Day Two

After a morning on the computer - this is Jane in the VUI Nicaragua office - doing the far-flung business empire thing, we tottered off to the bank (see below), then to have breakfast at Kathy's, a restaurant across from the Convento San Francisco. We sat at tables outside under the porch roof and ate a delicious breakfast while watching the citizens of Granada go about their business. This involved using a lot of contrivences made of recycled junk pulled by scrawny horses, new European, Korean and Chinese delivery trucks, women carrying wicker baskets of foodstuffs on their heads, battered fourwheel drive pickups with cargoes of workers, innumerable dented taxis beeping at every corner, bicycles with three family members aboard, a motorcycle with the rider holding a yellow Tropigas propane cannister onto the seat behind him, and the inevitable street vendors who wanted to sell us flowers, pottery, cashews and brightly painted, hand-carved whistles. These were usually children, sometimes an older sister/little brother combination, and although they were supposed to stay on the sidewalk, no one in the restauant seemed to care if they came up by the tables to try their luck.

And I got a thousand watt faceful of beaming encouragement from a very pretty young thing of about twenty who seemed to find me attractive.

Did I say the food was delicious?

The former convent across the street has been a museum for a century or so. While we ate a tour bus pulled up to the ancient steps and disgorged a load and I cast a mental sneer at them for doing touristy things when they could be stuffing themselves like me on gallo pinto. It was not until we returned to Costa Rica that I learned the museum has one of the most extensive collection of pre-Columbian statues anywhere, which I would have found completely fascinating, and I didn't lever myself away from the table to go and see, then or the next day either when we had breakfast at Kathy's again.

It's not like the street is any wider than any other street in Granada. And the museum is very inexpensive.

We went to a bank west of the square, where through the unremarkable miracles of modern technology, we could load up with American dollars drawn on a Canadian bank in mere seconds and convert them to cordobas with the helpful money changer who operates from the bank's doorstep immediately thereafter. He is making his living on the percentage difference of about 0.61 percent, and perhaps accumulating hard currency in the process.

Back to the hotel, and more far-flungery; we talked to Athena over Skype and found out that life in Brantford was cold and miserable, if you were outdoors. Always nice to know how the rest of the world, or the bit of it you are familiar with, is doing. Because of the old-style architecture of the hotel - high ceilings of about twenty feet, big doors and a courtyard open to breezes - the heat of the day was merely hovering in the background without the necessity for air conditioning.

Enough of my blather; Jane can tell you of the rest of the day.