The worst night of sleep ever!

Gecko in Granada

The spot that caused all the discussion

Our sweet ride

Ferry Ride

Can Jon join your biker gang now Dad?

 

Tuesday, April 2 2012

The power went out sometime in the middle of the night and it was so hot that it felt like we were in a flop house lying sweating naked on a cheap bed waiting until dawn.  So I got up early went for a swim in the pool at 6:30 am.  One of the hotel workers came out and timidly told me that the pool was not open until 7:30.  I informed him that the ventilador (fan) in my room was not working and I was hot, ending the discussion. 

After that, while Marcie got her beauty sleep I shuffled around some gear to try an’ make New Beige’s load more economical.   Now that we’re not carrying any bicycles there’s a lot more room and our luggage fits much more comfortably.

All day today was extremely hot.  I never saw a temperature reading but I’ll estimate that it was over 95 f with mucho humidity.  Our drive from Leon was a leisurely 3 hours, with no police checkpoints, legitimate or not, to the oldest Spanish colonial city in Nicaragua, Granada.  We checked into a hotel rite in the center of town for $16 US.  In retrospect maybe we should of paid $36 for the air conditioned room because it was wicked hot all day and our fan was as ineffective as the Patriots’ secondary.  The heat scored touchdowns on us all afternoon and ran up the score as the sweat ran down my back during our afternoon siesta.  When the evening cooled down a little we walked around town to the super mercado and the local mercado for groceries.   You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to by ice in this town.  You’d think that a store that sold margarita mix would also vend frozen water but this isn’t always so.  I eventually had to buy a sandwich bag of frozen water from a toothless old lady’s house to make my much needed Zia-Ritas.  

There’s a chance that I’m going to have to kill this glue sniffing homeless kid if he doesn’t get away from my truck.  I’m watching him from my balcony right now and I’ve already made it clear to him that we are not amigos.  Hasta Manana.

~Jon

Wednesday, April 3 2012

I believe that I spent the most miserable night of my life in Granada.  It was so hot. When I woke up at around 11pm and Jon was still up he asked me if I wanted to go walk around to cool off. I didn’t really but it was actually cooler in the outdoor hallway than it was in our room, so I took my pillow outside and put three kitchen table chairs together and laid on those for a while to cool down.  It worked a bit but then I remembered that we had a small fan in our truck so Jon escorted me outside so I could get the fan.  While we were out there several guys who were policing the streets told us again that we should move our truck around the corner.  It didn’t seem like a big deal to us to move the truck a few feet but these guys had told us several times and the glue sniffing homeless kid was still out there trying to “watch” our truck for us for money.  So we moved the truck and went back upstairs to the sweat the night away.

The next morning we drove the short drive from Granada to San Jorge where we parked the truck and got a ferry to the island of Ometepe.  We quickly got our stuff together, used the banos and walked over to the boat.  It looked pretty full and there wasn’t a gangplank to get on the boat.  Jon asked a lady near the boat if it was full and she said yes so we were a little bummed because the next boat wasn’t for an hour and a half.  Fortunately I saw a guy jump over onto a tire tied to the boat and climb on, so we did the same and made the boat as it was pulling away.  It was an hour ride over the lake to Ometepe. 

We arrived and quickly rented a moped.  Jon is trying to gain access to my dad’s biker gang the Warren Ridge Boys (a.k.a. Rocky Run Riders).  He thought by renting a moped and speeding around on the island that he might be able to join.  We only wrecked within the first 35 minutes.  Thankfully I was able to jump off before the bike fell on me.  I have to admit that there was a lot of volcano dust on the road and it made it a little difficult to drive.  After that we drove another 30 min. and made it to the rustic Finca Magdalena that we were intending to stay at.  About 5 min before the Finca the road was no longer paved and was volcano dust all the way across.  Add lots of Nicaraguan vacationers, pigs and other livestock into the mix and it makes for a pretty slow drive, but eventually we made it.  The Finca was very rustico being in an old coffee plantation.  We had our own room but had to share a bathroom and they were not pretty.  The showers had very cold water but the restaurant was cheap and had pretty good food.  We went to bed early that night because we planned to get up around 6am to get ready to hike the volcano.  While sleeping that night the power went out, not surprisingly, for the 3^rd night in a row.  There was also a lot of noise coming from outside.  Jon thought it might be one of the pigs that we saw because it was kind of a grunting noise.  The noises went on for most of the night and into the early morning.  We later found out that they were actually Howler Monkeys. 

~Marcie