Granada Slide Show
Nicaragua’s most popular tourist haunt, Granada, is a bastion of old money and conservatism. Replete with grand Spanish architecture, thronging plazas and thundering horse-drawn carriages, this is a city that longs to return to its golden age of colonial pomp and splendor. For all its high-blown grandeur is mere edifice. Over the centuries, Granada was repeatedly destroyed by marauding pirates and armies, and reconstructed in its original style thereafter. Today, there is a very visible disparity between locals and gringos, and this is undermining the city’s very identity. Real estate prices in the downtown area have sky-rocketed amid the tourist boom. Yet if you look beyond the foreign-owned hotels and crowds of camera toting tour groups, you’ll find plenty of noise, dirt and colour. Granada remains a quintessential Nicaraguan city – full of life, madness and character. These images were snapped on the streets and at other nearby attractions.
Thu, Aug 27, 2009
Animated slideshows, Granada and around, Nicaragua