End of a Continent

The volcano tour was offered as a day tour or night. Sign me up for the night tour. While waiting, I wandered around Grenada. Grenada sits on Lago Nicaragua, which is, I think, the largest body of water in Central America. The Malecon was dirty and smelled like sewage. There were pigs rooting around by the water. It didn't look very appealing. Actually, all of Grenada smells like sewer. I couldn't see the attraction of the city, but there were lots of tourists.

I wandered off the tourist trail into the street market. Near the end of the street, vendors were selling fruit and vegetables that were, shall we say, well past the "sell by" date. In fact, it looked rotten. It is a shame that people have to resort to selling stuff like that. It is even sadder that it may be the only thing other people can afford to buy.

Seeing that, while knowing everyone in the US was celebrating Thanksgiving, really makes me appreciate my country. We have problems and aren't perfect, but the poorest among us have it better than 90% of the rest of the world.

And they try to emulate us everywhere. Our music, dress,...Black Friday... Seriously, if they're going to copy Black Friday, then I should have been able to get a Thanksgiving dinner, right?

The volcano tour is popular and the night tour especially, as we had only 20 minutes at the top before we had to leave and make room for other people. First, driving to the volcano in the twilight, we could see smoke or steam coming out of the cone. Then, as we wound our way up and the sky got darker, we could see the red glow from the magma, even though we couldn't see it yet. At the top of the caldera, we stopped and got out and we could see down about 300 feet or so, the molten rock. My photos don't show the magma well. It looked better than the photos indicate. A pretty awesome sight!

The following day, I headed for the ocean again. San Juan del Sur was my destination. I took a "highway" that looked shorter than the main road. It soon turned to dirt, then mud. The tail of Hurricane Otto had come through here.This was Nicaragua National Highway #72. The better section.

Eventually, the road improved and I found a decent hotel on the outskirts of San Juan del Sur. There was a lot of debris on the beaches, but other than that, I saw very little damage from the hurricane.

An estuary between the hotel and the town, that I was told was normally dry, or at least a small step over, was now full of water. What was normally a 10 minute walk to town would take 30 minutes or more. But some enterprising local had strung a rope across the water and was pulling a boat back and forth across the estuary. For the equivalent of 33 cents, you could be ferried across. I was told he was charging $.17 the day before. What the market will bear, I suppose...

The town is full of ex-pats, and there are nice homes for sale for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Certainly is not like most of the Nicaragua I have seen.

The next day I hiked up to a Christ statue above the town. The view of the town was amazing.

Also a good view of the various coves north of south of San Juan. Probably to Costa Rica tomorrow.