At night, streets in Granada take a different character.

Familiar places look different and different places become familiar.

Granada is about to become past tense, about to become another disappearing city in the rear view mirror. Nicaragua is still developing, still a place where a privileged class picks the best fruit off the trees and sleeps on clean sheets turned up by servants – a country where some people have privileges and say what goes and what stays. Like the natural surroundings, there are molten lava undercurrents and noxious gases that can make you fearful.

This evening city people come out of their houses and rock in wicker chairs on the front porch. Country people are cooking tortillas on front yard fireplaces and tending to chickens, goats and pigs that sustain them through political upheavals and meddling foreign powers who want to put a lock on Nicaragua’s natural resources..

This trip winds to an end but as long as reasons to go outweigh reasons to stay home, Scotttreks postcards will keep telling their small quiet stories.

Nicaragua, a place I wasn’t certain I wanted to see, has been a surprise.

I would come back again.

Making  new places your friend is a big part of traveling.

There is a bit of Columbus in all of us once we let ourselves sail where people tell us we can’t  or shouldn’t go.