In which Layla and Roz fear for their lives on a small motorboat, view petroglyphs and cycle in the countryside

by Layla

We gravitated back to the cheery pedestrianised street for dinner, and settled at Don Luca for some very tasty pizza, though alas no mohitos. After a pleasant time watching some fire jugglers and break dancing teenagers, we thought we’d better head back to the hotel – after all, we were being picked up at 7am the next day for our tour to Zapatera Archipelago National Park.

Alas it turned out it was supposed to be 6:30, and we were devastated to hear that our lovely guide David was feeling unwell, so they’d sent some lesser model from the tour company with poor English, a less exuberant attitude, and a bizarre lack of knowledge of any of the places on the tour. We drove down to the pier and stepped aboard a motorboat. As we cruised smoothly through a picturesque and serene collection of ‘Isletas’, we initially didn’t even bother with the offered life jackets, gazing out at birds and plants.

It was only about 15 minutes after leaving the pier that we realised this might not be the pleasure trip we’d imagined. The boat started to rock. It started to pitch. Roz and I grabbed our lifejackets at triple speed as the boat slammed into a massive wave, flew through the air, and thudded painfully back onto the water. Thus commenced about half an hour or so of terror. Nothing but massive waves, and our boat being tossed around as it fought heroically through. Every time we hit the crest of a particularly big wave, Roz and I squealed, screwed our eyes shut, and clung onto each others’ hands, hoping not to die, and wondering why on earth the guidebooks or tour office hadn’t mentioned this adrenaline-fanning cruise. I genuinely thought we were going to be thrown into the water. Apparently there were sharks…

Eventually we made it, and sailed up to this very middle-of-nowhere island, where our aim was to see statues and petroglyphs from civilisations of 1000-1500 years ago (though in fact archaeologists and explorers had removed lots of them and put them in museums in Granada and the Smithsonian, USA). We were greeted by one of the 6000 people who live on the island (there was no sign of anyone else) and we stepped, grateful and entirely drenched, onto glorious dry land. We had a tour of the petroglyphs and statues, seeing some stones carved into the shape of animal gods (and the accompanying human and animal sacrificing places for them), a primitive calendar, and some places to mix shaman potions. It was fairly interesting, though not much seemed to remain on the island. We then walked past a sweet little village school and prepared for what we expected to be a couple of hours of hiking. Alas it was not to be – our guide didn’t know of any trails and so instead led us the short way back to the boat, trying to trick us into thinking it was a hike, then trying to persuade us to have lunch at 9:45. We declined, which alas meant back onto the boat and another 20 minute terror trip to Isla de los Muertos, a nearby island with some really interesting petroglyph carvings on a few giant stones, again for human and animal sacrificing. This was a small, cool little dessert island with palm trees, but we declined our guide’s suggestion that we swim, as we had just had clear evidence of the currents, and didn’t really want to swim under the gaze of the family who lived on the island… We declined lunch again (10:30), and pottered back to Granada. Yet another white-knuckle ride. We experimented with screwing our eyes shut to lessen the terror (and the water in the eyes) but both had a habit of glancing up just when the boat was on the crest of a particularly gargantuan wave. We returned via monkey island, a small island where scientists have marooned two types of monkey in order to study their behaviour. And then, hooray, it was back on dry land, and in the offices of Tierra Tours where we complained about the rubbish tour guide (and tour that lasted 4 hours instead of 9), got an appropriate discount, and (thus smug) walked back to the hotel in search of dry clothes and feeling that, all in all, it had been a good – if hair-raising – morning.

Afterwards, ravenous, we had a large and tasty lunch of nachos and hummous at Nectar, and retired to our hotel’s poolside, where I became entirely absorbed in a book called The Help, while Roz listened to her audiobook (The Woman in White) and went for a very chilly swim.

That evening Roz literally had to drag me from my book to have dinner; first a couple of mohitos, and then we tried the poshest place in Granada, a restaurant called Imagine. Certainly it was expensive, and the food was nicely presented, but it wasn’t as amazing as it might have been. And alas the atmosphere impeded by us being the only diners. But it was a very nice evening and I, for the first time this holiday, managed dessert: mango bread and ice cream (absolutely lovely). Hurrah. And about time too!

I stayed up til after midnight finishing my book, and awoke sleepily this morning. After breakfast we walked down to the centre and hired bikes: we were off on a cycle, as described by the Lonely Planet, to Puerto Assese, and its adjacent peninsula. It was lovely (if a bit hot) cycling back through the beach area (the waves were quite vigorous and we felt smug for having decided to kayak when the water was calm), then up through pretty countryside first to a port, and then along a very long and bumpy track to what the Lonely Planet claimed was a lovely clean swimming hole; in fact since the book was written there seems to have been some construction and a great deal of litter… we decided not to swim, but had enjoyed the cycle; we returned to Puerto Assesse for beer in the posh restaurant overlooking a beautiful view of the lake, but they had no vegetarian food at all, so we went to the Hotel Mombacho restaurant instead, right on the water, and only occupied by locals, and had some tasty ‘queso tostadas’ which are cubes of fried salty cheese, and fried circles of plantain. We read our books (me dispiritedly – it’s all very well to read Salman Rushdie’s history of Nicaragua, but not after the compulsive The Help), sipped beer, and then cycled back to the centre.

We walked back to our hotel, eating ice creams, and jumped into the pool, where we had a fun afternoon teaching Roz to swim underwater (she’s still working on lesson 2: underwater handstands) and we are now reclining in hammocks, about to go to the opening of a photography exhibition, and in staunch denial about this being our last night on holiday. Our flight is at 1pm tomorrow (and arrives at 10am the following day) – nooooo!