So, for our adventure last Saturday we decided to visit Laguna de Apoyo - a crater lake about an hour away from Granada. Joe wanted to rent an apartment that was right on the edge of this lake, but it was quite a bit more expensive and hard to get to without a car, so we decided to go see what we were missing :)
Caught a bus in the morning at Granada's bus station. Their buses look like they're used school buses from the states.
We passed Granada's cemetery on the way. Beautiful! Looks like a place we'll have to go back to and explore sometime.
Before getting to Laguna de Apoyo, we stopped in two small towns that are known for their handmade crafts and pottery. The first was San Juan de Oriente. We got there about 8:00 - before the town was even awake, so we walked through the streets for a bit until the stores started opening up.
A picture of some gorgeous flowers we saw. Have no idea what they are...as is usually the case around here :)
Finally found a shop that was open, and after we had looked at the pottery and were leaving, the lady started trying to ask us something and pointing to some boys in a family picture and pointing down the stairs behind their shop. We finally figured out that she was trying to tell us that the boys were making pottery right then and asking us if we wanted to watch them. She led us down the stairs and these guys that were the little boys from the picture were hard at work. It was so fun to watch them!
Pretty much every shop in that little town sold pottery of some kind. Pretty amazing pieces.
At a lot of the shops the families were sitting around making the pottery right there. They all had a job to do...
This cute little boy was kicking his blue ball around in the street, but by the time I got the camera out he had seen us and ran back to his mom. They tried to persuade him to smile for the camera, but there was no convincing him. The kids here are so cute! I wish I always had my camera ready to go to capture some of them.
Just took this picture to show you what a lot of the shops looked like. They seemed to specialize in wind chimes and brightly painted pottery. Everything was so colorful.
And hammocks. Beautiful, expensive hammocks.
We then walked the .5 miles down the road to the town of Caterina. These three wheeled taxis are how everyone got around between these little towns.
I almost like them better than Smart cars. Almost... :)
The town of Caterina is known for their greenhouses. Apparently everyone from Granada and the surrounding areas come here to buy plants for their yards and houses. The nurseries lined the roads and were absolutely gorgeous.
I LOVED these little kid swings/hammocks/chairs thingys! Forget the black rubber ones at the playgrounds in the states - these things are awesome!
We walked the mile or two through the town of Caterina to the main attraction - the lookout over Laguna de Apoyo. In the distance we could see Granada, Lake Nicaragua, and not included in the picture, the Mombacho volcano .
I had read somewhere that you could find a trail that would take you from the lookout down to the village on the lake, but when we asked around, everyone said you had to take a taxi out and around on the roads instead. But we did some exploring, and found the trail!
It was absolutely awesome hiking through the rainforests and it was pretty off the beaten path, too. We didn't see anybody except a group of mountain bikers. I would've been jealous if they had been going down the trail, but they were going up and looked pretty worn out. I don't blame them.
Our dirt path eventually turned into a paved road and took us into some civilization.
We passed quite a few banana tree orchards...
And mango trees (you have to look closely to see the mangos). It's mango season, so all of the mango trees are dropping mangos and sometimes they were all over the sidewalk. Too bad they split when they hit the ground or we would've had free lunch! :)
Beautiful tropical flowers that lined areas of the road.
Here's a picture of a lady picking mangos from her tree. She has a big bamboo pole with a hook on it that picks off the mangos.
A view of the lake as we kept walking down to the village. And an awesome picture of Joe :)
This a picture of Laguna de Apoyo with Mombacho in the background.
We passed a tree with like 6 or 7 howler monkeys in it. We took lots of pictures hoping to get them all in it, but this is the only picture where you can actually distinguish a monkey from the tree, so I guess you only get to see one of the monkeys :) These little animals can make a horrendous noise! We could hear them on and off during our long walk down to the village. They sounded like a family of dinosaurs or some other large ferocious animal.
Most of the trees in the howler monkey forests look like this! It made me so excited because I've always heard of monkeys swinging through the trees, and I've tried to picture them swinging around on stationary branches, but all of these trees have these rope branch things hanging off of them. It makes the picture in my head so much better :)
After asking around for a bit we finally found the public beach on Laguna de Apoyo! (Most of the beach areas are privately owned). It felt so good to finally be there! The walk had ended up taking us about 3 hours and we were very hot and sticky and ready to jump into some water!
The restrooms we changed in... (the inside was worse than the outside)
Joe out for his swim!
Pictures of the beach. Little kids walked up and down trying to sell nuts and fried bread things and a group of musicians with a guitar, xylophone, and drum walked up and down asking to play songs for money. That xylophone had to be heavy!
I really like the horse drinking from the lake in the background
When we were getting done swimming, Joe went up to a restaurant to ask when the next bus left to go back to Granada. The next bus was in 2 1/2 hours, but he met a foreign couple - the guy was from Hamburg, Germany and the girl was from Australia - that were staying in Granada and were driving back right then. So we decided to get a ride with them. They were like 115% hippie - it was awesome. The guy had the long dreads and this was their car... (the one on the right)
They bought it in San Diego a year ago and have spent the year driving down through the countries between the U.S. and Nicaragua. They hope to spend the next few years making their way all the way through South America. Their car is called "El Vagabundo Mundial" :). It was completely full of stuff because it's their house on the road, so they smashed some things together to make room for the two of us.
On the way out of Laguna de Apoyo, we passed two young boys trying to hitchhike, they had spent the day cutting firewood in the forest and had also discovered a cinder block. So we stopped, the guy loaded their branches and cinder block and them on top of the car, and we drove them back. They knocked on the roof when we had reached where they wanted to get off, and the guy helped them off with their stuff. Then they drove us to Granada and let us off. Pretty fun couple! They were about our age and just couldn't stay in one place for very long, so had decided to become nomads. What a crazy life!
I asked the girl how they've been able to fund a trip like this since they're both pretty young and she said that she got her degree in dance and also got certified to do massages. So whenever they need more money, they stop at a tourist town and she dances in bars and offers massages and yoga classes to earn more money and then they're off again. :)
On our walk back to our apartment we passed a procession. Have no idea what for...but at least they had a band :)
We went on a walk that evening to see what was further south on our street. Just more poverty. The further south we got, the smaller and worse the housing got. But we did see this cool fence made up of cactus!
And these cute little puppies!
And we passed this game of baseball on the street. Joe had mentioned to me earlier how odd it was to him that everyone here plays baseball instead of soccer because soccer is usually played in poor countries because it can be played with just one ball and for baseball you need a ball, bat and mitts.
Well this group was playing baseball with just one ball. It looked like a racquet ball and the batter would throw it up and hit it with his fist and then run to the bases while the other team tried to get him out. No one had mitts. So there you have it - how to play baseball with just a ball :)
As soon as we got home and I took off my shoes for the day, my left foot swelled up. It felt like I had a couple of bug bites - must have been ants from the beach. Anyways, it really hurt to walk and I wondered if I would be able to go to church the next day. But by 2:00 pm on Sunday the swelling had completely disappeared and I was able to walk to church without a problem!
LOVE LOVE LOVE YOUR BLOG! We just caught up on all of the posts. What fun adventures! You guys are sure making the most of your time there. Miss you and love you!
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