Day 3 - Granada

We woke up at about 9am to the sounds of a band playing outside. I looked out the balcony and there were two guys playing drums and another on the trumpet. It seemed like a weird place to be playing music on a quiet (well not so quiet now) side street at 9am on a Saturday.


While Kat was in the shower I was watching news on TV saw lots of people on the streets on Managua supporting the FSLN or PLC. There are 4 television stations in Managua and two were showing FSLN and the other two showing PLC supporters. Later all four stations were only showing FSLN supporters. Hmmmmmm.

After breakfast we walked over to the central mercado which was packed solid with locals selling everything imaginable on the street. After two blocks we were feeling somewhat claustrophobic so we bailed out and headed back towards the central park and to the Convento San Francisco museum where we paid $2 each and wandered around the museum where they had some nice art and a really cool diorama of the entire city. There are also a lot of pre Colombian statuary, and some exhibits on the native peoples on display as well.





Next stop was the Cathedral. There were some firemen using their portable firefighting ladder to get way up high and clean the ceilings 20 meters up.





Outside in the park there were buses and lots of FSLN supporters. We later learned that Ortega was busing in to Managua tens of thousands of supporters from all around the country to support his bid to change the constitution so he can run for another term. I forgot to mention that we saw FSLN signs on almost every electrical pole on the outskirts of the city.

Getting close to lunch time we stopped at the Roadhouse Bar which was nice and air conditioned. Had a few beers and some nachos. Lots of locals seemed to be hanging out there watching soccer on the big screen TV. Next we went to Zoom for some more beers and Cuba libres.



After a shower at the hotel we went to the Pan American for dinner (at the suggestion of Bill who we met the day before). It was nice to be off the off the touristified Calle Calzada. The food and drinks were excellent and we hung out with the owner who was a real interesting character entertaining us with war stories from Vietnam - ended up staying there until almost midnight and we couldn't drink any more. Stumbled back to the hotel and passed out

Day 1 - Arrival in Managua and transfer to Granada

We flew out of San Francisco on time at 11am on Continental with an scheduled hour layover in Houston. Once in Houston, we wanted to get a quick drink at an airport restaurant that was right near our gate but the waitress was incompetent and it turned into a 40 minute ordeal as they switched my credit card with someone else's when it was time to pay the bill. Fortunately we got it worked out and then found that our flight was delayed for another hour due to an FAA computer glitch that was affecting flights all over the eastern US.

We finally arrived in Managua an hour late at about 10pm and made it through immigration and customs in about 10 minutes paying our $5/person entry tax. The driver from our hotel, El Terrasol, was there waiting and he had us at the hotel in about 45 minutes. Since it was late the night guard let us in and gave us the keys to the room. Our room was super tiny but had a comfortable bed, security box, cable tv, and a/c, along with a small balcony that looked over the street.

We were pretty thirsty from our trip so Kat went down and got some beers, two Victorias and two Tonas, from the guard. She dosent speak Spanish and the guard didn't speak English so when he said "seis" she thought that meant $6 and gave him the money.

We were pretty tired from the day of traveling so we watched some TV and then hit the sack.