Take Flight Day Four: Granada and Las Isletas

By: Bella, Lola, Shanice, and Kris

Today, we got to sleep in a little and get up at 7:30 (if you call that sleeping in). We all got up and went down for breakfast. After that the Magnificent Don Pablo picked us up and drove us to Granada over the course of an hour. On the way, we stopped by for our tour guide, Eduardo, to go with us. Eduardo is a friendly person. Then, the Magnificent Don Pablo dropped us off and we boarded four horse drawn carriages (four people per carriage). We stopped five times at churches and old forts to protect the Nicaraguans from pirates long ago, while Eduardo talked about how all of Granada was burnt to the ground by William Walker, who was an American who tried to control the trade route through Nicaragua and eventually became president of Nicaragua. 

After we got off the carriages, Tr. Kate, Tr. Steve, and Eduardo gave us a task: we must interview the random Nicaraguan citizens around the square and ask them these four questions.

1. What is a typical Nicaraguan food and how is it prepared?
2. What is your favorite place in Nicaragua and why?
3. What do you think is the most important holiday in Nicaragua and why is it important?
4. What is one thing that people from other countries should know about Nicaragua?

It was more difficult than you would expect. Just over half of the group cannot speak Spanish, so it was difficult to communicate through mostly hand signals. Some of their dialect was said very quickly and was hard to understand, while others still refused to be interviewed. After we finished interviewing, we had ten minutes of downtime in the park to roam. Almost everybody shopped for souvenirs, and others just sat and rested. It was extremely difficult to bargain with the vendors (we noticed that they charged a lower initial price for natives than to people who appeared to be American). Lots of people of all ages, though mostly young children, came up to us and asked for money or food many times. We didn’t really know what to do in a situation like that and were overall stressed about the entire situation. We have been presented with this situation quite often. It has been getting easier to say no, to word the response, but it hasn’t really been getting easier at all. You know what to say to make it stop temporarily, but not to solve the problem.

After shopping, we went off to lunch. At lunch, an amazing man named Alan crafted personalized maracas for us. The amazing part was that he carved with lightning fast fingers and exacto knife. He is also the third best carver in Masaya. The restaurant itself was mostly outdoors, with a flourishing garden and beautiful paintings. Lunch was excellent, and we were all looking forward to the boat ride in the afternoon.     

After our tour of Granada, Eduardo took us on a boat tour of a typical lifestyle of the city Granada.The lake we took a tour on was called Lake Nicaragua. Eduardo talked about the heritage of Granada. During the tour we saw traditional houses, restaurants and huge beach house on islands also known as las Isletas. some of the houses were very big and had 2 to 3 sets of the houses which were surrounded by bodies of water, where people can only be transported by boats. The traditional house were on the other hand more historical than the others because the rich get better houses than the poor. the rich have more property than the original houses while the traditional houses have historical value. The coolest part of the tour was seeing spider monkeys! After that we went back on the boat and went to a small island to get these amazing drinks.we all had different types of juices but the main ones people had were coconut water, fanta orange soda, pineapple cocktail, and the best one was strawberry cocktail. The tour was the most fun and “redonckulous”  experience we’ve ever had!

Now the most awesomest part of the day was when we took a picture of our driver Don Pablo and we also made a song for him and he was happy. Now our favorite part, dinner. We all tried quesillo made with a burrito wrap, a type of cheese that tasted like string cheese and fried plantains and all the toppings you wanted on your food.The best part of the whole meal was dessert.The main desert everybody wanted was brownies and  tres leches. After dinner we finally arrived home and had our our meeting we talked about how we were feeling and what was the best part of the trip. Now we’re here. All I can say is that we miss all of you guys and we know y’all feel the same way.BYE!!!

Click here to see the Day Four Slide Show