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Published: April 7th 2010
The sign
The sign at the entrance from the road.My ideas of what I was going to do this week changed over the weekend. I couldn't decide if I should go to the north for the mountains and cooler weather or go to León for some culture and beach opportunities. I ended up staying at Laguna de Apoyo.
León during April is one of the hottest places in all of Central America. I couldn't do that. I can hardly stand the heat here sometimes--it's quite hot today. So then I debated going north to Matagalpa or Estelí per Pablo's recommendation. But I only had 3 days. The time lost due to travel and the heat and the fact that this place is a great place to be made my decision obvious to me, in fact I sort of had an epiphany during what I thought to be my last night swim.
The kids left on Saturday and it's certainly been different around here. An important secretary to somebody in the FSLN (Sandanista party) came with her family, as well as a man who runs an environmental group called NicaGlobal. It was neat, Jefferey and I showed them around and they really liked the tree nursery.
On Sunday
The place
This is what you see from the top of the stairs coming down from the road. I took a sailing lesson. It was fun and nice to get a different view of the crater. I only nearly capsized once. There was a lot to think about out there on that little dighy. It made Godforesaken Sea all the more fascinating to me. It's just hard to believe that people are able to sail extremely hard boats to sail around the world, including the Southern Ocean, solo. When we were putting the boat back on the trailor to get it out of the water, a malfunction caused the hull to crack and she began to take on water. We eventually got her out of the lake by hand. Poor Ferdinand took it pretty well, he said, "let's just enjoy or Easter Sunday," and he bought me a beer. I really felt like being home--it was Noah's 18th birthday and Easter. But just a week left.
This week has been a good week. The loud music isn't around and the beach is relatively deserted. Yesterday morning before breakfast Pablo took us on a birdwatching walk. The best thing I learned was that the grackle used to be Nicaragua's national bird. They changed that because the traits of
the bird didn't fit the majority of the populace. Now the national bird, the one which represnts the people, is the mot mot, a bird that cannot survive in captivity.
Jefferey has been telling us about all the different people he's met, largely "because he live's in Nicaragua." He has stories about terrorists to authors to Fidel Castro. He also has an ex-wife in Cuba and a 3 year old daughter in Barcelona. He really likes to tell people about the controversial people he knows.
I've been preping empty milk bags for planting and today I planted some olives (Simarouba amara). They are big olive trees with olives that fall and can be eaten, they taste sweet. The other day I planted some Granadillo (Myrospermum frutescens). It has become apparent how important the Latin names of things are on this trip, because people have different names for everything the world over. In all, I've planted about 120 seeds--very few, but maybe they'll get so many trees.
The pictures this time include some around the property, the dogs, and some interesting trees from the bird walk.
It's my final afternoon at Laguna de Apoyo. Tomorrow I head
Una Asosación
The Acacia tree and birds. The acacia provides protection to the nests--see the thorns? to the also very hot Granada where I will spend my last three nights in Nicaragua. A long, air-conditioned bus ride to San José on Sunday and I'll be home Monday night.
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