Granada, Nicaragua

This is the first real city I´ve been in this trip. It´s nice, I like it.

Today we went to Mayasa, a town very close to Granada, for the market. There´s not really anything in Mayasa but markets. A few notes about buses in Nicaragua:

- You find out which bus you want by listening for the drivers loudly yelling out their destinations as they stand beside their vehicle. They also yell out where they´re going while driving, to groups of people on the road.

- They seem to be decorated with whatever stickers and stencils are laying around. Today our middle aged bus driver had Hello Kitty and Tweety Bird on the roof of his bus.

- There aren´t really bus stops. You can just flag down a bus anywhere you are and get on.

- If you catch a bus in a bus station, while you´re waiting for the bus to leave you have a lot of people coming into the bus, offering you food and drink. It´s convenient!

- Apparently we are the only tourists in Nicaragua who take the local buses.

So we get to Mayasa. We don´t really know where the Old Market is, so we just head off in the direction everyone else on our bus was going. Everyone else on our bus was local, so we end up in the New Market. Which is to say, the local Nica market, and not the tourist market. That was a very interesting comparison to do once we found the Old Market. I have some pictures that illustrate the differences much better than I can explain. Suffice it to say, Nicaragua is poor. Really, really poor.

The tourist market was cool, it had a lot of local crafts and such. I would have bought more, in not for the logistics of getting it home unbroken. As it was, I bought a $3 t-shirt (which was probably over-priced, but I feel bad haggling when I probably make more in a year than most Nicas will in their entire lives) and shirts for the niece and nephew. Now my niece will have clothes from Granada, Spain and Granada, Nicaragua.

Now I´m tired and smell bad. Time for a nap and a shower, then off to see what this town has to offer for Mardi Gras.