A day for drinks....

Waking up at 5 am has never been my thing. I'm not a morning person at all. But when it's steaming hot in your room once the sun rises, it's sort of easy to want to get up. You sweat all day and you sweat all night. We have cold showers in the morning to clean off the sweat of the night, cold showers before dinner to clean up before going out, and cold showers before bed to wash off the bug spray/sweat of the evening. Good thing cold showers are quick or Nicuragua would start charging for water usage! Anyways, back to waking up early! Since I slept like a log...literally, until 5 am, I was pretty much ready to get up. Being that it was much cooler downstairs in the "common" area, I took my iPad down there to work on my blog. Jan stayed in bed a bit longer, before bringing down our breakfast. We had stocked up on some cereal and milk to save having to go out for breaky. Just as I was about to edit the post I had been working on for an hour...I lost it. Enough about that though! I am totally over it! The night before we had met one of the girls that Jan went to school with, who was leaving the following day. She brought along her new room mate, Rachel. We invited Rachel to come to the Laguna with us since she was going to be alone over the weekend. We met her the next morning around 9:30 and caught the chicken bus to our stop.

(Kids enjoying T.V. on Saturday morning)

After a short trip, we got off and crossed the highway and caught a cab who drove us up the volcano and then down towards the crater which holds the laguna. There, we went to the Laguna Beach Club where we could sit and relax while enjoying their amenities. 

The gals wanted to go straight into the water but I coulnd't focus on anything but my blog so I stayed to work on that. 

Not to shabby though, to be able to write facing the beautiful scenery of the Lagoon. It was a lovely day of smoothies (mine was Pina Colada), WIFI, and paddle boarding.

I was so excited to get out onto the water and try paddle boarding. It's much harder than it looks! At first, Jan joined me on the board to get out deeper in the water a bit, but our board was floating below the water and we kept losing balance. Plus, it was hard to paddle from the back. I went off on my own and even made it to my feet! Yay. I paddled around a bit but I was so unsteady. I also didn't want to go too far into the lagoon so decided to turn around. This is where I fell. It all happned in slow moton. I lost my balance. Not wanting to fall face first onto my board, I pushed myself away from the board where I fell straight back into the water. When I resurfaced, I was sure I had broken my hand. I was in so much pain across the bottom of my palm. Jan assured me that I would be crying if I broke my hand, but I wasn't so sure.

After that, we decided we should get going anyways to avoid being in the rush of leaving with everyone else. 

(This guy spent 4 days painting this "billboard")

(Home/shop on the side of the highway)

When we arrived back in Grenada, we headed to the market to buy some bread to make PB sandwiches for the next days travel day and also some fruit. The market is a small blocked off area where there are wooden tables for vendors to sell their goods.

The ground is dirt/pavement...often it looks like dirt because it's so dirty. The smell is awful. One because there are fruits and veggies rotting in the heat, two because they also sell meat and anything else you can think of and three because it is filthy! There are puddles of liquid to step over and who knows what those puddles are. We managed to buy a small pineapple and 2 mangoes for about 50 cents for all of it!! Afterwards, we went to walk up the bell tower of one of the churches in town where there's supposed to be amazing views. Unfortuntely, it had closed only minutes before. 

Some pics of Granada:

The Old Hospital...so beautiful!

Next, we decided to walk along a very touristy promenade where they sell fun jewellery and other cool thing-a-ma-bobs. Rachel decided she'd better go home as her host family had planned a special meal that night. Jan and I decided to stop for happy hour...2 for 1 cocktails! At that point, we also decided that instead of walking all the way back to our gross hostel, we would stay out and eat. Then once we got back we would stay in for the night, showering and bed. Slurping back our pineapple mojitos (best.drink.ever), we decided to order the fish tacos, which were the best in Granada, or so their sign said. They WERE pretty delicious. We had just asked for our waiter to order a third round of drinks when the waitress came over and said she'd buy us a round if we moved tables. She had a big party coming in. No problem! She brought us over two pineapple mojitos while we relaxed in super awesome lounge chairs. Then, along came our watier with 2 more drinks. Apparently, they had gotten their wires crossed and they'd both brought us the free drinks! He shrugged and told us to drink them. Have you ever heard the expression one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor....it applies to mojitos as well! Jan took her last drink to go but I pounded those tasty juices back in no time. Since it was just before 8:30 (the cutoff for walking home safely at night in Granda), we decded to walk back quickly instead of taking a cab. Basically we ran, one of us may have had to go to the bathroom! We got back to the hostel, sweating and huffing and puffing. I was feeling no pain in my hand at this point! Since it was still early, we decided to do some facetiming!!! We spoke to our friends back home, laughing over some of the events that had happened so far. Soon enough, after our showers, we were passed out in bed, tired from our day in the sun. The next day, we were headed to Ometepe, an island in a large lake in Nicuragua. Since we knew it would be a long day of buses, taxis, and ferries, we planned on leaving early. And I could not wait to get out of that hostel!