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Derek says, "Hola Granada, mi nombre es Derek."
Granada replies, "You speak spanish?"
Derek responds, "Un poco de espanol."
Granada, smiling, "Do you have another cigarette for me?"
Well maybe Granada was just a fellow we met on the street while looking for a hotel, but he did tell us that they called the main strip "Gringo Street."
We took our time packing our bags due to the very "short" day of riding between Leon and Granada. By the time we had finally got the bike packed up it was around noon and just over 90 degrees. I check my gps and Google maps for the best route which they both seemed to believe was the highway CA3 and not CA1 which is the Pan American highway. We did a quick few circles around the city before finding the highway and we were off! The road was amazing and the scenery was even more spectacular. Large agricultural fields, crazy looking trees and large volcanoes popping out in the background. Then we took a right at the fork in the road which led us down CA3 and onto one of the craziest roads so far. So much of the "highway" had been eroded away that entire dirt road sprang up on either side in order to dodge the large pot holes. Looks like our short day was going to take a bit longer....
We finally made it into Granada, which is a beautiful colonial city with a lively square and of course the "Gringo Street". After parking our bikes in the front lobby of the hostel we set out to find a lunch/dinner and check out the city. Granada has quite a few tourists and some pretty swanky colonial hotels lining the main square. It is a bit like San Cristobal, Mexico or Antigua, Guatemala.
Tomorrow we plan to head down to San Jorge to catch a ferry to the island of Ometepe, a double-volcano floating in Lake Nicaragua, for a day or two.