Laguna de Apoyo

Saturday July 16

There are no lessons on the weekend, so today a bunch of us went to Laguna de Apoyo, the lake that formed after a volcano imploded several tens of thousands of years ago. (Take my dates always with a grain of salt.) Over thousands of years, it has collected rainwater, and so it’s now a freshwater lake: but the water’s warm, and the rocks and sand under your feet are even warmer than the water. There are funny little currents, too: dramatically warmer spots that shift and flow with time. And if you paddle around, on foot or in kayaks, you find pumice stones just floating in the water.

We drove through the rain for an hour to get there, and when we arrived, it was still raining, but that didn’t stop the kids from jumping in the water. “Very British,” said J.

Jeremy was in his element, playing sea monsters with Dad or kayaking with Mum.

Zoe and Alice tried to encourage him to put his face in the water: he did eventually stick his nose

in!

Watching the storms sweep across the lake and then rise gradually over the hilltops was pretty amazing.

As the rest of us sheltered from the rain, waiting for the van driver to return, Zoe just stood out on the deck to soak it all.

The Mariposa van had broken down in Managua Friday night, so we had another hired van and driver: this guy was a little more aggressive than Gordo, though, so we kept going head to head with, say, a re-tooled American school bus coming the opposite direction. High excitement. There was also a small collection of cars led by a police truck with lights flaring: a high government official, the driver said. This coming Tuesday, July 19^th, is the anniversary of the triumph of the revolution, so when we stopped in San Marcos for people to get cash on the way back, we saw a parade: a couple of flag carriers, 3 trumpets, trombone and big drum, lots of fireworks (which mostly just sound like guns or cannons going off—no lights or anything). This morning (Sunday) about 5 a.m., the oompah of the campaign truck (tuba, trombone, drum) came through again, accompanied by fireworks. Evidently Sunday is party night in San Juan, so we can expect lots of music and noise tonight. But first, J and Zoe are going up to the volcano by horseback. I think Jeremy and I may have to rest and recuperate.