Day 22/23/24/25

The view from the bell tower.

A Howler Monkey!

Lake Nicaragua (note the polluted water...)

Cathedral.

La Merced church.

First off, I'm so sorry that it's taken me so long to post this blog! You'll see why as I tell you about my weekend adventures...

We had Spanish class on Friday morning, and the rain still hadn't stopped. I felt considerably better than I had felt on Thursday, so that was a good thing! We had decided as a group that we didn't want to hike Mombacho Volcano if it was going to be muddy. Plus, we knew that because of the rain, we wouldn't be able to fully appreciate the beautiful view once we got to the top! We therefore planned to spend the weekend in Granada. Granada is a colonial city about 40 minutes away from Jinotepe. We had planned to leave Friday afternoon, however, the rain did not motivate us to go. We decided to wait and leave on Saturday morning, hoping that by then the rain might let up a bit.

We therefore spent Friday afternoon further exploring Jinotepe. We went to the market and looked around a bit. This Friday was pay-day, so there was a HUGE line-up outside of every bank. Leo always warns us to get our cash out of the bank before Friday, because the banks run out of cash fairly quickly!

I worked on Spanish homework during some of the evening, and just sort of did my own thing. I went to bed early to make sure I continued to feel better!

Saturday morning, we woke up to the most beautiful sound - someone popped their head in our room and announced that the sun was shining, the birds and butterflies were out, and that the rain was gone! YAY! We basically jumped out of bed, and went and stood out in the sunlight for a few minutes, appreciating it so much after having been without it for 4 days!

We left shortly after breakfast for Granada. After getting off of the bus, we began our hunt for a cheap hostel! We stopped at 5 different hostels before finding one - the three of us spent the night for $25, which was a good deal! The city was beautiful! It is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Nicaragua, and we definitely understood why. It was very well kept and clean city - much cleaner than Jinotepe! There was a large central park, many beautiful churches, and lots to see and do! Granada is just off of Lake Nicaragua, and slightly farther away is Lake Apoyo (the crater lake we saw when we went to Catarina, remember?). After we found a hostel, we headed down to the lake and went on a boat tour. One of the unique things about Lake Nicaragua is that it has 365 islands (the Nica people say one for every day of the year!). One of the first things I noticed was the colour of the water. It's brown hue made the level of pollution in the lake evident...yuck! Fish only live in the deeper, middle parts of the lake due to the pollution. And there was a lot of garbage floating in the lake. It was really sad to see the lack of care and appreciation for this a beautiful lake.

Our little boat tour took us around to see the islands. Some islands were only large enough for one house or little restaurant, others were much larger! We even saw a small island which was only inhabited by howler monkeys! The boat driver had the boat close enough that the monkey could have jumped right onto our boat! It was definitely something I will always remember.

I got sick on our boat ride...again...haha. I can't help it! I think it was more to do with me still recovering from my sickness over the past few days than with my motion sickness, but who knows.

We had some lunch, then walked around the city a bit. We met a couple from Edmonton - they were on their 10th week of a 16-week backpacking trip all over Central America. It was really cool to hear of their experiences so far. They had a lot of good advice on places to go and things to see.

We went up the bell tower on one of the churches just in time for sunset. It offered a fantastic view of the city!

We had some pizza at the Mona Lisa Pizzaria, then walked about. We met a lot of people from all over the world! It was Mother's Day on Sunday, so there was a huge horse show/celebration on the main street! We watched at least 50 riders parade around on their horses. There were bands playing music, and people celebrating everywhere! I was surprised that Mother's Day in Nicaragua was such a party!!

On Sunday, we left for Lake Apoyo at around 10:30am. Somehow, we weren't surprised when we found out the tour ride out the Lake Apoyo was in the back of a truck...haha I guess we're getting used to the Nica means of travel! We spent the day out at the lake, swimming and meeting the other people that were on the tour (there was about 10 of us). There was a Dane, an Austrian, a German, three women from England, an American from Kentucky who had moved to Quebec, the couple from Edmonton, and the three of us! Needless to say, we were quite the group!

When exploring the beach a little later, we found a clay slope. We dug up the hot, red clay and put it all over ourselves because the girls from England said the minerals were great for the skin. It was an awesome (free!) full-body moisturizer! And it sure felt nice on skin that had been out in the sun all day! The funniest part though was after, when we were rinsing off the red clay in the lake, we realized that everyone's bathing suits were dyed red!

The tour was scheduled to be back in Granada at 5:00, and we had planned to catch a bus back to Jinotepe right away after. However, everything runs on Nica-time here, and we didn't get back to Granada until 5:45. As a result of the Mother's Day festivities and because of the 6pm sunset, there were no more buses going to Jinotepe for the evening. We therefore had to check into a different hostel (one called The Bearded Monkey) for the night. They had no room left, so they told us we could sleep on the floor for $5 each. We met some really awesome people (and many, many Canadians!). It was quite the experience!

We caught the first bus to Jinotepe on Monday morning, and arrived back at the house around 10:30am. We then had Spanish class from 11:00-4:00.

In the evening, I had a Skype meeting for a school group. I unpacked from our weekend, and made plans for next weekend with the girls. We were all pretty tired from our first weekend on our own, so we all fell asleep pretty quickly!