Masaya Market

This Sunday, the nearby church bells woke us up at 5:00AM. They continued ringing through the morning, and then the noisy Spanish party started yelling again as well, so we didn’t get a great sleep. Right after breakfast we moved from our noisy hotel to another nicer hotel. It was too early to check in so we left our bags at the hotel and went to the bus station, stepping into a church on the way to hear a minute of their service. We took the local chicken bus to the Masaya market. All the buses we’ve seen in Nicaragua are retired school buses from the USA and Canada. They make their way down here after they are no longer fit to drive American school children. We could see wires running along the top of the bus where rust had eaten holes into the metal.

We got on the bus and had to wait until it filled up. Some food sales people were selling their wares on the bus as well. The interior of the bus was decorated with religious stickers, mostly Spanish slogans having to do with Jesus. There was also a setup of speakers and colored flashing lights in the front. The seats were upholstered and surprisingly comfortable, and we didn’t get nauseated from this ride with all the windows open. People kept boarding as we inched through town and onto the highway - it took us 20 minutes to cover the 10 minute walk from the bus station to our hotel. Thankfully we picked up a little more speed (and people) on the highway, where we paid the assistant our 10 cordobas (about $0.33) each for the ride. We had to squish together to allow a third person onto our bench. It’s called a chicken bus because they transport stock as well as passengers. This bus stopped at a farm and loaded some produce onto the roof, but no chickens. The bus terminal is right at the Masaya municipal market - for locals, not the artisan market for gringos.

At the market itself we wandered through endless food and clothing stalls for hours until eventually we found where to buy souvenirs for our friends, and haggled a little with the sellers. It was rewarding to haggle in Spanish, though nothing there was very expensive to begin with, we didn’t know all the numbers, and it wasn’t really necessary to haggle hard in this market. We had a cheap and basic lunch of chicken and plantain chips at the market, did a little more souvenir shopping, and later took another chicken bus back to Granada.

This bus made its way out of Masaya and stopped on the highway when the engine exploded - at least, there was enough smoke coming out of it that everyone wanted to disembark. We hopped onto a more fancy direct bus in front of it, that brought us to Granada. This one was a school bus in a little better condition and we paid double, but aren’t sure whether we needed to. We walked to our hotel and rested at the pool a bit before dinner.

At sunset we stopped for a second time today at the local church that supposedly had a better view from their belltower, but that was closed already so we proceeded to dinner at Granada’s version of the Hard Rock Cafe. It’s called La Frontera and plays ‘90s rock music, showing the music videos on a little TV screen. Everything on the menu is named after rock subgenres; it’s mostly burgers and Mexican food. We had a good burger and burrito there and bought a bag of local coffee that they were selling at the bar, to bring back as one more gift.