Another Successful Visit

The rest of Laura's visit was fantastic, we enjoyed the beach at Pochomil





and then headed down to the Island of Ometepe for the weekend which was spectacular.


I believe it is my new favorite place in Nicaragua, too bad it's it takes forever to get there from my site. I think the island is Nicaragua at its best: the people are super nice (I have the number for an excellent and informative taxi driver if anyone is looking for one), the landscape is gorgeous, it's safe, and although there were many tourists around even for the end of May, it didn't feel like they were encroaching on the local culture and I got the impression that more of the tourist infrastructure out there is Nica-owned (as opposed to Granada where it seems like all the most successful businesses are owned by expats).

Rather than spend a full day and what I can only imagine would have been gallons of sweat climbing up one of the two volcanoes, we opted for a 3 hour hike to a look-out point on Volcan Maderas, the smaller of the two. I think it nearly killed Laura and left me with a little family of blisters on both my feet.

Laura & our guide heading up the last steep portion:


The lovely view, Volcan Concepcion hidden behind the clouds and the lake below:


We rewarded that effort with an afternoon on the beach at Playa Santo Domingo:


(It was windy)


The next day we walked 4 kilometers to a farm in Balgue to see petroglyphs and buy some locally grown coffee.




We saw some howler monkeys along the way:




My feet survived that trip better but Laura's did not and we had some extremely good luck when the owner of our hostel drove past and gave us a lift home.

We also rewarded that with some beach time.


We spent our last night back in Granada and after all that sweating, we opted for a room with AC and got prettied up for our last night.

Cable TV and air conditioning totally warrants a photo:


Out on the town:


I'm sad to see Laura go, we had a great time and it seemed like everyone and their mother was asking when she would come back (my students even offered to raise money to fly her back down!). But continue I must, and I’m happy to say that I just had my mid-term health check-up and I’m pretty darned healthy. However, the highlight of my week was definitely receiving a check from the mayor’s office to cover some of the expenses for the teacher workshop I’m putting on next week with two other volunteers. That's a whole story in itself that I'll tell another day.