Nicaragua Day 1
After arriving late in Granada last night (and then having a little mishap when checking into the hotel…) we let ourselves sleep in this morning. We left the hotel at ~10 AM for Garden Cafe. I had heard this was THE place in town for latte art, but apparently the Nicaraguan word for latte is Cappuccino and I got a large warm milk with a little bit of coffee flavor. ?
Breakfast was delicious though! I got a nacatamal – Nica’s version of tamale and it was great! After breakfast, we headed to Claro to buy a SIM card. I think we got unlucky with timing because a large family was in there getting chips before us and it took an hour for us to get out. We made a quick lap of the town square and then headed back to the hotel to get our things for the main event – Laguna de Apoyo.
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Apparently we were getting swindled by our hotel. The cab to Hostel Paradiso was more than the price on the wall when we got there ?. Oh well. The deal was $7 for a day pass that included access to all facilities, kayaks and coffee. We spent 45 minutes swimming in the lake before getting out to get some lunch.
We spent a little more time swimming and then gathered our stuff to leave. The shuttle we were planning to take back to Granada had a flat tire, so the hotel was calling cabs for groups of 4. While we were waiting, it started pouring rain out of nowhere! We finally got a cab and when we arrived back at our hotel it was sunny again! So we spent the rest of the daylight walking down to see the lake in daylight.
We head back to the hotel and cleaned up for dinner. We had spent a lot of time wondering where all the Americans were. They were all at Restaurant el Zaguan. Despite definitely catering to gringos, Zaguan was delicious! The steak we got was better than any steak I had in South America! After dinner, we were surprised to find ourselves in the middle of a Christmas parade.
We took a quick walk around the town square and then made our way back to the hotel! Interestingly, the pool area was packed! Overall, an awesome day! Now if you’ll excuse me, I think there’s a bat in my hotel room ?
