From Beautiful to Bold: How León Won My Heart Over Granada

It’s funny, sometimes just how far a place can transpire from your original expectations.

This was true for me in both major cities of Nicaragua, Granada, and Leon.

Granada was supposed to be the more beautiful of the two, and it was the only place that I’d heard of in Nicaragua. I was expecting it to be a lot like the radiant, vivacious colonial cities of Oaxaca in Mexico or Antigua in Guatemala. I was fully expecting it to be my favourite.

Leon I’d heard was a little rougher around the edges. My expectations were low but as I’ve discovered in the past, sometimes there’s a joy to be found in low expectations.

What Granada had in beauty it lacked in atmosphere. It was a ghost town, with a demoralised, lethargic, lacklustre, and anxious feeling to it post Covid.

Leon was alive. More than alive, it was jumping up and down, pumping its fist in the air in defiance. It had so much character, charm, and warmth. It was lively and energetic, and we loved it there. It defied my expectations and ended up being my favourite of the two.

This might be because it’s a city of people with fire in their bellies and revolution in their hearts. I highly recommend a trip to the Museum of Revolution which tells the tales of the Sandinista Revolution of the 1970s, whereby Nicaragua revolted against the dictator Somoza. The city of Leon and its Student Revolutionary Front (FER) played a key role at this time and the power and the pride that Leon has in its history is inspiring and infectious. It is an outrageously cool museum and incredibly all the guides are former revolutionaries with their own stories of the part they played.

Our guide was delightful and reveled in showing us his face in the photographs and even his bullet wounds. (Make sure to check when English-speaking guides are available. When we visited the only tour available was in Spanish and our basic grasp of the language did not quite extend to the intricacies of political revolution. We grasped as much as we could but would have learned much more with an English-speaking guide).

I also recommend taking a walking tour to learn even more about the city’s history and to discover the numerous haunting murals dedicated to the revolution along with plaques and statues.

My favourite place was Leon Cathedral. It was a joy to explore the rooftop filled with white domes marbled with black swirls, miniature stained-glass windows, sumptuous archways, and male statues elevating the bells above the city. It was otherworldly as sunset enfolded it with a lilac sky of decorative clouds. I loved it up there and I could have stayed forevermore.

One of the big draws to Leon is the volcano boarding. There’s a small, very young, active volcano, Cerro Negro that you can sled down. We saw pictures of people in bright yellow jumpsuits and goggles, (breaking bad style) careening down the side of the volcano and thought, well that looks like fun!

The night before our tour I made the mistake of reading more about it. I read what speed you can reach on the sled; some people have managed 50 miles per hour! What?! I watched some videos and was shocked at just how high and how steep it looked. This was the point where I started to psych myself out. I also became aware of the fact that what you are sliding down is essentially like gravel and if you came off your board, you could hurt yourself and potentially pebble dash your skin, I read horror stories about people who had done just that.

As a clumsy girl who fears heights, this suddenly didn’t look so fun anymore…

No surprises here, I chickened out. My partner Joe went on without me and I had a day to myself.

This was the first time on the trip that I’d been on my own and I noticed a stark difference between the way men looked at and treated me. When I walked around with Joe, I didn’t give it a second thought, I felt safe, and nobody paid me any attention. Alone, some men were ogling me in the market, looking me up and down, and catcalling me. I suddenly felt very much on display and vulnerable. It was like a completely different place. It brought flooding back memories of feeling like that on past solo trips. It makes me quite angry to think that men treat single women like this and that they respect the man that a woman is walking hand in hand with but not the woman herself.

Back from the volcano boarding Joe was on cloud nine. I wasn’t surprised that daredevil that he is, he absolutely loved it! He was exhilarated describing it to me and said that he would do it again and again if he could. However, just as I started to feel a tinge of FOMO and regret, he shared the photos and videos of it, and oh boy, I would have hated that! I felt that it was the right decision after all.

Different horses for different courses as they say!

So don’t let me defy your expectations, who knows you might experience things totally differently if you go for yourself!

Thank you for reading! Hearts and tips are always welcome and your support is very much appreciated.

This story was originally published on Medium

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