のんびりとしたグラナダとアポヨ湖 – ニカラグア市内と湖ツアー 🇳🇮

のんびりとしたグラナダとアポヨ湖 – ニカラグア市内と湖ツアー 🇳🇮

Good morning, and welcome to my third stop here in Nicaragua. This is Granada, the third largest city in the country, and one that is so rich in history, I don’t think an hour-long video could do it all justice. We are just up here by the ruins of the San Juan de Dios Hospital. This was a building that was built in 1905 and stood for about 100 years. Up until four or five years ago, you could actually go inside and check it out. But as you saw from the video there,They’re having to put additional supports on the front of the building and other walls inside because the building is starting to come down. So, but just a beautiful old building here in Granada, and I figured it’d be a nice place to start. I’m going to work my way back down towards the center. We’re going to check out a few other stops along the way. We’re going to check out the chocolate museum. We’re going to go to the church that has the best view in the entire city. And then we’re going to finish up down by the lake, Lake Nicaragua. The largest freshwater lake in Central America and one of the largest in the world. So if you’ve watched my last couple videos from Nicaragua and Leon and Managua, you’ll have noticed that it was slightly more restrictive in terms of being able to record and shoot footage around the city. Granada does not have that same feeling. It is definitely much more a older colonial style city And you don’t feel the same watchful eye that you would have had in those two places. So we’re going to head down this way towards the centre of town, talk a little bit about the history of the city, which is fascinating to read about. And yeah, let’s head down and check out some of the sights. So here in Granada, one of the most recognizable features. Is Volcano Mombacho, which is just kind of hiding up there in the clouds today. It overlooks the city here of Granada and is quite an impressive sight when the clouds are cleared off. So while we’re heading down to the square here, I thought I’d kind of give you a bit of background on Granada. Granada was founded in 1524 by Hernandez de Cordoba. He was a Spanish conquistador who came to this part of the world, obviously, for the Spanish conquest in the New World. And Granada is the oldest and longest running continuously occupied city in this part of the world. It is now 500 years old as of last year, and the history since that time has continued to be one of the, I think, most interesting of anywhere that I’ve been. In the early days before a unified Nicaragua, there were two distinct sections. There was the regional capital of Leon, which was the liberal capital in the north, and then there was here in Granada, the conservative capital in the south. Both cities fought for control of the country, who was the true capital city. And there were many skirmishes and battles that broke out trying to decide that. Eventually, it was decided that the capital city would be Managua, which was about halfway between Leon and here in Granada. In the 1800s, The chaos in Nicaragua continued. There was basically a revolt in the government and the Northern Liberals from Leon were kicked out and which of course set off a whole new series of issues. In 1855, an American by the name of William Wallace, who was basically a mercenary for hire. was employed by the North to come to Nicaragua with his military forces and fight for control of the country. The history of William Wallace in this part of the world is fascinating, and I think would probably make a good movie. I don’t know if there has been one already. If there has, I’ll put it on the screen, but I haven’t seen it. But he was involved in separation efforts In Mexico and here in Nicaragua, he fought to have Baja California set aside as a separate country. And then obviously the fight here in Nicaragua where he for the short term became president and then later died in Honduras in 1860. I believe the term at the time would have been a filibuster or mercenary today. Walking down through town here you get a real sense of the old colonial style buildings that are still here today. So just made our way down here to our second stop. This is the Iglesia de la Merced. It was originally built in 15 thirty-four, so just ten years after the city was founded, the initial groundwork was done on this church and it was continued to be worked on for. Another 150 plus years after that to get to where it is today. So it is one of the oldest churches here in the city and up there in that bell tower has one of the best views of the city. So we’re going to head up there and take a look. So the bell tower you actually climb up to here at the church, but it’s closed at the moment. It actually is open from like 9:00 to 11:00 in the morning and then. From two to five or six in the evenings, and I’m here sort of in between those two times. So, may come back and and film a little bit of that tomorrow up here at the church, but for now we’ll take a look at it here and then we will continue on our way for now. So we’re gonna head down to our next stop here, a museum in the city that everyone recommends you check out. I’m Not going to go through the whole tour of the museum, but I do want to stop by and have a look at it. Maybe pick up a a souvenir, we’ll say. So it’s just down this way to the left. So just a few blocks away, we are here at the Chocolate Museum. They actually have a free little mini tour inside and a cafe and a little, you know, gift shop or whatever with some chocolate. So let’s go inside and take a look. Again, I’m not going to do the whole tour or anything, but I just want to check out the gift shop and see what they have available. So they’ve got a little workshop in here, which you can go in and actually make your own chocolates and stuff. And then they’ve got a museum tour, which goes out back. I’m going to take a little walk through the museum here in a second. And then they’ve got this gift shop out front with all kinds of different chocolate things to try. Let’s go back here first. See how this is specifically guided towards tourists if it’s all English, but anyway, there’s a history here talking about the history through the time with chocolate starting back as far as 2050 AD and looking at the Maya first, who were the first people to discover cacao, which is obviously the key ingredient in chocolate. And there’s also a piece here on the Aztecs. And then the Spaniards after they arrived in the 1520s, talking about all the different uses and it actually became a currency in Aztec society. It gives you an idea of the prices of things at the time. And then this continues right through to the expansion from the European colonies to the industrial age and then into modern days today. It’s funny, one of the things I was reading the other day was talking about how Cacao prices have exploded in the last few years due to climate change. So a lot of the cacao and chocolate in the world now comes from Africa, from places like the Ivory Coast. And the heat waves and problems they’ve been having there have resulted in cacao prices like tripling since about 2020. It’s interesting that it’s one of the most affected crops worldwide. due to climate change. Anyway, I’m going to pick up myself a little chocolate bar and try it out. So I picked up a milk chocolate bar with peanuts in it, and they had a little sample thing there too with three different kinds of chocolate, which we tried, just little pieces of them and stuff, and they were pretty good. But I got this one because it’s got the peanuts in it, and it’s always a good combination. And the bars are 183 cordoba, which, or $5 US. So they’re, you know, touristy chocolate bars, but we’ll try it in a little bit and see if it’s any good. So we’re just going to make our way down here now to Central Park, Plaza Mayor. And it’s only a few blocks away from the Chocolate Museum, which was just basically a chocolate store, let’s be real. But that’s cool. It was There’s lots of those chocolate type places around Nicaragua, so if you’re travelling through the country, there are plenty of opportunities to sample and eat all of the chocolate you want. As you can see, by the way, the vibe here in Granada is much more relaxed and laid back. You know, I’m able to. freely walk around and film anything that I want for the most part, which is nice. And yeah, it’s just a more laid back vibe. You can see why it is a very popular tourist spot here in Nicaragua, arguably the center of tourism in the country. So welcome to Central Park here in Granada. We’re just here in front of the famous Yellow Cathedral. And it’s a pretty busy spot, even in the middle of the day, on an overcast day. We are, we were talking to a guy here a second ago, a tour guide, and he was saying that what looks like it’s closed, even though it’s not. The cathedral here is actually open. You can go up to the bell tower. So this is the famous yellow cathedral here in Granada, known as the Immaculate Conception Cathedral. It was actually just built recently in 1991. And was officially opened in 1993 and it’s a beautiful church here right on the main square. So there as you can see, here’s the main square here with the bandshell and lots of shops and stuff around it. And you can actually go up into the bell tower here, but there’s no way to get to the outside edge obviously. So you can kind of see from just inside the building. The other church where I was at earlier, Iglesia de La Merced, you can actually go out. There’s a fence around the outside of the bell tower, so you can go up there and walk around the outside. So we’ll definitely, we’ll check that out tomorrow. But here’s a sign here celebrating the 500 years of Granada, which, as I mentioned, since 1524. So 500 years was just last year. It’s really nice, beautiful walking streets down here too. One of the things I’ve seen a lot of here in the city are these horse-drawn carriages that kind of look like sort of like Cinderella carriages, I guess. My personal belief on that stuff is I wouldn’t use one of those. I think that those horses are probably not well looked after. You know, they’re standing up in the hot sun all day, every day on the hot streets and you know, they’re basically just a tourist attraction. But if you can avoid them, I definitely would consider that. I think that, you know, it’s just. It’s not worth it for the animal’s sake. You know, I was. I rode an elephant when I was in Thailand in 2004 and since learned that that probably wasn’t the best option. So I kind of regret it a little bit. It was a cool experience, but knowing what I know now about it, I certainly wouldn’t do it again. So it’s, you know, sort of the same thing as that, I think. So our. Last stop here as I walk past the Immaculate Conception Cathedral. We’re going to take a walk down to the waterfront. Obviously Granada sits right on Lake Nicaragua. It’s sort of the northwest corner of it, and so it’s only about, I don’t know, 10 minutes or so down the road here, and it’s a straight shot. So let’s head on down this way to the water. The street’s really nice for walking down. I mean, it’s peaceful, it’s closed off to traffic, at least heading down towards the lake. So what’s really nice about it is you get all these little park benches and stuff along the way. And in the middle of the road, they’ve actually made all these mosaics celebrating, you know, Granada 1524, and there’s one of the sharks. So I think I mentioned it before, but Lake Nicaragua, which is what Granada sits on,This actually has freshwater sharks at it. I believe they are the only type of shark in the world that can survive in freshwater. And because this lake is so big, they have found some of those sharks here, which makes sense when you consider that the lake is fed out to the Atlantic Ocean through the river that connects the two. I would say the skies are looking more threatening by the minute, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just rain. So even here in Granada, you still see these memorials to the Revolutionary War that happened in the 70s. This one here is a memorial to Winston Antonio Serrato, who was just 19 years old. It’s right across the church here from the Church of Guadalupe. We’ll take a walk around the front side so you can have a look. It’s the front face of the Church of Guadalupe. I’m just going to go up and have a look at the sign here. See what it says here about the construction date of this church. Well, this stone was placed here September 1992, but this church is definitely older than that. We’ll continue our way down to the lake. We’re almost at the end of the road here. Just a few more minutes. And here we are, down at the waterfront. They have this nice little park set up here with a very strange giant head statue in the middle. I’m not sure who it is, but I’ll throw it up here on the screen if I figure it out. And then the water is just down behind. So I can certainly see why when people come to Nicaragua, they immediately make a run for Granada. It is a very cool, very historical, very laid back town. Lots of history and things to see. And it’s got this beautiful walk along the lake that’s coming up here in a moment. It’s just got a nice vibe to it. And I’ve really, really enjoyed my time here. I’m guessing this was some sort of waterfall or water display. And the cranes are just sitting here alone now. She’s going to grab a drink, cross the street, then we’ll head over to the to the water. So we’ve made it down to the lakefront, waterfront here in Granada, and a beautiful spot. and there’s hardly anybody around, which is surprising to me, considering how busy the main part of the city was just a few blocks up the road. It’s uh, they used to have this pier here that you could go out, you can see all the benches on it, but now you can only go out on it if you have a tour booked to another part of the lake. So this is Lake Nicaragua. It is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world. I believe number 19 or 20. It is about 8,300 square kilometers, which is about, I don’t know, 3,000 square miles, roughly. It is roughly the same size as Lake Titicaca in Peru, which I got to see a number of years ago. And by a number right now, I mean 26 years ago. And it’s a huge lake that separates between Peru and Bolivia. and the southern end. Lake Nicaragua’s original name was Kosibolka, which was the local indigenous name for the lake. It’s actually not very deep, interestingly enough. For the size of the lake, it’s only about 20 metres deep at its deepest spot. So it’s fairly shallow, which has led to issues with fairies and stuff. They used to have aa ferry that would run from here to Omotepe Island, which are the twin volcanic islands down in the middle of the lake. But the water is now too shallow for those ferries to travel back and forth from here in Granada. So you actually have to go farther down the country and take the ferry over from there. As I mentioned earlier, this lake actually flows out to the Atlantic Ocean through the San Juan River. That river was the Atlantic side of what was a planned canal here in Nicaragua. Those canal plans seem to resurface here every few decades, and there’s currently discussions even now today to have another canal established on the Pacific side into the lake, and then from the lake to the river, and then from the river over to the Atlantic to create a new canalto work alongside of or in competition with, I suppose, the Panama Canal. And as I mentioned earlier, there are sharks actually in this lake who have migrated their way here from the Atlantic Ocean up the river, and they are bull sharks. They were originally believed to be a unique species of shark here in the lake, but it was later determined through scientific research that they are one and the same with the bull shark that lives out in the Atlantic. So it’ll be interesting to see if I see any during my journeys here. So this lake, we’ll see more of it later. I have three more stops planned still here in the country. One of which will be the Omotepe Island, which is the twin volcanic island that sits in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. You can’t actually see it from here, but it’s that way, roughly. And it’s apparently quite the spot, so I’m looking forward to seeing that as well. But you can’t get to it from here. You’ve got to go farther down the country to get to it. Anyway, just for perspective, if you look very carefully from here up past the cranes, there you can see the Immaculate Conception Cathedral off in the distance. So that is approximately how far, about 15 minutes, I would say, on foot from the Immaculate Conception Cathedral down to here to the lakefront. Good morning. We are back out on the streets here for another day in Granada and thought I would finish up a few things that I didn’t get to yesterday, including firstly heading up to the church to get up to the bell tower to have a look around. So let’s head up there first. So just as I was making my way over here, of course, it started to downpour, but I managed to escape it and it has since stopped. So we are here now and we’re going to head up there and have a look around. It is a very tight squeeze taking up the bell tower. All right, well, that was not too bad. It’s 35 Cordoba to get up, by the way. Let’s go. Watch your head as you get to the top. So I get to the top. The climb wasn’t that bad, it’s just narrow. It’s a lot of moving around and squeezing around tight corners, but. I would definitely agree. This is the best view here in Granada. There’s the Immaculate Conception Cathedral with Lake Nicaragua behind it. Some of the beautiful mountains and volcanoes that surround the city. A little overcast at the moment with the low clouds and stuff but sprinkled all the way around and just a tremendous view of this colonial city here in Nicaragua. Definitely worth the one dollar to come up and have a look around. Look around the back side here. Here’s the rest of the cathedral from up on high and the rest of the city. You know, more churches back there, of course. So I would definitely say that if you’re in Granada and you want a proper view of the city, this is definitely the place to come up here in the top of the Iglesia de la Merced. Again, as I said, it was 35 cordoba or one US dollar to get up to the top here. And even on this decidedly overcast day, it is still quite the view. All right, well now the only thing left to do is to head back down and finish off the rest of my exploration here in Granada. And then while we’re here I’ll have a quick look at the church itself. This is again Iglesia de La Merced. There’s some beautiful stained glass work there above the altar. This is where I’ve been staying the last few nights here in Granada, at Arincon Nica. Let’s go upstairs and I’ll give you a tour of the room. So I thought I’d give you a quick room review of where I stayed here in Granada, Nicaragua. This was Hostel Arincon Nica, and it’s a nice family-owned place here only a couple of blocks from the main square. It’s been really good for a few nights and I’ll show you the room. So this is the room I had here for a few nights in Granada. Worked out pretty well. It was quiet here at night which was nice. Comes with a single bed and a nice desk and chair for working on. There’s a fan up here on the wall. There’s no air conditioning in this room so you’re kind of reliant on that fan. Or getting a breeze through at night. The only issue I had with that of course is that the windows do not have screens on them so you have to be careful of mosquitoes and bugs and those type of things to make sure you have bug spray with you or just close up the windows and they seem to be fine after that. There’s also a private bathroom in here. Nice walk-in shower and toilet sink and stuff. And just out through the bedroom window I actually had a Nice little view of the top of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral. So that was kind of a nice little perk bonus. But overall a good little spot. You know I was here for a few nights staying in town and it was good. It’s close to everything. You know you’re a couple blocks away from the main square and you know restaurants and all those types of things which is nice. Outside here as well, oh this chair. So outside the room itself, I had this nice little work area here for just, you know, my laptop and a chair and stuff. Sitting here, it was in the shade, which was nice because it’s been very hot here in Granada. Just down here, there’s actually a shared kitchen space. So if you want to bring your own food and cook your own meals, there’s a space for that. And the mother and daughter who run this place also have scooter rentals. And they have all kinds of resources for booking of, you know, tours or volcano hikes and those types of things. All available here too, you just have to kind of ask about it. But a nice spot overall, you know, typical kind of view with all the different buildings in the back here, but then you get the trees and the mountains sort of off in the distance. And as I mentioned, you get the cathedral through the bathroom window. Anyway, Hotel Rinconnika is the name of the place. I’ll put the information on the screen here. I found it through Airbnb, but they also have a direct Whats App number you can contact them through, which ends up being a bit cheaper, which is always nice when you’re looking to budget travel through this part of the world. And either way, definitely a good experience overall. 2,000 years later. Welcome to Laguna de Apoyo here in Nicaragua. This is sort of a side quest, I suppose, of sorts. From Granada, we are only about 25 to 30 minutes outside the city, but we are, as the saying goes, a world away. So Laguna de Apoyo is actually an old, inactive volcanic crater that was formed a very long time ago. I don’t even know how long ago it was, to be honest, but it’s a beautiful spot here. I’ve been staying here now for a couple of nights and I almost didn’t come initially because I was like, it’s a little tricky to get to. There’s not a lot to do when you get here other than just relax and come down to the lake, maybe swim a little or, you know, hop on a kayak or something like that. But I’m very glad I did. It’s been a very relaxing time and I’ve just been using it to kind of just watch the world go by and get some work done and. Yeah, it’s been awesome for that. I came here through a rental that I found on Airbnb, which I will show you in a little bit, but I’ve been really impressed with it. One of the things that gets recommended a lot if you come to Laguna de Apoyo is to, you know, bring your own groceries and stuff. There’s no supermarket here. There’s, you know, just some local places to stay that some of them will have restaurants and stuff too, but. Most of the places around the lake have a kitchen available, which my place does. And so I picked up some groceries in Granada and hopped in a taxi and took a taxi direct out to here. There are a couple of local bus options from Granada, but it’s basically two buses and then when you get off the second bus to where I’m staying, you’d still have to walk another 1 1/2 kilometres or so. And it’s a pretty narrow Rd. Because so much of the overgrowth has kind of come over the road. So it’s pretty narrow, not great for walking. But a taxi to here was about $20 US, so a bit more than what I would usually spend on things. But I usually have really good deals when I’m, you know, travelling. So I made an exception for this case to come here, my plan for getting back out of here. Is to get a ride just up as far as the first town, and then from there I can get a local bus down to my next destination. But it’s been, it’s been awesome. It’s such a cool place. You know, I look around and I see little places sprinkled, you know, just around the water’s edge, little houses and places to stay and that sort of stuff. It’s been beautiful here, watching the weather. We get some really fierce storms that have come in sort of over these mountains and across the lake. And you can actually just watch them almost like sheets of rain as they come across. And it’s been really nice. So it’s been great for that. This is not a place that a lot of people tend to naturally come to. You know, most people when they come to Nicaragua for a vacation or as a pass-through, you know, they’ll come into Managua, usually through the airport. And then they’ll immediately go to Granada and then they’ll immediately go to Omotepe, which is the big island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua with the two volcanoes. And then they might go over to the Pacific coast to some of the surfing towns a little bit before continuing on. So this was a really cool extra stop for me, and I’m really glad that I did it. And to be honest, the the deals that you will find on places to stay around this lake are top-notch, honestly. And so we’ll take a look at the place I’m staying at here. But this is just sort of an epilogue of sorts, I suppose, for my video from Granada. So I thought I’d give you a quick room review of where I stayed here in Laguna de Apoyo. This place was magnificent. I had a fantastic time while I stayed here and I have, I don’t think, any complaints really at all, nothing of note at least. This was a place I found on Airbnb. It’s just listed as, you know, house number one basically. And I’ll put the information on the screen here at the end so that you can find it. But this was basically it’s an entire unit that I had to myself and I’m going to kind of show you all around. This place is big enough for like a family of four even and comes with all the things you would need to basicallyjust sit here and enjoy that view. So we’ll start over here. There’s an outdoor kitchen area here which is fully stocked. There’s a fridge, stove, lots of dishes, coffee maker. There’s actually even an air fryer up there on the top. You know all that sort of stuff. Everything you would need to do any cooking. There’s fresh water here in this natural filter which works great. There is a dining area here. It’s got three chairs here. There’s actually a fourth one but it’s in my room at the moment. And this whole area is all what you get. So there’s a whole kitchen. You’ve got the seating area here with two more rocking style chairs. You’ve got this nice high bar style table with two chairs there. I’ve been using this to do a lot of work this week because That’s been my view while I’ve been working and it’s awesome. And then inside here is the sleeping area. And in here is great. So there’s two double sized beds with I think all brand new mattresses. They’re super comfortable. Obviously I’ve only been using one bed all week which has been nice. This one here I actually had a bunch of my stuff on. And I tried to clean it up a little bit as I’m heading out tomorrow. There’s also some recreational stuff here. There’s like an exercise ball, an inner tube and some flotation devices if you want to go down to the lake. This place also has some available kayaks and a rowboat which are free, no charge at all. You can take them down, use them in the lake, all that good stuff. Ceiling fans, there’s actually two of them in here. And no air conditioning but you do not need it. It has been very cool and comfortable here every night. All these windows are open with screens on them. This window here actually has no glass on it at all. It’s just the screen. And same with the door so it’s been really nice for lots of fresh air. In through here is the bathroom of course. And yeah, great standard bathroom. Nice walk-in shower. Lots of water and stuff in the sink. And a little mirror there. Places to hang your clothes both here and then there’s some hangers over there in the corner as well. And yeah, this place has been awesome. The Wi-Fi here has been fantastic. It’s nice and fast, nice and stable. The cell service here isn’t great but the Wi-Fi has been fine. They’ve even got a couple dogs. There’s one of them right there hanging out. There’s a caretaker actually on site here. His name is Alvaro. He lives in this house here. and he’s been great. He’s really good at you know helping you get set up when you arrive, get you checked in, and then if you need anything else while you’re here, he’s very helpful in that regard too. He actually helped me get my taxi booked for tomorrow morning. I’m heading out from here up to the bus stop, but that’s in the next town, so it’s probably a good 20 minutes away. So we get a taxi arranged for tomorrow morning to go up and do that, and then head down to my next destination. Yeah, this place is amazing. As you can see, it’s you know fully surrounded with lots of greenery. There’s been all kinds of birds and stuff coming through here. All different kinds. I had a nice show with some fireflies last night, which was amazing. And yeah, there’s the lagoon/lake here in front of us and you can take out the kayaks and stuff and go out there on the water or even just go for a swim. And yeah,What a place. My only recommendation is if you do come here, make sure where you’re coming from you stop and get some groceries in advance. There’s no supermarket or anything here around the lagoon. There are some restaurants at some of the other like resort type places up and down the road, but I didn’t bother going to any of them at all. I just picked up enough groceries for the time I was here and cooked all my meals here, which was great because it’s very inexpensive, obviously, with groceries here. And you know cooking those meals is always a great way to kind of save some bucks. So the all important question obviously is how much does a place like this, with a view like this, and all the space cost?Here on Laguna de Pollo, I paid $23 US per night. And then I decided to add one more night to it, paid with cash in person,and the extra night was less than $20. So as I mentioned, I found this on Airbnb. You know Airbnb obviously has fees of their own and things like that. So quite often, if I decide to try and add places as I go, I will talk to the owner or the manager or whoever and often just pay in cash, which usually works out a little bit cheaper. So all told, the average worked out to like 21 and change per night. And it’s been… I haven’t even left. I’ve been here for, you know, three nights. I haven’t even left the place. I’ve just been enjoying this view, enjoying the nature, went down for a walk down to the lake and just getting lots of work done. And it is a special place to do that. So if you are coming through Nicaragua and you’re in Managua or you’re heading, you know, somewhere else farther down, make sure you stop here and check it out. I would recommend, and I don’t say this very often, but if you’re going to come here, I would just recommend booking a private taxi you know for the amount of transfer times and everything else you’d have to do. The 20 bucks is is actually well worth it. So I’ll put the information here on the screen about the place, where to find it on Airbnb and all the other relevant information. The owner of this place is actually not local, but again, as I said, Alvaro has been here on site and has been amazing. So massive. I’d give two thumbs up, but I’m using one hand to hold the camera. So this is one. Here’s two. Two big thumbs up for this place. Amazing spot. Can’t recommend it enough. And yeah, if you’re coming through here and you’re thinking about stopping at Laguna de Apoyo, I would recommend this place over any of the $100 or $200 or $300 a night places that are just down the road. So that’s going to do it from this two-stop video both in Granada and then again here at the Laguna de Apoyo. I thought I would combine them because out here at the lagoon there’s not a lot to do except relax, enjoy the natureand just take a few days to yourself. And so I thought this was a nice way to end this video. I have to say I really enjoyed Granada quite a lot. As I have mentioned in my previous two videos from Leon and Managua, they were pretty difficult in order to kind of film at times. I felt like I was being watched. Every time I turned the camera on there was somebody checking out what I was doing, those types of things. No one ever told me I couldn’t, but there was certainly that auraabout it. But Granada was a very different story, very much more laid-back atmosphere and felt more like an old-school colonial town that I’ve seen in many other countries. So a great spot. I had a great time there. I hope you enjoyed this video. I think as you get to Granada and then head farther south from there, I think you see a very different kind of the country from what we’ve seen so far. So definitely recommend checking out Granada. And all of its history. There’s so much to see there and I barely scratched the surface. To be honest there was there was more than I could have been a month but I don’t have a month. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. I always appreciate it. If you like this video, leave a comment or a like down below to let me know that you were here. If this is your first time coming across my channel, welcome and feel free to hit that subscribe button. It doesn’t cost you anything. And that way you’ll get updates as new videos come out down the road. If you would like to support me further, there are a few different ways you can do that. Firstly, I have some memberships set up here through You Tube, which start at just $3 Canadian per month. And then there’s two additional tiers above that, which are more, but they come with more perks and all kinds of fun stuff. If you’d like to support me at one time with a donation, I have some donation links set up through Pay Pal and also through Bitcoin. I’m not really big into Bitcoin but a few people had asked me to set it up in the past for donations so I greatly appreciate it. And of course I also have my merch store with t-shirts, hats, mugs, tote bags, you know all kinds of different things and I’m continuing to work on some more designs for people to check out there. And as always, life is short. Wander. And I will see you in the next video.

Granada, Nicaragua — a city of colorful colonial charm, quiet streets, and a laid-back vibe. 🇳🇮

In this video, I take you on a walking tour through Granada’s highlights: the lively main square, the stunning cathedral, and the delicious Chocolate Museum, before heading down to the tranquil lakefront.

The journey ends at Laguna de Apoyo — a crater lake known for its crystal-clear waters and peaceful atmosphere. After exploring the city, there’s nothing better than relaxing by the water.

Along the way, I also review the places I stayed in both Granada and Apoyo, sharing the full experience of Nicaragua’s most relaxing stops.

Special thanks to my first partner, Mult.dev — the site I used to create the animated travel map in this video. They’re affordable, easy to use, and their support is excellent. I’ve been using them off and on for over a year before becoming an ambassador. Check them out here (affiliate link):
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🧔‍♂️ Who Am I:
WanderBeard is the vagabond name of Ian Daye, former IT specialist for over 25 years who’s decided to go wander the world and share his adventures here. I’ve been traveling full-time across the Americas for over a year, sharing my experiences from diverse cultures, people, and histories along the way.

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