Calzada Street begins at the Granada Cathedral and ends at Lake Nicaragua. This street has become a main tourist draw and has everything a tourist might want, and plenty they don’t need.
In the stretch down both sides of Calzada Street you have bars, restaurants, street vendors, an open seating area in the middle of the street, waiters standing on sidewalks promoting mojitos and two for one Happy Hour. This place is a mixed drink of locals, foreigners, tourists, ex-pats, hustlers, transients, businessmen, artists and artisans, homeowners.
In the old days this was a sleepy street and residents lived normal lives. With an influx of foreigners, real estate became more valuable than most could have ever imagined. A quiet street on the way to the Lake became the Las Vegas Strip. Old adobe homes were suddenly valuable.
This house on Calzada Street has brought local issues out into public.
It’s owner calls out swindlers, by name.
The bottom line is that this house is not for sale, unless, of course, the price is right.
Swindlers buy dirt cheap and sell sky high.
Swindlers, and those swindled, dance a fine line on Calzada Street.
Panaderia’s are common in Central and South America and this is one that has American style doughnuts and fresh ground Nicaraguan coffee early before it gets hot. You can drink your cup inside at a small table or outside in a small courtyard and watch the street wake up.
This morning they are doing a brisk business making and selling cakes for birthdays and weddings.. At the counter, you can buy fresh bread, cookies, pastries, slices of carrot cake, and chocolate concoctions for your sweet tooth. They have ham and cheese and sub sandwiches for a modest price and I feel like I am back in Uruguay looking inside Eduardo’s back seat at his sub sandwiches in front of the Punta Del Este construction site.
Seating myself at a small table in a corner I watch eyes light up as kids see their birthday cakes for the first time and ex pats come in for their breakfast on the way to the market for fresh vegetables and fish and get news about the U.S.and Europe off their cell phones.
Once you find your best places in a new town, you start to feel more lat home.
Bakers in the back kitchen, knead dough, squeeze icing out of tubes to decorate elaborate wedding cakes, chatter about their boyfriends and girlfriends, Grandma, and Presidente Ortega.
This little bakery feels like being on an inner tube on a river that lets you lie back and let the river carry you along on a perfect summer day where all you need is a swim suit, or less.
Finding relaxed places in new places is what lots of us traveler’s like to do in foreign lands.
Being busy all the time isn’t much of a vacation, or a retirement..
When you ask locals where the best places to dine are, in Granada, El Garaje restaurant is one of the first to be mentioned.
The first time I walked past the place, it didn’t register as important.
It was closed then because of an electrical outage but the proprietor came to the door and apologized and shook my hand.
When I returned. he remembered my name.
The restaurant is called ” El Garaje ” because it occupies a spot that someone’s car used to occupy. Many homes in Granada have a garage directly in front of their house, You open the iron gates to your property, drive right into a garage, park, and then walk up garage steps and walk right into your living room. The owners of this restaurant have turned their garage, at the street front, into a restaurant.
This restaurant has limited seating, and, when full, stays full until someone leaves. Paul serves and his wife cooks.
The vegetable barley soup is so good that I go back to the menu for a pulled pork sandwich with caramelized onions and homemade coleslaw without mayo,
I leave without trying the sour orange cheesecake for my pocketbook’s sake.
There is fine dining in Granada.
You just have to find the right garage.
In Granada, streets have horses, wagons, carts and carriages..
Horses and carriages carry tourists on tours of the city and the usual place to match up is in front of the Hotel Alhambra at the Parque Central.
Horses and carts are also working today, hauling sand, lumber, and produce down shaded thoroughfares.
This morning, two Nicaraguan generations, sitting next to one another, turn a corner, the reins waiting to be passed, but not just yet.
There will not be many years before horses will not be allowed on thoroughfares here and one more trace of the nineteenth century will vanish.
This boy won’t have a horse and a cart in his future, but he will remember this early morning ride with his Dad.
Saturday is laundry day, and trombone day.
Over the blue wall, next door, someone is practicing trombone. I was up late listening to Masterclass You Tube Videos by Hal Galper on jazz improvisation, hearing, thinking, the tribal attitude, musical tradition.
Learning to play jazz is like learning to walk, learning numbers and letters, reading, all over again.
You start at one note and then find the next one that sounds good. You put them in an order that is pleasing and play till you have it where it sounds good to you, and to an audience.
According to Hal, we don’t have slow hands, we have slow brains.
While I listen, and hum along, a lizard scales the blue wall, rests on the top ledge, looks over the other side. He catches the morning breeze.
Making sounds is one thing; making music is another.
I need to go practice.
Getting triggered by your surroundings, goes to the heart of Scotttreks.com
Early morning, city crews are closing traffic on Calle Libertidad and an intersecting residential street.
An old fashioned wood electrical pole is going to be replaced by a newer fiberglass model,and new electrical lines are being strung to provide more service to a nearby house under construction, a house directly across the street from us spectators. This old wood pole sticks up through the roof overhang of a home that was here before the road ever thought about coming this way.
The city crew starts around eight and right after lunch power is cut so linemen can scramble up poles and reattach new lines in place of old ones.
The men in hardhats, overseen by their supervisors, do their tasks in an orderly fashion.
Onlookers sit on front stoops and watch the men work, traffic finds other ways to bypass the scene,and pedestrians lift yellow tape and squeeze underneath to get to their casa’s on this little side street off the main thoroughfare downtown.
When power is restored there are sighs of relief and the new pole doesn’t touch the old house though there is still a hole in its roof that someone will have to patch.
Civilization, these days, still goes only as far as roads and electricity.
We are all hooked up to all kinds of grids even if we only see a few of them.
Electric is civilization’s lifeblood.
Unplugging, for some, is a death sentence.
There are exotic birds in the pool area, some in cages, some free in the banana trees. Two of the caged birds are varieties of parrot and several others are parakeets. They are brought out by staff in mid morning and climb obstacles in their cages, hang upside down on swings, break sunflower seeds with stout beaks.
There are also two tortuga’s in the undergrowth by the pool. They are more difficult to find because they are not colorful and make no noise.
After looking, and not finding them, I give up the hunt till Security man Juan finds one and calls me to admire it.
The smaller of the two is underneath plant leaves and nestled in shade, in a moist area.
” No agua, ” Juan says, wagging his finger.
He picks up the tortuga and holds it in the air.
It’s hands, feet, neck and head remain inside its shell. It looks like a rock with a hole in the middle.
Tortuga’s make good pets. They eat leafy plants, don’t tear up flower beds, eat insects, are quiet to a fault, and hibernate if it ever gets cold enough in Granada.
Juan carefully places the turtle on pebbles but it doesn’t change it’s attitude of withdrawal.
I return to the pool and don’t hear a peep out of either of them.
All I hear is the rooster next door that wakes me every morning and struts all day, full of himself.
Tortuga’s don’t talk much, but if they do, I listen.
Scotttreks eats up lots of shoe leather.
An easier day is board game afternoon on Wednesdays,
This Wednesday, our game is Mexican Train dominoes in Nicaragua..
There are rules and procedures, but all domino games end the same. In domino’s, if you play all your tiles before everyone else plays their tiles, you win the set. Each of the other players counts the dots on their domino’s that they have not played, and the dots are added and the sum is written under their name on a score sheet. When someone’s point total reaches a hundred, the game is over. The player with the lowest point total wins the game.
In the Caribbean, domino’s is an afternoon game played on a rickety table under a shade tree in front of a local bar. In Granada, this afternoon, it is a late afternoon game in the back room of a mini market at a big table.
I will make it a point to be here next Wednesday.
Finishing in the middle of the pack is not a bad place, but I, like everyone else, like it when my train pulls into the station first.
Competition is okay but it is trumped by good company every time.
I hear and follow the rhythms.
This gathering, at a Calzada street intersection, is a neighborhood parade of girls in traditional dress, a brigade of drummers, a crowd following the action. This little group is practicing for a much larger extravaganza celebrating the Independence Day of Nicaragua on September 15.
Drummers work themselves into a groove and the dancing is choreographed on the spot.
Turning a corner, the assemblage marches away and I finally stop following.
An old man with a cane also watches them turn, then goes inside his hotel. When he walks he sticks the end of his cane in front of him, and then moves his body forward to stand by his cane.
His marching days are over but, as he watches the band, his cane taps its own rhythm on the sidewalk.
The game isn’t over until you have no heartbeat, and, then, you have no rhythm either.
It is always good to hear about red berries.
Walking in this rain forest we are truly in a different world within our world, surrounded by green, the smell of decomposing plant life, the sounds of unseen animals. The city, though not far away, is actually very far away. As we hike, our voices are captured by the space around us and it feels like we are being held here by unseen forces.
Whether you are on Mombacho in Nicaragua or in rain forests in Costa Rica, the advice is the same.
Don’t eat anything if you don’t know what it is.
Red is nature’s stop sign.
Jose makes sure we know that there are some things you are not wise to do in this preserve, even if temptation is strong.
Being tempted in the garden goes way back in human history.
Recent Comments