“A guy like you needs a beard then, to protect yourself from the cold,” he said, and in that moment we became best friends.

A Day in Granada Nicaragua

“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us” was written like a lonely commandment above my bed at The Backyard Hostel in Granada, Nicaragua. It is on the road, away from our routines, where mundane errands can feel like wanderlust quenching escapades abounding with vibrant life

My second morning in Granada, Nicaragua I had a few missions to execute that the displacement of the road made seem unknown and exciting: Who would fix my shoes? How would I find them? Who would cut my hair and shave my beard? What would we talk about? Would I find a swimming suit? How much would it cost? How low could I haggle it? Where would the day take me? Whom would I meet? What would we do?  

Granada Nicaragua’s Hot Barefoot Sun

The yellow cathedral in Granada’s Central park caught the spark of the day’s swelling sunlight and my feet cooked on the warm pavement because my first order of business was to find someone to fix my Maasai tire sandals that had broken the day before. Barefoot, I asked randoms where I might find shoe repair shop and all fingers pointed towards the market.

At the entrance of the market was a man behind a sewing machine, banging away on a dress shoe’s sole with a small hammer.

“Good day!” I bid him, pointing to my bare feet. I retrieved the sandals from my man-bag-purse.

“My shoes have failed me.” I handed him the rogue sandal. He turned it over in his hands. I added, “These were made by the Maasai warriors in Kenya who buy women with cattle and make amazing sandals from tires.”

I explained to him the repairs I wanted. We settled on a price. Barefoot, I walked deeper into the market, protecting my bag from pickpockets and avoiding stepping on decaying organic matter and broken glass.

Barber Shop in Granada Nicaragua

Inside a labyrinth of aluminum and cement, I found a busy barbershop with four men clipping and shaving their reclined clients. With élan, I was ushered into barber Kevin’s chair and explained to him what I was looking for: “The same thing I have now, just shorter.”

He whipped out a razor, “This is a new blade, and so you will not get AIDS!”

“Excellent,” I told him, because AIDS dims even the most illustrious haircuts.

He asked where I was from. I told him I was born in Montana, and that from an early age I wrestled bears. He asked if the winter was very cold there, and I told him that sometimes it gets so cold that if you walk outside without a coat, you die.

“A guy like you needs a beard then, to protect yourself from the cold,” he said, and in that moment we became best friends.
As began shaving my neck beard, a woman with a basket of bananas appeared and shouted wildly at my barber. The woman believed Kevin should give her money. But Kevin was all like, you’re not my woman, why do I need to give you money?

The woman told Kevin he could go to hell and dance with the devil.

“If you keep talking, I will shove a banana in your mouth,” Kevin said. The woman turned to me to tell me that the man cutting my hair was a hijo de puta and I had better watch out because he would likely cut my throat. Then, politely, like a child asking for candy, she asked me if I would like to buy a banana.

With a freshly trimmed beard, a newly sculpted scalp, I emerged from the barbershop and meandered until I found an overpriced Chinese made swimsuit that would disintegrate by the end of my trip. I retrieved my sandals from the man behind the sewing machine and carried about the day, walking without a specific goal through Granada, Nicaragua’s cobblestone streets.

Stand-in Grandmas in Granada Nicaragua

Near my hostel I approached a gray haired woman hunched over a walker. As we passed, she looked up with young bright eyes and wished me good day. She shook my hand like a prodigal son. She asked me where I was from and when I answered she told me it was wonderful that I had decided to visit her country.

Then I ran into my hostel roommates—three Scottish medical students. One held his stomach and spoke grimly of intestinal woes. With the qualifications of having had my fair share of whistle belly thumbs, I prescribed him Cypro. Together, we walked to a pharmacy. On the way we reflected on the coming Antibiotic Apocalypse—the speculated day when medicine could take a trip back to the dark ages due to antibiotics losing their effectiveness from overuse and misuse.

The pharmacy was decorated like a birthday party and bumping under the effusion of two speakers being fed blaring American pop music remixes. The red-shirted employees jived to the music. “We are celebrating children!” they informed us, and it was the most joyful pharmacy of all time.

Buying Horse Shit in Granada Nicaragua

The day meandered on. Now that I had a swimming suit, I took a dip in Lake Nicaragua in a place I later found out was where the sewage pipe drains. After a vigorous shower, I ran into the Scottish trio again and we all decided that before the day’s credits rolled we should procure ingredients to make a spliff and have a jam session in the hostel.

With one of the Scottish blokes in tow, we set of down La Calzada, Granada’s main drag, to see what we could do. I ran into a group of bohemian Mexican/Argentinian bracelet makers/musician I’d met a few days before and they linked us up with a local whose legitimacy they vouched for. He took the equivalent of $8 from us, told us to wait, disappeared on a bicycle and we never see him again. Trounced, Scotland and I walked back through the park. Midway through he saw an English-speaking local he’d met before and in the course of saying hello he tells him about our recent rip-off.

“You never, never, never give them money in advance,” he lectured us.

 

“Hey,” he tells us in a lowered voice, “I can hook you up if you want.” I looked at my Scottish companion and his expression matched mine, “Might as well, we’re this far.” We waited in front of the park’s Cathedral.  A few minutes later he returned and we exchanged money for a small bag of what looks like what we sought.

We got back to the hostel and the three Scottish medical students and I and found cushions next to the pool. I was ready to smoke and jam but it turned out we bought horseshit—actual horseshit. We’d fallen for one of the oldest gringo tricks in the book. The four of us laughed about our international ineptitude and somehow even this added a hue of happiness to a day in Granada, Nicaragua where routine things carried the sustaining aura that shimmers on the road.

Read my other Travel Nicaragua Posts:

1. Travel Nicaragua: Unrelenting Overnight Bus Hangovers 

2. The Rum Infused Meanings in the Music on the Road

3. Travel Nicaragua: Sex, Love and Travel