Jan 7

PActea's day off

Finally, Sunday! Sunday is one of our favorite days during these trips as it is our vacation day. In the past we have toured the city of Granada, learned how to make chocolate, and spent time at the lagoon. This time around we chose to again spend time at Laguna de Apoyo. Laguna de Apoyo is a lagoon abut 30 minutes away from Casa Nica that has very nice (~80*F) water and many beachfront day resorts. The drive to the lagoon is very scenic. As you drop into the lagoon's bowl you are met with beautiful views of the surrounding mountains rising about the lagoon's surface. Every time we go it makes me wish I had my camera and that we stayed until sunset. Regardless, when we spend a day here it is always enjoyable. This time around we visited a beachfront restaurant with no entrance fee (most of the resorts have an entrance fee of $10-20 USD). It was lacking boats to borrow but we all had fun regardless.

Zach and Derek swam out about 100ft from the shore and floated around enjoying the scenery and warm water. Trevor and Cristian hung out closer to the shore. After a while we decided to get out and order some food. Derek and Cristian both got a different type of ceviche. Derek enjoyed his shrimp ceviche greatly whereas Cristian felt that his had way too much onion in it. The day consisted of lots of swimming and reading and it was very relaxing.

Once we had had enough fun in the sun, we split up into two separate taxis and headed back to Casa Nica. On our car ride back, we saw a few interesting things as well as sights that were more familiar. We drove over some inverted bumps in the road which forced you to slow down, drive into a small hole, and back up to continue your way. We later saw a group of kids and teens playing baseball with only a ball and a long stick. Also, all four of our windows were down so we got a full dosages of the smog in the air.

Once we arrived back to Casa Nica, that's when people started to feel under the weather. A few of us said that they were feeling nauseous and a slight headache. While some needed rest and hydration, others needed a nice home cooked meal.

When we wanted to wash ourselves off from the lake water, we found that we had no running water! :O Luckily there was containers filled with clean water for us to take bucket showers and wash the food that we were about to prepare. Dr. Basha and Derek prepared beef fajitas that were absolutely delicious from ingredients that we had picked up from a local market. Our night ended after we all went for ice cream from a local ice cream shop.