Use your imagination....

Hola,

Still no camera (sorry, sorry... i´ll quit bringing it up starting...now.) Since i have no visual aids for today, i´ll try to paint you a little picture... I arrived back In Granada today after a gorgeous, but slightly nauseating sailboat ride from Ometepe to San Jorge/Rivas (the waves in Lake Cocibolca where the bull shark lives are quite big, for a lake), followed by a sweaty, jammed chicken bus with my pack tied to the top along with crates of empty soda bottles, a kitchen hutch, and bags of beans or rice among all sorts of other stuff. My new canadian friend, Irish Dave, kept me company and we had a coca-cola and some chickys (¨chocolate bisquits¨) in the bustling but tiny Rivas market before hopping on board for the 1.5hr trip. The countryside looks much better from a seat than it did when i was smashed, standing in the back on the way to Ometepe.

This afternoon, as the temperature finally dropped slowly by a couple degrees, i stopped to sit on the veranda of posh Hotel Plaza Colon in Granada. This! felt like how a vacation is supposed to feel. People walking and biking by, horse drawn carriages waiting for riders, people selling goods and going about their day. For the same reasons I like the pike place market, I like to watch the Parque Central; it hums with energy. Trees pop up all over to provide cool'ish shade above benches and homes for twittering birds and octagonal cobblestones circle a beautiful gazebo in the center where ¨Take My Breath Away¨ blares from the speakers of someone with a stereo sitting on the steps. Across the park -past the carriages that line the west side, past food and jewelry carts, past benches where young, old, and inbetween sit, past the kids hawking pirated dvds, cashews, and gourd pots - is the *bright!* yellow cathdral. Gorgeous, spanish-colonial architecture, built after William Walker torched the city in 1855-ish, it is THE landmark of town from which all directions are given.

This is definitely not the place for the average local, or at least i assume, unless they are here to sell goods to bumbling tourists like myself. There is buzzing energy here, despite the heat at 4pm. I could sit, drinking my nica libre with flor de cannas rum and watch for hours.