I flew to Granada Nicaragua with a friend of mine. He wanted to take the bus from Quepos to Granada because it was only twelve bucks but it took, more or less, 22 hours to get there. There was no way I could sit in a bus for that length of time. The flight was quick and easy and was under $200 for the round trip flight. We arrived in the late morning. I was given the run around by immigration with my American passport and my friend traveling on a Canadian passport went through quickly with no hassles. We took a taxi to downtown Granada and checked into a nice hotel near the main square. Almost all the cities in Central and South America follow the Spanish tradition of having a main town square in the middle of town. The locals gather in the squares to walk around and socialize.
We went down to have a look at Lake Nicaragua. It was filthy with garbage along the shore. There were plastic bottles and plastic bags everywhere. Out in the shallow water there were some people collecting trash that they could get paid to recycle. We walked along the pathway running next to the lake. There were couples sitting on benches and people walking alone or in couples. It did not take me long to figure out that this was a cruising area for prostitutes and for gay men. We got our look around and went back to downtown. There were a few baseball fields on the road from the lake to the square. Baseball is popular in Nicaragua. If a player can hone their skills enough to play well then there is a chance that the American scouts that come down here might draft them. That is like winning the lottery for them, going from rags to riches. There were no games being played at the moment but some young kids were out in the field playing pickup ball.
For dinner we went to a restaurant that people told us about run by an American that had Southern style barbecue. The food was great and we met some of the local expats at the restaurant. They were gathering to play some texas holdem poker that night. We were invited to play but we declined. Instead we went out on the town. There were a number of clubs that had dancing and big crowds. We checked out a few of them. I was getting hit on by prostitutes all night, some of them were as young as eight years old. I was kind of shocked and disgusted by this.
When I walked across the town square earlier lots of children approached me for sex. They offered themselves to me for coins or food. It was very sad to see. There is a huge pedophile presence in Nicaragua. The country is so poor that pedophiles can actually purchase children from their parents and then molest them as they please. When they get bored with one they just dump them out on the street to fend for themselves and go buy another one. About fifty of them hit on me the first night and I think the oldest one was maybe twelve. There were both boys and girls doing this. The people in the square paid no attention to these kids out hustling sex for a living. It was just an accepted practice. I sat at a cafe near a catholic school for kids 6-12 years old. As they were getting out of school there was a priest and a couple of nuns in their habits standing in front of the school telling the kids goodbye and things. There was a guy with a pickup truck standing almost right next to them asking kids if they wanted to come and have sex with them. The nuns and priest just ignored the guy like he was just part of the scene. I was totally shocked watching this and wanted to go kick the guys ass. I am the one that would go to jail if I did beat him up or something however so I just observed. Nicaragua has a long way to go in protecting their children.
We had breakfast in our hotel the next morning and went to the market to look around. We ended up in a bar/restaurant for lunch and we had a nice cuban sandwich for lunch then proceeded to get bombed on beer. we just sat there all afternoon drinking and watching the world go by. We were laughing at the horse drawn taxis and how they reminded us of cinderella stories and stuff like that. We took some pictures of the taxis when we were hammered. My friend wore a tiara that he saw in a store and waved like he was the queen of England. The taxi drivers were laughing their asses off at him as he pretended to be a queen. We attracted a bit of a crowd before we decided to go back to the hotel and have a nap.
The next day we went out to see a volcano close up. We laughed at the sign that said all vehicles had to remain unlocked and pointed in the direction of the exits in case of an eruption. We were allowed to walk right up to the edge of the crater and look down into it. There was stinky sulfurous smoke and steam rising from the cauldron and the red glow from the lava lit up the deep hole. I enjoyed getting this close but I could only take the smell for a few minutes before I was ready to leave. We went to an older volcano next that had a big deep lake now. We took a boat ride around the lake and listened while the tour guide told us in Spanish all about volcanoes. There were people fishing in the lake and I wanted to fish but they told me I wasn't allowed to fish. We had food at a restaurant next to the lake and went swimming in our underwear like everybody else was doing. Glad I wasn't wearing those old grundies with the holes in them today.
The next day we were going to ride over to the ocean a couple of hours away but the ride we arranged did not show up. We spent the day wandering around town looking at all the architecture. I love the villa style of architecture with the high wall surrounding a compound of buildings and a big private open space in the center. There was usually a garden or a fountain in the center and frequently both. Some of the ones we looked at were posh modern versions of Spanish design and others were more classical with Moorish patterns and things. Some of them were trashed and looked like they had been abandoned for a long time. We were pretending that we wanted to buy one. They were priced from around sixty thousand bucks to a half a million bucks for a very nice large multi-family compound.
We went out on the town again that night after another barbecue meal. My buddy decided to go with a trick but I just talked to some local expats and got an early night. We flew back to San Jose the next morning.
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