Tamara: la Viajera: Early departure....

Buenas,

My apologies for the long delay in posting but the delay came in part because after agonizing over the decision all of last week I decided to return back home a couple of weeks early. So this past weekend I traveled into Managua as planned but instead of heading north to study more Spanish I changed my flight and flew home on Sunday. I am not going to get into the details of the decision here since I sincerely believe that blogs are not really public journals so if you are interested in more info please feel free to call me or send me an email.

But, I did do some more interesting things before departing so here is one last post along with some photos!

Last Thursday afternoon, my fellow students and I decided to make an afternoon trip into the city of Granada. At one time I had been thinking about doing a week of study in Granada but since I was planning to go north I wanted to at least get in to see the place. Granada is touted as the most beautiful city in Nicaragua and it certainly has very impressive colonial architecture. It is situated on the gigantic Lago Nicaragua and for a time was the national capital. It was also frequently burned to the ground in the past by pirates since it's location on the lake makes it accessible via the Rio San Juan to the ocean, and thus, was a central trading hub - and apparent bull's eye for pirate pyromaniacs!

After waiting a quite long time to hail a cab from the middle of nowhere (we were told it was easy to pick one up and then told it was near to impossible....but thankfully the locals helped us out with a phone call!), we made it to the city where we spent a few hours wandering around, seeing the sights, and treating ourselves to some non-traditional food at a restaurant (hummus....yummy.). Granada is also very touristy so I saw the largest number of gringos that I had seen in some time.

Here are some photos from Granada:

Some fellow students: Emil (from Denmark), Ali (USA), and taking the pic, TJ (from Australia)

The next day I left the Laguna and headed for Managua where I met up with Jes Buller, a '08 GC grad! She was in town doing orientation with the MCC SEED program which she now co-coordinates in Colombia. We ended up doing some sight-seeing with the SEED group as we visited. It was delightful to see her.

We hit up the standard views in Managua which included the empty and somewhat run down National Cathedral, the Palace, and a mountain top view of the city where a large silhouette statue of Sandino stands. Managua's city center was destroyed by an earthquake in 1972 and has never been rebuilt so it is a bit of a stark city and not particularly beautiful but here are a few photos from my two days there. Oh, and one of the bus terminal in Masaya that I bused through en route to Managua: