Granada
By Jaimy de Vries
Leon and Granada are the most beautiful and popular cities of Nicaragua. We can’t leave Nicaragua without visiting Granada too. It’s a beautiful colonial city, located next to the Mombacho volcano and the Nicaragua lake. We stayed here around the time hurricane Julia hit Nicaragua. Well let’s say we didn’t had the best weather conditions in Granada – making this well known vibrant city – not so vibrant.
A wet welcome
We said goodbye to our lovely stay at hotel Tortuga Booluda in Leon and set off to Granada. We went by tourist shuttle for $19, but going by collectivo bus is just as easy and it saves you half the money. When we arrived and put our bags in the room we wanted to go out for lunch. But then it started to rain heavy. We ran to our restaurant what is just a 2 minute walk, but even wearing a rain jacket my under panties were soaking wet. But we were rewarded with a good and cheap meal.
No good vibes
We walked around the city center. Everything was wet and it was quiet on the streets. The first local that talked to us was a guy at the main plaza with his horse carriage. These horse carriages offer a city tour. This is part of the culture and a fun thing to do, a nice way to explore the city. But the horses are quite exploited. They make long days. We don’t want to participate or stimulate that. So we said that we didn’t want the tour and continued. There were some stands on the plaza where they sold ceramics and clothing. We went for a drink at a restaurant and sat outside. There were a lot of things that happened while we were drinking a cup of coffee. There was a musician, we saw almost a fight and there were some artist running on the street with loud drums and dressed weird. One of them, a guy dressed as a women, asked for a tip. We didn’t want to, they were just walking by. But he was just obligating us and was extremely annoying and quite aggressive. We haven’t asked for this, so we said no. We’re getting tired of people wanting things from us and asking tips all the time.
The horse carriages are waiting
But the guy still stood there and asked 5 dollars. Insane! After saying 3 times no we got angry and then he finally left. But he gave us the creeps. We saw more strange people and walking here didn’t gave us a good feeling. Lots of places look abended. We didn’t feel safe and we didn’t liked the vibe. We went back to our hotel to relax and make a planning for our stay here. We shortened our stay because the bus to Costa Rica leaves only on certain days. The people working at the hotel were great, they helped us a lot. After having dinner in a Chinese restaurant what was nice we heard that there is an hurricane coming, called Julia. It will be raining a lot soon.
Hurricane Julia
When we wanted to pay the check it started raining and it didn’t stopped for more than 24 hours. We took a taxi back home. The collective taxi’s are really cheap, we paid $0.50 per person. Because of the hurricane Julia we adjusted our plan for the next day. We cancelled our tours. And o boy, glad we did. It was pouring rain the whole night and the next day. During the hurricane we just chilled at our hotel, worked on my blog, watched some movies. We did went out for lunch and groceries completely covered in rain gear…but still we got wet.
In the picture below you could see the damage of the amount of rainfall…a whole park flooded.
Source: weather channel
Next day: flooded park
Isletas de Granada
The next day we were a bit unsure if we could do some tours. When we woke up and had breakfast it was sunny and the forecast for the morning was good. We decided to walk to the harbor for a boat trip at the Granada islands. There are travel agencies that offer this tour around 25-40 dollars, but we thought it would be more expensive than oi you go by yourself. We walked on the main street and across the lake. We could see this is a touristy spot, more colors, statues, signs and lots of restaurants…. ..but now it wasn’t really well maintained and almost everything was closed. We didn’t saw many people, just a couple of locals. It looked like tourism died here? There were no tours offered while walking across the lake. We went into a restaurant, one of the few that was open, and ordered a coffee and asked about a boat tour. He called someone and 5 minutes later there was a tour agent. It was still quite expensive but we arranged a boat tour for 2 people for 35 dollars. He picked us up and we drove to the harbor. Unfortunately it turned out both two harbors were closed because of the hurricane Julia from the day before. But he had some friends with a boat that could offer us a private tour. It was 40 instead of 35, but this was our only shot of seeing the islands.
We sailed around half of the islands. We went to the less touristy part, because that was the only part that was open. At the tourist side there is the popular monkey island and a fort, but we couldn’t acces these. The rest of the islets are mainly privately owned islands for hotels and villa’s. There are 360 islets in total. What was really interesting to found out, is that these islets are of volcanic origin. They were formed when the Mombacho volcano blew much of its cone into the lake thousands of years ago, thereby creating the archipelago. Cool right!? Most of the islets are covered with vegetation and rich with bird life. We saw white egrets, but also quite a lot of vultures. The boat ride was really slow, maybe a bit too slow for us. There was a guy on a kayak who was faster than us. But it was a nice relaxed boat ride and we felt very Tranquillo afterwards. We had an amazing view over the Mombacho volcano, one of the active volcanos in this area. And it was interesting to see how people are living on the islets, some were really impressive. We also saw a church.
Showing of his new outfit
Islet with on the top: two great white egrets
Private tour
Afterwards we had lunch and discussed what to do next. We could go to the Masaya volcano at night to see lava in a volcanic crater or a canopy tour. The weather improved, so both were possible. We decided to do the canopy. One, because the reviews were really good. Two, we have seen a lava spitting volcano before that was probably way more impressive. Three, we want to be back early to pack our stuff for our early bus to Costa Rica the next day. First we went back to our hotel and took a nice (cold) refreshing plunge in our hotel’s swimming pool.
Zip-smiling 🙂
We got picked up at the hotel and drove up to Mombacho volcano. Once we arrived our guide was ready. He spoke perfectly English, that’s always rare in Nicaragua. He explained us the tour would be just with the two of us and we will have three guides. Wow! The tour takes about 1 hours and It includes a 2 km route, 17 platforms, 11 double lines and 2 hanging bridges. First we drove up the Mombacho volcano, halfway we were there. We were surrounded by jungle. We geared up. Everything looked professional. We were excited!! We climbed up to our first tree top. They explained us how everything works, how to get on the cable, and what to do. I got a little bit scared. I like these things, but I have freight of heights. I went first, first we were just hanging in the cable. That was fun! At the second tree top we saw cappuccino monkeys! They came to take a look at some strange monkeys zipping down. We felt one with the jungle. We also had an amazing view over the landscape. We could even see the Masaya volcano with some coming out of the crater. Even tough we cancelled our tour to the Masaya volcano, still we were able to have
All geared up and excited to go!
a little peak. Afterwards many ziplines followed. We did it on every possible way: upside down, like superman and Jaron and I even went together at the same time. At the end we went on a fast zipline and they started to pull the zipline what makes that I was jumping up and down on the zipline. A hell of an end to an amazing hour of fun!
First zipline
Amazing view over the landscape and the Masaya volcano spitting smoke
First zipline
Superman
Superwoman
Together <3
Lots of bloggers are enthusiastic about Granada, but we didn’t felt it. We didn’t liked the vibe in the city and felt unsafe sometimes. It was abended and there are lots of poor people living here. But we were in Granada on low season and during our stay the city got hit by a hurricane. After the hurricane the weather got better and so did the vibe in the city. Granada is a city with a lot of potential. Nicaragua got hit by a revolution war in 2018 and COVID-19, tourism is not the same ever since. We hope Granada will shine again ones tourism is back to normal.
My guide for your Granada trip
We stayed in Granada for 3 days. We booked 4, but we shortened our trip because of a bus to Nicaragua and the weather and vibe was bad. We wanted to go to our next destination as soon as possible.
- Recommended duration visit: 3-4 days
- Good and cheap restaurants (recommendations from locals): querube's, chino año neuvo (chinese restaurant).
- Highlighted things to do: city tour by horse carriage, night tour Masaya volcano, visit the islands of Granada, Canopy Miravalle, Masaya market
- Our accommodation: Hotel Gran Sultana. Good service and has a swimming pool. Lots of backpackers go to Selina.
- My favorite activity: Canopy tour