Ometepe island and Granada

Buses. Nicaraguan buses look funny. Most of them are part of a stock of old American school-buses that was bought for a cheap price by the government. Even now they hustle around Nicaragua painted in yellow and with the sign "School Bus" still written in the front. They are smelly, incredibly slow and crammed with people, and at every stop all sort of sellers come in shouting the virtues of their greasy, suspicious and non-identified snacks. And when you think it could not get any worse, the music starts... :)

Night. The guy from the hotel reassured us promptly. "Tonight there is the moon, so it won't be difficult to find your way". But then he decided to be magnanimous and lent us his torch, with very little battery. "Use it only in the difficult bits". So there we were, walking down that muddy path in the middle of the forest and in total darkness. All sounds were amplified. Insects, frogs, birds, the wind blowing, lizards crawling, fruits falling down the trees. It was all black, the moon was not doing such a good job. But we could see the stars above us, very big and bright. Plus - and that was the most incredible thing - we were surrounded by fireflies. There were hundreds of them, blinking their white lights all over the night. So we advanced in the black while real and flying stars were shining all around us, and that was truly magic.

Jump. There was a small dock stretching into the lake, very close to the road. We were so tired and hot after the long hike to the waterfall. We hesitated a bit, people would look at us and the dock looked a bit too high... But then we found the courage, we put our bikinis on, we walked to the end of the dock on and we jumped in the lake. And then we did it again, and again, and again, diving, head diving (do you say it like this?), diving backwards, taking funny pictures, playing like two kids in the swimming pool. Then when we couldn't take it any longer we sat on the dock and looked at the lake, and every single muscle was hurting.

Church. Granada is the oldest city in the American continent. The Spanish tried to demonstrate that they could build something beautiful in that wilderness, and they managed. Elegant, sober, proportionate. An enormous renaissance-style cathedral, wooden porches around the main squares, hidden patios, verandas hanging over the central streets. But if the lines are European, the colour are Central American. Yellow, blue, pink, green, blueberry, purple. Bright, crazy, tropical tones filling the facades, the columns, the doors of every building. The most impressive thing is a baroque church from the XVIII century that miraculously hasn't been restored. No colours on the front, it's simply grey. The decorations have been ruined by the rain and the wind over the last three centuries. It looks bare, old and fragile. That kind of decaying beauty that provokes feelings of attraction and pain at the same time. The same bittersweet feeling that you get when a flower starts loosing its petals, or immediately after the sun sets.