In Which I Leave Granada, Ride a Chicken Bus (or Two) & Brag About Being on a Beach

27 June 2012
4:37pm - San Juan del Sur; more specifically, the beach.

There is a man with a live squirrel on his leg walkign down the beach right now.  A live squirrel.  On what appears to be a shoestring leash.  Simultaneously bizarre and enthralling.

Life is good.

The sunset right now is gorgeous, by the way.  Did I mention I'm sitting on a beach?  With a beer?

There's a lot I like about this picture.   Side note: only ONE of those is mine.

Returning momentarily to Granada, we went for dinner after our return to the city from the volcano & ziplining adventure.  After dinner, we did some souvenir shopping in the square in front of the cathedral, then returned to the main streeet to find  somewhere to hang out for a little while.  Having heard a lot about O'Shea's, an Irish bar, from both our guidebook and people we'd met, we decided to give that place a shot. 

Very multicultural.

 I accidentally ordered the three of us three 40s of Tona, the Nicaraguan beer, which I guess is how we knew we were off to an interesting start.  Sarah and Roisin, the British and Irish girls (respectively) who were also in our hostel, ended up joining us, as did two other girls from the hostel who we hadn't met yet.  We befriended Tom, the owner, a seventy-something Irish expat who one day decided to move to Nicaragua and open a bar, who told us to "forget the children" and volunteer at his bar when we returned to Nicaragua.  I haven't yet ruled that out as a possibility.  While we were sitting there, a group of teenage Nica boys set up a stereo in the street and began doing the fiercest breakdancing I've ever seen.  It was incredibly impressive.  Once they'd finished that, they moved into a perfectly choreographed Michael Jackson routine.  I'm fairly certain they were good enough to potentially knock out any competition in one of those reality talent shows.  

The next morning, we were woken around 6am by what could have been sporadic gunshots or fireworks.  I chose to believe the latter and went back to sleep.

Regardless, we were up by seven, packed by eight, and checked out by nine.  We said goodbye to Gerry and made our way to the bus station.  We wandered through a chaotic, smelly, crazy market that reminded me powerfully of Bartela in Agartala.  I desperately wanted to poke around, but we were on our way to the chicken bus.  We navigated successfully through the market, eyeing various breads and tempting street foods on display, but got a little sidetracked when we were supposed to turn for the bus station.  Fortunately, we were guided in the right direction by a wiry little man yelling, "RIVAS! RIVAS!" at us and another backpacker who also appeared confused.  Rivas was the city where we'd be switching busses to get to San Juan del Sur.  How the little man knew where we were going, I'll just never know (sarcasm - San Juan is a pretty popular destination).   Our guide led us to the chicken bus (so named because occasionally people will use the bus to transport livestock, such as chicken), which is a retired American school bus.  

Chicken bus.  Image swiped from Google.

You could still see the signs at the front of the bus that were clearly meant for school children ("Don't Lose Your Riding Privileges").   

Interior of the chicken bus.  The guy on the left was the other backpacker who was lost with us.

The seats were worn down and springy - certainly less than comfortable - but the exterior of the bus was brightly colored and no two busses looked the same.  There were far more backpackers on our bus than we anticipated.  They didn't appear to be American and left us at Rivas, so apparently were not heading on to San Juan either.

The Rivas bus station was a crazily chaotic, bustling, overwhelming experience.  Hopping off the back of the bus (kind of like a fire drill), we were instantly accosted by cab drivers, rickshaw drivers and bus assistants yelling backpacker buzzwords like, "San Juan! Good price! San Juan! San Juan!"  

Rivas bus station.  Also swiped from a Google image search

Amidst the chaos, I attempted to locate our bus so we could start moving like we had a plan.  The only bus going to San Juan that I could see was clearly packed to the brim and didn't look like a viable option.  One of the crowd around us, who ended up being a bus assistant, captured my attention by yelling in my face about the San Juan bus.  Nice.  So, I asked him where the bus was and he indicated that we should follow him.  Deciding to back out if this suddenly got sketchy, we followed him across the bus station, through the crowd, and to an empty dock, where he told us to "Espera."  Wait.  The bus was coming and would be there in five minutes.  So, we waited and the bus came.  I thanked the guy who had helped us and we climbed on board to await departure.  As we waited, vendors climbed on and off the bus, hawking everything from food (we couldn't help it, we bought some biscuits.  Unfortunately, they were unimpressive, but we didn't think we were ready for the chicken, tortilla & rice in baggies just yet.) to plastic cups to music to boxers.

Towards the end of the trip from Rivas to San Juan del Sur, someone put in a DVD of music videos into the TV at the front of the bus.  They were easily the most absurd things I have ever seen - and definitely filmed in the 80's.  Every member of the band was wearing fringe, cowboy hats, and brightly colored cowboy suits.  The lead singer continually cast himself as the hero in the plots of the videos and was either continually broken hearted or breaking hearts while dressed as a cowboy - always with a white hat.   I tried very hard to find a picture of this, but Google searches involving keywords like "1980s, latin band, cowboy hat, fringe" don't really turn up anything useful.

The San Juan adventures will begin on Thursday.