Masaya

Saturday we decided to make a one-night trip to Granada, stopping at Masaya on the way. Masaya is known for it’s markets, with artists and vendors of all kinds. We wanted to do a quick stop over on the way to Granada, so we asked at the bus station for a bus that was headed for Granada, but would stop at Masaya along the way.

Well, lots of jostling and bustling finally got us onto a bus still empty enough for us to sit down on chairs! We bought an apple juice through the bus window from a guy carrying a bag at least as big as he was, filled with juices, water, and tons of ice. The apple juice was good. Ahh… I’d forgotten that flavor.

We sat on the bus for a while as it crossed through the city of Managua and pushed past the endless pick-ups loaded with random supplies bound somewhere, with piles of workers loaded on top, surfing their way down the streets. Eventually we ended up on a long, straight road that connects the capital city to Granada, and waited for our queue to get off.

Well, apparently we missed our stop. At one point several people in the bus started acting all anxious and motioning towards us. A quick conversation later, we find ourselves jumping off the bus (it only barely stopped) and leaving it to disappear down the road behind us. A light rain started to fall. We looked around.

“Where the hell are we?”
“Um… on a road.”
“Where’s Masaya? And the Market?”
“Um… that way, I think.”

And so we started walking. Some guys on bicycles passed us and asked us what the hell we were doing, walking along the side of the road, in the rain, obviously slightly lost, and completely aimless. Well, we figured this was all part of the adventure, so we just kept walking. People had told us that the Market was so big you couldn’t miss it. We just had to wander until we found it.

We walked until we came upon the only intersection for miles.

“Meh. Let’s turn down this one.”
“Right or left?”
“Um… well, there’s more people going left. Let’s go left”
“Aight”

And so we walked some more. Donkeys passed hauling wood. Some more bicyclists zoomed by, stopping long enough to whistle appreciative greetings to Maya and I. Oh, the joys of being young, female, and white in a country that appreciates all three of those traits so blindly. Despite being soaking wet and covered in mud that had kicked up from the street, we still managed to attract attention.

After walking for over an hour, we decided that we were definitely lost and started keeping an eye out for busses that said Masaya on them. We flagged one down only to find out we’d walked way past Masaya and her markets.

We turned back and wandered some more.

Suddenly the soft rain decided to be mean, and picked up to the level of torrential downpour. It is rainy season, after all. With about 2 seconds to save ourselves, we ran into the first place with a roof. Que suerte! A restaurant.

We ate yummy food and drank beer. For the first time in our Nicaraguan experience, we were not accosted by three different drunk men trying to sit at our table and marry us. Who knows… maybe it was the rain.

Waiting out the rain, we drank beer and more beer. Never mind that it was before noon on a Saturday. At one lucky moment, we happened to look down a narrow alley way and saw the “unmissable” market at the other end. Whoo hoo! And so when the rain settled back into it’s soft drizzle, we wandered through the thousands of stalls selling anything from onions to hand-carved African figurines to beaded jewelry made from local seeds to high fashion dresses left over from the 80s.