don't do it here. Its not funny, really. Everyone just thinks you are a tosser. And as I sit here trying to hear myself think, Im wondering, is there a connection between this and the fact that this town is full of rangy old men who are into boy love?

Nice view from my hotel though - and at $16 great value (I'll write more on next post on this)

I took a walk up the quite saddening main drag here tonight. Annoyingly smug backpacker couples with their lonely planet Spanish language guide trying to order up some authentic fried corn and beans. Bespectacled German peados drinking beer and giving a little too much attention to the street kids. And large groups of white tourists spending money in Western owned Restaurants (there is even an Irish Bar..sigh..where the Irish owner tonight was shooing away the local kids who were putting on (a quite rubbish, too loud, and very annoying) show to make enough to eat.) Top this off with white hippies making and selling crappy beads (just to make sure locals get exactly zero income from the tourist industry here) and you have an extremely depressing first impression of Granada, Nicaragua. Well for me at least.

Awwww

Its a good looking city though, loads of renovated and beautiful churches and old colonial buildings. But it seems to me that, unlike Leon or Estelli - the beauty is very skin deep.

Ok i will now abuse the next 50yr old Canadian who decides to sit outside and rev his harley davidson.

Maybe i'm wrong about this place and my criticism is based on me just not being such a big fan of random needless noise pollution. And its not all negative. For example, I did have fun tonight though with the word 'Pederast'. What a lovely sounding word. I always thought it sounded kind of Lord of the Ringsish, you know..Pederast the Green or something. Jodi assumed it was a spice. (just throw in a dash of Pederast, and voila!....)  but come to think of it the thought of these vile creatures having a funny name just depresses me more...oh well....lets see what tomorrow brings, I'll write more later....