Tuesday, January 26, 2010 -- SAN SIMIAN LODGE ON LAGUNA DE APOYO

The  electricity went off again at 6 am, but the hostel soon had the generators up and running. We slipped out and had breakfast at Garden Café again and then went to Tierra Tours for our trek up Volcán Mombacho. Quickly, before the van was due to leave, one of the Tierra guys whisked me over to the other side of town and Radio Shack where I bought a pack of AA batteries. I hadn’t brought my charger and did not want to run out of power for my camera. Batteries do not last as long in this hot and humid climate.

The van dropped us at the foot of Mombacho where we transferred to a huge open-topped 4WD monster that would take us to the crater’s rim, sometimes up grades of 40%. I tried to capture the pitch with my camera but couldn’t. Suffice it to say that the passengers all raised their arms roller-coaster fashion several times. I was not looking forward to the ride back down at such a pitch, but it turned out not to be too frightening for the height wienie that resides in me.

About halfway up we stopped at a large coffee farm and gift shop where one could buy . . . coffee and snacks, etc. Jess and I both bought a little packet of tostones (plantain chips) and used the restroom but resisted buying coffee. Our tour guide gave “mama” as he called me, a big red flower.

When we got to the ranger station at the top, our naturalist, Camilo, told us that we could order lunch to be ready when we returned from our hike around the rim. Some did, but we decided not to. On the way to Volcán Mombacho, Camilo gave us an excellent run down of Nicaragua’s history. Then, on our walk around the crater rim, he pointed out birds, lizards, and plants: orchids, split leaf and reg. philodendron, ferns, moss, dieffenbachia, cecropia trees, and bromeliads; even spotted a sloth—actually all we could see was a patch of long gray fur up in the crotch of a tree, no face, no movement. We also saw butterflies and one endemic grayish lavender salamander.

At the top were many varied sizes of steaming fumaroles—vents where the volcano was letting off steam. It was very windy along the rim but blessedly cool. We had several series of dirt steps to ascend and descend but, lo, my hip and Achilles tendonitis did not bother me at all.

When we got back to Granada, we were in a rush. We got back at 2:35 and our taxi to San Simean was to pick us up at our hostel at 3:30. I “ran” back to the room and got us both packed up; Jess ran to Garden Café to get take-out sandwiches. We just had time to gobble our sandwiches (mine a delicious turkey pesto) in the room before our taxi arrived. 

Good bye to our ladies and their waterless and electricity-less hostel. They made out like bandits as they could now double rent our room, something Jess reminded the unfriendly boyfriend of before we left.

Our taxi driver, David, was a young Nica kid who worked for San Simean. He drove the usual suspensionless little car, so had to work getting up to the volcano’s rim. When we got to the bottom and the lake on the other side, he took a right and soon the road disintegrated to dirt and large stones. We felt every one of them. Eventually we turned into San Simean. The Portuguese owner, Victor, and his American wife, Amanda, greeted us and showed us to our hut and around the property, which consists of a large deck off the main house, pretty little thatch-roofed cottages scattered in the woods, a waterside bar, dock, swim tubes, kayaks, and a catamaran.

Our little thatched-roofed hut is wonderful. The bedroom is semi screened, the wide bed has a nice moskie net and reading lamp, the bathroom and cold shower off the bedroom is outdoors in an little plant-filled courtyard behind a high semicircular stone wall, we have a table and two easy chairs outside our door, a little patio to the other side also, and we are practically on the water.

We unpacked and immediately went for a swim. Jess is pretty burned after her kayak search yesterday but I helped her cover her burn with sunscreen. My chest is still peeling and itchy from my sunburn. After our swim, we had the barkeep make us drinks—pina colada for me, rum on the rocks for Jess—and we wrote our journals and checked our bird books (Victor had a good one up in the dining area on the deck) from our hammocks. There were quite a few White-throated Magpie Jays flitting through the trees. Like all jays, they are brazen, but they have a little comical topknot. What a relief to be out of the city and our airless hostel and up here where it is friendlier and breezily cool.

The little bar at beach side

Jess with her rum and my pina colada

We had a couple of drinks and then changed and walked up to eat dinner on the deck. We and a small family are the only ones here. At dinner we got to know Victor and Amanda—they are caretaking San Simian for an American woman who has a hotel—The San Francisco—in Granada. They found the job through workingcouples.com. We also got to know Lola, Amanda’s pet orange-fronted parakeet. Lola is very sociable and gave me a few soft nips when I tried to put her back on her cage when our dinner arrived. She wanted to snuggle on my shoulder.

I had fish, rice, mixed veggies. Jess had chicken fajitas. (Are you beginning to see a preference pattern here?) Tom, a new guest, arrived late. He was in his early 20’s and had just graduated from college. He’d come all the way up from Granada for just the one night. We invited him to sit at our table.

We were both in bed reading at 9:30 pm. One goes to bed early when there is no or little light beyond the headlamp.