Arriving in Granada, one of the most important cities in Nicaragua, we are gifted with a beautiful surprise: today started the XIV International Festival of Poetry! Every year around the 15th of February, poets from all parts of the world meet here to share and celebrate the beauty of poetry. But there’s more! This year, the festival coincide with both Carnival & San Valentin day making so that everybody is partying on the streets for one thing or the other. We don’t even find the time to put our backpacks down that we’re already on the move following the huge parade of dancers, colors and music. Welcome to Granada!
It seems like the city has prepared a huge party for us! Strolling around the coloured streets next to towering colonial churches and the music following feels like being in a movie. The parade lead us to the Cathedral of Inmaculada Concepción de María, a majestic newly built yellow building right next to the beautiful Central Park of Granada. Chill on a bench in the shadow, have a drink from one of the many street vendors or just grab a “pincho” (skewer) for a quick snack. Just next to the Cathedral there’s also another small plaza where you can find the Casa de los Tres Mundos, a cultural institution which promotes cultural projects in Nicaragua and throughout Central America. During the festival, this place was hosting talks, shows and workshops as well as beautiful photography exhibitions and most of them for free.
In between the Cathedral and Casa de los tres Mundos starts the renown La Calzada, the most touristic street in Granada where all the restaurants, bars and hotels are concentrated. From Italian pizzerias to Irish pubs, here you can find anything you could have ever thought of! Every day at around 6pm aka happy hour time, it gets flooded with people ready to have a drink, eat and listen to some great live music.
At the end of the Calzada, after a nice relaxing 15min walk you’ll find the Lago Cocibolca aka Lago Nicaragua. The water is kind of brown and doesn’t really looks nice for a swim but the breeze from lake and the warm sun make it a nice spot where to have a stroll armed with ice cream. Here is where various local dance groups reunited to exhibit in honor of the Festival of poetry and visiting poets. What a show!
Once at the waterfront you can keep following right for another 15min and reach a small “touristic” area with a couple of local restaurants where you can take tours to the Isletas . On the way there many people will try to sell you tours to the isletas offering better and better deals as you get closer to the boats. Needless to say that we went straight to the boatmen at the docks and after a bit of negotiating managed to get a 2h tour for just 100C each (three times lower than what was offered just a few meters away!). All in all, the tour consist in boating around some of the many small islands around the coast of Granada; houses of millionaires, restaurants and local houses but apart from that nothing special. We didn’t really enjoy the tour, it felt more like a real estate tour as if we wanted to buy a house rather than discovering the surroundings! If you’re looking for something cultural or nature related look away!
Even the famous Monkey Island, the “top-spot” of the tour ends up being a small island with just three monkeys that are NOT living there but have literally forced to live there and now they cannot leave cause they cannot swim! Beforehand there used to be many more but from the moment they decide to put electric cables on the island several of the monkeys have been electrocuted and died in a short time. Shame on the people who did such cruelty!
Close to Granada you can also visit the Apoyo Lagoon, a huge lake located inside a crater which offer a perfect temperature and clean waters to have a swim. We spend sometime there at the Paradiso Hostel, a relatively expensive hostel for our average but nothing less than what the name says: a paradise. The hostel offers free kayaks all day long, the food is the best we’ve eaten in Nicaragua and the location is just perfect to enjoy some relaxed time away from the bustling cities.
In addition, you can also do several tours from the hostel, one of which being the incredible tour to the Volcano Masaya, an active volcano where you’ll be able to see moving lava!
Also, don’t forget to hike up to the Mirador Santa Caterina, a beautiful lookout point from where to enjoy beautiful views of the Lagoon, the city of Granada and further on. If you don’t fancy hiking you can also get a tuk-tuk or a taxi to get you there but make sure not to miss it!
If you fancy something more challenging which also involve getting to know the local culture, doing a trekking on the Volcano Mombacho, visiting the Masaya Market and learning local ceramic techniques can all be done in a single not-so-cheap tour. Truth is that around the area of Granada & the Lagoon there are plenty of things to do!
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