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Published: December 16th 2007
Ahhhh! Bit behind on my blog writing, so will have to do a few places in one go! Will try to keep it short and not bore you to death!
LAGUNA DE APOYO
Half an hour from Granada is an absolutely gorgeous crater lake- I think it´s probably one of the most beautiful places that I´ve seen so far! Much nicer than the crater lake that I spent hours hiking to on my birthday- you can drive to this one, as well as swim in the warm water! Woo hoo!
There are only 2 places that you can stay at the laguna. I stayed at ´Crater´s Edge´which was really quiet, but sooooo relaxing. There was a pontoon off the shore when I spent my days on sunbathing. I was the only one staying in the dorm (so I had my own private bathroom- yey!) and it was amazing because it was kind of open air. You could lie in bed and get a great view of the lake. I was woken up in the morning by the sun rising above the crater and shining in my eyes- it was lovely!
ISLA DE OMETEPE
Ometepe Island was
formed when 2 volcanoes on Lake Nicaragua errupted were joined together by the lava flow. It was a really nice place, but unless you are a complete activity freak then it´s not really the place to go! There was no way that I was hiking up another volcano- this one would have taken 8 hours, no thank you!!!!!!
The hostel I was staying in was really nice. You could hire horses (no thanks, didn´t want a sore bum again!), bikes (no thanks, the roads were dusty and bumpy) and kayaks. Thought I best do something active so I decided to kayak to ´Monkey Island´with a few others. It took about 30 minutes to kayak to the island (you can´t get onto it cos the monkeys are a bit vicious) by which time my arms were ready to drop off. Luckily it was a 2 person kayak and I was sitting at the back so I was able to slack off a bit and let the girl in front do a lot of the work- tee hee!
I felt suitable wimpish as when we were nearly halfway back we saw 2 heads bobbing about in the water, and discovered
that a couple in their 50s were SWIMMING to Monkey Island. Oh my goodness, I was impressed!
SAN JUAN DEL SUR
I´d heard a lot of bad things about SJDS before I arrived there. I was expecting a completely gringofied and touristy place. And yes, it was a little more touristy than some other places in Nicaragua, but hey, I´m a tourist and I liked it!
The beach where the town is wasn´t the nicest that I´d seen (but not as bad as I´d been expecting!) but there are shuttles every day to 2 really nice beaches about an hour away. They were lovely and actually reminded me of the beaches in Pembrokeshire (particularly Broad Haven!)
The first day I spent on the beach was gorgeous and sunny (sand kept being blown on me which was v annoying- I hate sand!!!) but the second day was a mixture between boiling hot sun and torrential rain- a bit annoying, but at least the sand stayed a bit damp and didn´t get blown over me again!
SJDS is also near a big turtle reserve. After my dodgy poaching experience in Guatemala, I decided to give it another
The sunrise that woke me up!
Ok, the prison style bars are not too pretty, but if you ignore those then it was amazing!go and went on an organised tour. It was sooo much better- we watched a big presentation about turtles before we left, then saw 3 turtles coming onto the sand to lay their eggs. The leaders of the tour were really respectful of the turtles- we weren´t allowed to take torches, we could only use these tiny red lights at times. We could only take 1 photo of the turtles egg nest, then one of the turtle as she was about to get in the water. I felt much better about the whole thing. It was a bit annoying though, as every full moon (a week before I was there) they get a massive influx of turtles laying their eggs- between 4,000-40,000 in a night! How crazy must that be!?!?
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