Advertisement
Hola amigos!
Really I should be writing this blog in Spanish as we have now started our spanish classes, but I think I´ll have to have a few more lessons before I´m up to that standard. Maybe next week...
Well, we last left you when we arrived in Granada, which as always when we write our blogs seems a whole world away from where we are now. After spending our first day wondering round the town of Granada we decided to take it easy the next day and went to the "Monkey Hut" on Laguna de Apoyo, a little hut right on this gorgeous lake in the Apoyo crater. The hut had kayaks and a basket ball court so we just spent the day having fun!
We also ventured up another volcano in Nicaragua (brave after our last lava adventure). We decided to do a sunset tour of the volcanoes in the Masay national park near Granada. It was pretty exciting as the volcan Santiago is still very active so you see all the smoke coming out of it. When it was dark we also went to peer into the volcano and you could see the red hot
Monkeys!
On Monkey island in Granada lava "brewing". It was pretty amazing to think that you were looking into the centre of the world. It was also easy to understand why many centuaries ago they believed that the volacano was possessed and there is a big cross just by the volcano that was put up by a priest to try exorcise the evil demons inside!
After spending four days in Granada we decided to hop accross to the Isla de Ometepe, descriped in our guide book as a fantasy island! It is an island formed by two volcanoes and it is pretty amazing. We also had quite an amusing incident on our first night there. We had spent the whole day travelling to the island and then spent an hour or so carrying our bags looking for somewhere to stay, so when we found somewhere we were pretty knackered. After we had each had shower and gotten ready for dinner I just went to wash my hands in the sink before we set off when suddenly the bathroom sink fell off the wall and smashed on the bathroom floor (it really wasn´t my fault...it was loose on the wall to start off with!)! Suddenly water
starting spurting out from the broken pipe in the wall flooding the whole bathroom. I could hear Simon calling out "what are you doing in there?!" as I tried to stop the water! Simon had to go and fetch someone from the hotel reception while I tried to stop the leak in the bathroom. By the time Simon managed to convey in spanish that the sink was broken, the bathroom was flooded and they needed to come quick (quite tricky with the laid back attitude of the Nicaraguans!) water had gotten into our bedroom. Opps.
We weren't amused though when we were paying our hotel bill and the hotel tried to charge us for the bathroom sink. We both firmly said no to that.
Apart from the sink incident and all the flies (literally hundreds of them!!) the island was beautiful. We hired bikes and cycled to the "Ojo de Agua", the eye of the water, a water hole in the middle of nowhere where you can swim and sun bathe.
After Nicaragua it was time to head to Costa Rica to start our spanish lessons. We spent a day in Liberia on route and then arrived
at Playa Flamingo on Sunday.
Playa Flamingo and our spanish school are lovely. The beach is gorgeous ( clear blue sea, white sand). We´re staying in a village near playa Flamingo called Potrero and the family that we´re staying with are very friendly and welcoming. Our conversation is pretty restricted to a mixture of sign language, pointing and the few words that we know, but hopefully that will change soon as we get better at spanish!
Our classes are quite intense. The school is quite small (about 8 students in total) so at the moment we´re having private lessons for four hours each day. The teachers don´t speak English so we basically have to talk for four hours in spanish (or at least try to) and then come back to our family and try some more. They also give us quite a lot of homework so at this rate we reckon we should learn quite a lot in the three weeks that we are here. Hopefully we won´t then forget it all when we set off on our onward travels.
Thanks for all the emails from everyone. With all our rambling in our blog it´s good
to hear whats going on in your lives too!
Que tenga un buen dia! Hasta luego.
Amy xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.087s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 14; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0494s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Ib Lilley
non-member comment
Just thought i'd drop you a note saying that the blog is great. The pictures have been fantastic. Quite jealous of the beach side spanish lessons. See you in three weeks! ps Mucho Agua? Really?