Happy 4th of July!
Yesterday we toured the city of Granada more with a horse drawn carriage then we took a private boat tour of Lake Nicaragua and the many islands. Mombocho volcano erupted 50 million years ago and dropped hundreds of islands into the lake. All the rocks are black volcanic rocks. We stopped at a bar with our boat captain and had beers, watched the soccer game, swam in a pool, and made friends with Toto the pet parrot. We also stopped at an island and saw monkeys!
We received some really bad news. The community Jiquilillo that we had planned on volunteering at has flooded and the program we would have been working with has closed. Fortunately the hotel we will be staying at next week also runs a school and they are allowing us to volunteer at the school. They were delighted to have two teachers on board! Our thoughts go out to Jiquilillo, and we are excited to be teaching at a school.
We are now in Laguna de Apoyo. We are staying on the lake in the jungle. We are living like the locals here, where we wash our clothes in an outdoor sink, sleep under a mosquito net, and have no tv to watch. We start taking Spanish classes tomorrow. We went swimming in the crystal clear lake surrounded by mountains covered with jungle today and it started raining, but it was cool. There is an ecological research station here and everyone is really nice.
We are not sure if we will be able to upload pictures from here, but we will keep up with our posts.
Love D&J