I counted 24 passengers on the minibus from Managua to Granada today, which included two people standing like hunchbacks, the ticket collector dangling precariously out of the open door, an old woman with 3 dozen eggs on her lap and an extranjero with seriously cramped legs and grave concerns that his rucksack that had been loosely tied on the roof would not still be there when he eventually arrived in Granada.
The old woman next to me was concerned about the thirty-six huevos on her lap being broken. I was more concerned about the two between my legs being permanently damaged, squeezed as I was between the old woman and a sullen girl that didnt want to tell me the time it would take to get from Managua to Granada. With less legroom than on a Ryanair flight for the uncomfortable one hour journey, I could hardly feel my legs by the time I limped off the bus in Granada to discover there was a Feria in the town this weekend and all the hotels were fully booked.
I staggered from hotel to hotel trying to find a vacant room. It was in a posada on Calle La Calzada whilst I was waiting for a young girl to find out if they had any spare rooms, that I had the inspired idea to rest my legs and rucksack by sitting on a metal table. Ten seconds later, the table exploded underneath me. Another ten seconds later, I was backing out the posada as the young girl and a couple of other young people stared at me and each other with open mouths, as I mumbled somrthing about the available room being too expensive for me and I would prefer to stay elsewhere.
