Hello all, back with another update here. Currently Kash and I are entering our 4th and final week of Spanish school here in Granada. We are also volunteering with a morning day-care for poor kids, as well as taking classes. Next week we leave to tour Nicaruaga for two weeks.
In my previous posts I had taken us up to July 12th, which was our first weekend in Granada. Since we had been in the city for a week we decided to to go to the beach, so we hopped on the chicken bus with one of our new friends to San Juan Del Sur.
By chicken bus, I mean the local buses that most people take to get around. There are some nicer more expenisve buses, but they dont go to most places. The buses are all 70s and 80s American yellow school buses that have been painted with wild colors. They have no seatbelts, and all the safety instructions are in English. We got to the bus a little late, so we all had to take the second and a half seat. When the bus fills up, one side of the bus is a little bigger than the other, so you either have the choice of getting one cheek on, or standing for two hours. There is no concept of a full bus. As we pulled out of the station, when I thought we couldnt possibly carry any more people, a guy was still hanging out the front hawking the destination, trying to get people to get on. All duing the ride, the bus would slow down to pick people up or drop them off. There arnt many real bus stops, you just flag them down as they pass. Meanwhile, vendors would hop on and push thier way through this totally crowded bus, selling pastries, quesedillas, gum, drinks, whatever. after the two hour or so bus ride (which cost 1.25) we got to town, checked into a hostel and then took a cabride through a muddy, flooded road to an isolated beach. There are a lot of popular beaches in this part of Nica, especially with surfers. From what I understand the waves at some beach can be 15-20 feet high. The beach that we went to was fairly small, and almost totally deserted. It was semi-protected by a foothill on one side, and a large outcropping of rock on the other, so the waves were pretty normal sized, 5-6 feet.
I think I have mentioned it before, but it is the rainy season here, so it rains a lot. We had all been in the water for about 20 minutes, which is a really, really nice temparature, when it started to rain and then started to pour. Normally you would think that we would all go running out of the water, but the rain is pretty warm as well. It was crazy, being in a rainstorm while up to your chest in the ocean, and the temperature of all the water being 75 or so degrees. It was like being inside of a hurricane. Afterwards, I went for little hike to check out the nearby jungle and then the rock formations. One of the things that I love about tropical areas is how the jungle and the beach run into each other. In the states, I am accustomed to a dry or dead zone before you hit the beach, with some scrubby bushes or tough grass, but down here the rainforest runs right into the edge of the water, with giant trees hanging off of the rocks and sliding into the water.
The beach had all of these crazy crabs running all over the place, these medium sized dark red and white spotted crabs, these little tiny midnight blue and black crabs, it was pretty wild. When I hiked up into the jungle, there was this huge bright orange-bodied crab with black legs that seemed to only live on land. It was a little scary, as I first thought it was some kind of rodent in the bushes, and then this crab bigger than my hands runs out. I hiked out of the jungle and then walked about 500 feet out onto the spit of rock, which at the end shot striagn up into the air like a finger about 75 feet high. All the time, it was raining off and on, making the algae covered rocks really really treacherous, which is my kind of fun.
Oh shoot, I gotta go, I will talk to you all later.
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