Granada

I was very happy to hightale it out of Managua and get to Granada which is a lot nicer and friendlier than the capitol.  It´s a cute colonial town with lots of pretty, colourful buildings.  Our hostel even has a little swimming pool.  Robert and I walked around for probably an hour trying to find the tourist information center to find a decent, updated map of the city/hotels/restaurants.  The one on the map in our 5 year old lonely planet book was not actually the tourist information center but some sort of park that you had to pay to enter.  So we got directions from a couple people and seemed to walk almost in a circle.  When we finally found it, it ended up being closed.  That evening we were very pleased to find that the culinary options were much more varied than both El Salvador and Mangua, where the options were limitted to rice, beans, tortillas, chicken, and pupusas (torillas filled with beans and cheese).

The next day, while exploring the streets of Granada I was approached by a boy on a bicycle offerring me a tour of the city.  When I declined, he continued to walk alongside me and offerred to take me to the beach, or to see where he lived...Once I realized he was going to ´join me´on my tour whether I wanted him to or not, I agreed to see how he lived.  He introduced me to his mom, who gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and a tasty glass of fresh mystery fruit juice.  Alfredo then told me to hop on the cross-bar of his bycicle and drove me down along the lakefront and gave me a scenic tour of the lake and the entire city, including a stop at quite literally every church and park and past a couple factories.