Elliot and I said goodbye to our Canadian friends this morning and made our way to one of the youth hostels in the town center, where I had made a reservation (earlier this morning) for us to take a shuttle to a place on Laguna Apoyo called San Simian. Upon our arrival, however, the lady there told me that the shuttle wasn't going after all, as the other passengers had canceled. So disappointing! And so Nicaragua. But across the street was another hostel with another shuttle going to another place at the Laguna, so we just took that instead.
The shuttle was an ancient blue VW van (I think maybe the same one I took a photo of last week), literally coming apart at the seams... All vehicles here seem to be in various stages of decay. But the driver was friendly and got us to our destination - The Monkey Hut - in one piece.
The Monkey Hut was at first a bit of a disappointment: the water was deep with no real beach, all but two of the kayaks were broken, and there was nary a monkey in sight. There were also no life jackets small enough for Elliot, and the supposedly crystal clear water had a lot of mysterious flotsam and a couple of small dead fish floating in it.
However, we were basically stuck - San Simian was a 4 km walk around at the opposite end of the lake, there were no taxis, and the shuttle driver told us he wasn't allowed to drive us there. So... We made the best of it, and ended up actually having a nice time. I wrangled one of the working kayaks (with crazy homemade wooden unfeathered kayak paddle) and we took a short trip, happily noting that the water beyond the shallow beach area was in fact crystal clear; we swam with one of their inner tubes out to their floating rafts and back (the shallow area seemed to get progressively clearer and cleaner as the day went on). We also met two lovely young women who are currently studying in Mexico - one of whom is studying to be a documentary filmmaker (go figure). Plus I finally got to have some fried fish (delicious!), and Elliot got to try out several hammocks. It wasn't luxury by any stretch of the imagination, and it wasn't particularly cultural, but it was fun. There is a whole weird hippy tourist backpacker subculture here that I still haven't figured out, and the Monkey Hut (along with its accompanying hostel in Granada, The Bearded Monkey) is one of that subculture's icons.
Tomorrow we need to sort out our plan for the week: I've determined that studying for four hours in a classroom is not much fun for Elliot, so we are looking at the possibility of doing some excursions with our teachers instead. I am also hoping to go tomorrow to Jinotepe - a small pueblo near here that evidently has its annual patron saints day tomorrow, complete with traditional masked dancers. Hoping to take some good photos!
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