Granada

The bus part of the trip from León to Granada was already described in my updated bus post, but in spite of the compulsive speeding by the microbus driver, he did get behind slower traffic occasionally, so I could get a picture or 2 from the window.  Arrival in Granada was very convenient and calm in a small station just for minibuses only a block south from the central park.  The hotel was only about 4 blocks east of the park, so it was an easy walk.

A composite of the trip from León to Granada.  (Unless the formatting prevents it , I’ll follow the convention of labeling clockwise starting in the upper left .)  A view of the volcano Momotombo, near the base of which is located the abandoned León Viejo.  The next two show a couple of traffic circles or street islands with sculptures.  The top one also has a billboard which still has FSLN (Sandinista) campaign ads from last fall.  The strings going up to the billboard are lights—this sort of Christmas tree effect is located in several places in Managua.  On the bottom , note the Burger King sign.  (This is taken near a major, US-style shopping center.  Finally, another Pali (Walmart), but with a virtually empty parking lot and a string of trici-taxis waiting to pick up customers—quite a contrast to Walmarts in the US.

Our hotel in Granada, called La Pergola followed by a close-up of one of the more exotic flowers in the courtyard and finally an general view of the courtyard garden.  I’ve really come to like this open court-yard feature, but it’s a bit more difficult to implement in Wisconsin!

Granada lies on the western edge of Lake Nicaragua, aka Cocibolca, the second largest lake in Latin America.  It was founded in the same year (1524) and by the same man (Francisco Hernández do Córdoba [after whom the currency unit is named]) as León and there is apparently some dispute as to which came first.  However, since Old León has ceased to exist, Granada proudly claims the title not only of the oldest city in Nicaragua, but according to sign as you enter the city, as the oldest city on “terre firma” in the Western Hemisphere.  (I take this to mean on the mainland, as opposed to Caribbean islands because the terre is often less than firma with the many earthquakes here.)  Granada has traditionally been a city of wealth and conservatism, with much wealth coming from the fact that it was, in effect, and Atlantic port city (the Río San Juan connects to Lake Nicaragua).  Perhaps because of the wealth, Granada has suffered more plundering over the years than León (although León had its share as well).  A major problem during its early years were English pirates so eventually a fort was built on one of the nearby islands as protection.  Almost everything in Granada, although built in a colonial style, is 150 years old or less (the time of the last major burning, which I’ll talk about a bit more below).  León and Granada have been bitter, and sometimes violent, rivals over the years, especially during the 19th century, and the rivalry only subsided after Managua was chosen as the capital.

Because they were both “colonial cities,” I had expected a similar “feel” to both cities, but they turned out to be quite different.  I’ll try to briefly give my impressions.  First, León is considerably bigger, which could alone account for some of the differences, but I think there is more than that.  León seems to be a more “real” city than Granada in the sense that it seems to exist more to satisfy the needs of local people than to satisfy the needs of visitors.  Granada almost has a Disneyesque (or at least New Orleans) feel to it in that it is geared more towards tourists, especially foreign tourists (and many permanent-resident ex-pats as well).  In Granada, the facades are fresher (although this may be in part due to the buildings actually being much newer, but perhaps also due to wealth), the services (restaurants, etc.) are better labeled and seemingly more plentiful, there are more pedestrian-friendly areas, it’s easier to find a quiet street (even close to the city center) and it is a very nice place to stroll or take a carriage ride.  Granada has more foreigners, both tourists and residents, or at least their presence is more obvious.  (We saw many air-conditioned tourist buses with mostly-gray-haired Germans, Canadians, Dutch, etc., getting dropped off or picked up at up-scale hotels—but not so many from the US.)  León, perhaps because of the large student population and history of activism, had a feel of more energy, while Granada has more of a laid-back feel.  Finally, although the visual appearance of much of the city seemed poorer in León, there were far fewer beggars or in-your-face-sales people.  In Granada, kids would approach us, even while sitting in a restaurant, and start to make things out of palm leaves or even try to grab items off the plate—this never happened in León.  I have the impression that although the city of Granada appears to have greater wealth, it may have less equality of wealth than León.

Here are some random scenes from our visit that may help get a feel for Granada.  The gigantic Spanish woman and the small, large-headed man (from the legends museum in León) are here personified and animated.  You can see the drummers as well.  There were several of these groups that would suddenly break out into drumming and dancing wherever large numbers of foreigners had gathered.  The next photo gives an idea of the level of catering to foreigners as you see a restaurant called “Imagine” located on Penny Lane with a picture of John Lennon.  Boxing is very popular in Nicaragua and we stumbled across a boxing match on an evening stroll.  Another serendipitous event was seeing a funeral procession complete with black, horse-drawn hearse followed by mourners on foot.  For some reason, the procession chose to do down the most crowded market street in Granada.

Another contrast between León and Granada is the condition of their respective defunct railroad facilities.  (All railroads in Nicaragua were shut down about 1990 as the foreign bankers holding the purse strings decreed there should be no more public support for the railroad—so it ceased to exist.)  The Granada station has been restored and is now a trade school, while the facility in León (a shop, not a station), is derelict.

The William Walker Saga   Because of its importance to Granada, I’ll give a short account of the William Walker story because it truly is one of those “fact is stranger than fiction” stories.  William Walker was an undoubted bright individual.  By the age of 22 he had:  received a degree in the classics from the U of Tenn, received a medical degree from the U of PA, become fluent in Spanish, French and Italian and passed the bar exam.  He became the editor of a newspaper in New Orleans, where his editorial stances were pacifist, anti-slavery and non-interventionist.  He fell in love with a deaf-mute woman, learned sign language and became engaged.  Shortly thereafter, both his fiancée and mother succumbed to cholera and he headed to CA during the gold rush, where disillusionment turned his views 180° and he became a proponent of both slavery and expansionism.  In 1853 he led a small party in an invasion of Mexico, declared himself president of an independent Sonora and was promptly driven out.  …Meanwhile, in Nicaragua, the Liberals in León had lost power to the Granadans and were having difficulty regaining it.  In 1855 they may the fateful decision to hire William Walker to help them in their struggle, however Walker had other, more grandiose plans, i.e., the annexation of Nicaragua as a US slave state.  After capturing Granada, instead of ceding it to his employers, he had himself elected president (and the US promptly recognized his “election” as legitimate), declared English the official language, confiscated all property from “enemies of the state,” reinstituted slavery (which had already been abolished in Nicaragua) and invaded Costa Rica.  At this point, the perennially warring factions in Central America (including the Leonese, who by now had had their “oops” moment, and Granadans) united against a common enemy and finally drove Walker out in late 1856.  In his last act, Walker had Granada burned to the ground and a casket buried in central park with a sign declaring “Here was Granada.”  Not deterred, Walker made additional forays into Central America until he was finally captured by the British navy and turned over to Honduran authorities, who put him before a firing squad in 1860.  In Nicaragua today, the liberation from Walker is a more important holiday than the liberation from Spain.  In some ways, the story of Walker and Granada seems to parallel the story of Sherman and Atlanta.

As is typical, the central park is the center of town and across from the main church, in this case the Catedral Nuestra Señora de la Asunción.  The shaded park has a band stand, some statues, horse carriages for hire along one side, craft and food stands along two sides and several permanent kiosk-type food stands with fairly extensive seating areas.  Just to the north of the park is the Plaza de Independencia, with a monument to the liberation from Spain.

(L to R)  Susan sitting at one of the permanent eateries in the park.  This one has been here since 1950 and this is where we were accosted by both the palm-leaf-folding entrepreneur and the food snatcher.  If you look closely in the background, you can see some of the horse-drawn carriages between the vendors’ carts.  Here is Susan in front of one of the ubiquitous mothers’ monuments with the band stand in the background.  The cathedral is to the camera’s back.  Middle is the Plaza de la Independencia with an obelisk honoring those in the struggle for independence from Spain in 1821.  The building on the right is the Casa de los Leones, named for the carved lions on the stone entry arch (the only part of the building to survive Walker’s burning in 1856).

Though not as many as León, Granada has some beautiful churches.  Unlike the rest of Nicaragua, many of the churches here do not face west.  (So now, not only am I uncertain why the others DO face west, I’m also uncertain as to why many of Granada’s churches defy the convention.)  The cathedral and Iglesia San Francisco do face west, but Guadalupe, La Merced and Xalteva face east and La Asunción-Xalteva faces north.  Most of these churches are more recent rebuilds—some have been rebuilt several times.

Catedral Nuestra Señora de la Asunción.  First build in 1583, then rebuilt in 1633, 1751 and between 1860 and 1915.  At the top you can also see a bit of Volcan Mombacho.

On Friday, there was a processional with a statue of Jesus carrying the cross carried through the streets.  Many churches have such processionals during lent, usually with a different route each week.  The priest (in white) along with alter boys (in red) leading the crowd in prayer via the loud-speaker truck (vehicles with large speakers are very common in Nicaragua, so it wasn’t hard to find this sound set-up).

Iglesia San Francisco with the convent just to the left.  The palm trees are in the convent’s central courtyard.  The church and convent were also rebuilt after 1856.  A view of the cathedral from the front of the church, also showing Volcan Mombacho towering over the city.

Views of Iglesia La Merced, whose tower is open to visitors.  A picture of Susan descending the spiral staircase from the tower.

Views approximately in the four compass directions for the tower of La Merced church.  Starting upper left, a view to the north, looking toward the baseball stadium.  (Apparently the León-Granada feud lives on on the baseball field.)  Next a view to the south with Mombacho dominating the scene.  Note the clouds gathering around the summit;  also note that in neither the north or south views is a single church—this could not happen in León.  Bottom right is looking west towards two churches in Xalteva, Iglesia Xalteva on the right and just beyond to the left, the Parroquia de la Asunción-Xalteva (with the blue roof).  Finally, the view east to the cathedral.  Just off camera to the left is San Francisco and barely visible to the right, behind the cathedral is the Iglesia Guadalupe and in the distance lies Lake Nicaragua.

Until the 1870s, Xalteva was an autonomous, indigenous community.  On the far left and upper right are pictures of Iglesia Xalteva;  in the center and lower right are photos of La Asunción-Xalteva.

In the interest of efficiency, we opted for a couple of canned tour packages in Granada and only saw a couple of museums on our own.  One was in the convent of the San Francisco church and was a mixture of archeology and art.  It had a number of stone pieces for the Isla Zapatera in Lake Nicaragua, an area rich in pre-Columbian sites.   Some of the modern art works were also very interesting with a distinctive style that used very vivid, bright colors and a more primitive style.  Unfortunately, there was no photography in the museum, so no highlights here.  We also visited a couple of smaller, private museums, one dealing with chocolate and one with pre-Columbian ceramics.  The chocolate museum was interesting, but mostly informational in the form of posters, while the ceramic museum had an extensive collection of various types of pottery.  While everything was labeled, there was not a lot of context to tie it all together.

A collection of burial jars displayed in the museum of ceramics.  They are symbolically shaped like a pregnant woman to indicate a new birth into the afterlife.  Some of the jars even have navels and a few have scars that may be indicative of a knowledge of C-sections.

For our first tour, we took a morning bicycle-boat excursion through Las Isletas (a group of about 360 small islands formed by the last eruption of Volcan Mombacho about 20,000 years ago) and the Peninsula de Aseses.  The tour was mostly enjoying the scenery, but the guide also pointed out some of the wildlife, in particular birds that we would not have noticed on our own. 

Here is a map showing our route through Las Isletas.  We biked southward along the shore to point A, where we loaded the bikes into a boat and cruised through the islands to point B.  From there, we biked to the tip of the peninsula, then backtracked to point C before returning to Granada.  In total it took about 3.5 hours, in part because the roads were very rough and required slow going.

The first picture shows a couple of typical small islands.  Many are uninhabited, but some, like the second picture, have luxurious homes occupying a single, private island.  If you look closely, you’ll see a power line in the first picture and a power pole in the center of the second picture.  Uninhabited islands have lots of wildlife, including the egret (or similar) in the third picture.  One island has been occupied by a band of monkeys who are able to sustain their existence on one single, tiny island (perhaps helped by humans in boats coming by for a look?).

For the other tour, we wanted to do at least one volcano in Nicaragua and had two options:  first, Volcan Mombacho, a long dormant volcano and its cloud forests or 2)  Volcan Masaya, a distinctly active volcano with one caldera having a steady pool of magma within sight of the top.  We opted for an evening tour of Masaya, hoping to be able to see the magma glowing.  (Susan, with her Mt. St. Helens experiences in Portland was a bit wary of going up an active volcano, but as you can see, we survived.)  Because we were the only two signed up for this particular tour, we went by cab (air-conditioned at that!) instead of by bus.  With the exception of being cut a bit short on time in the museum, the tour was very good and included views of three different calderas on the mountain, a walk through a lava cave and sitting in the opening of a cave while bats flew out all around.  Unfortunately, the glowing magma had receded a bit the day we were there and was not visible.  We did, however, get to the parakeets returning to their nests inside the smoking crater (but it was too dark to get a photo).  They have become especially adapted to the sulfurous environment and are safe from predators in the harsh environment.

Masaya volcano is part of a national park as shown on the sign.  The next three photos show the various craters.  First is the large crater from an old eruption, called Ventarrón.  The black line just below the horizon is the limit of this large crater, which is about 10 km x 5 km and includes most of the national park.  On the right, is a blacker area of a more recent lava flow.  Next is the active crater of Santiago, in which hot magma sits at an approximately constant level.  It was very windy and the wind was at our backs, so the smell was not too bad.  Finally, the San Fernando crater is forested over, but the ranger said the ground is warmer at the bottom and you can smell the sulfurous gases.

First is the cross of Bobadilla (not the original).  It was placed here in the 1530s by the Friar Francisco de Bobadilla because he believed the volcano represented the gate to hell and he wished to keep the door shut.  Susan and me with the picture taken by the ranger standing at the base of the cross and looking into the Santiago crater.  Next is a view of the parking lot from the cross.  You can faintly see a line parallel to the current bumpers about 5 m closer to the crater as well as a few large rocks in that area.  An eruption in 2001 blew molten magma and rocks into the parking lot, so they moved the cars back by the 5 m and now require that all vehicles be parked pointing outward.  (This did not make Susan feel any better about visiting the volcano!)  Finally, a view of Mombacho and the Laguna Masaya in the foreground as we were ascending the San Fernando crater.  A major eruption in 1772 threatened the nearby town of Nirindí, but legend says that Cristo del Volcan diverted the lava flow into Laguna Masaya, saving the town.

A few photos from our cave hike.  The caves here were formed not by water carving them out, but by hotter, less viscous lava flowing through tubes in colder, more solid lava.  First is just a picture of us “suited-up.”  We never had to crawl or slither, so it was my kind of cave, but I know Sarah would be disappointed.  Next is a typical view of the cave ceiling showing mini-stalactites.   Another ceiling shot, but includes a few bats.  Because of the human traffic through this cave, there aren’t a lot of bats here.  Note also the tree roots here, even  though we are 10-15 m below the surface.  From craters above, you can pick out the areas where there are caves because the trees are greener, due to the fertilization of bat guano.  Finally, a shot at the entrance of a different cave, where humans are not allowed.  There are many more bats here, and we had the opportunity to sit in the cave mouth and hear/feel the bats exiting around us.  If you look closely, you can see a number of bats in the photo.  In the lower right is one that looks like it’s headed right for me.

I’ll just throw in a few shots of our hotel in Managua because in some ways it seemed so “standard US” and in other ways was distinctly Nica.  It is literally across the street from the airport and with a 6:20 flight for Susan, it was nice to not have to rely on cabs arriving on time.  Although one of the nicest hotels in Managua and expensive by Nica standards, it was probably 50-75% less than an equivalently located hotel in the US.

The top two photos just show the grounds and pool at the hotel (a Best Western).  There are no hallways as the rooms are all in small cabañas with two rooms each, connected by covered sidewalks.  The chapel is definitely a Nica touch and you can see some rooms to the right.  Finally, I just threw this in to illustrate Nicaraguans’ love for BIG speakers—on trucks, on vans, in buses, wherever.  The event would only have included the pool area, so not really a great need for such a large system.  I’ve heard it said that Nicas are always hoping that their speakers will blow out so they can get bigger ones.