Sunday, July 31: Horses and volcanoes

James is on the mend today, and he’s terrifically relieved to be feeling better. We had a rough night with Jeremy, who kept crying in his sleep, so we’re having a slow start to the day, but we’re going to try going for a ride as a family on the second shift.

Back now: Jeremy did wonderfully well surviving a three-hour horseback ride. He walked, trotted, and even cantered—and on the first half of the ride he was reasonably happy with all three paces; trotting was his favorite. Noel took us up a different route so that instead of seeing the volcano from the ridge, we were looking at it from the top of another small mountain. The views off all sides were incredible. It was so kind of him to think of exposing us to more than one view, even though I think it was a longer ride.

Jeremy liked the "magic wand" grass, and we had a little duel. He died violently, but recovered to fight another day. And another...

On the way back, Jeremy was a little less happy about cantering; by the end, even trotting upset him, but Noel was very patient with us. We just meandered slowly, walking with an occasional trot, and we were lucky that the rain held off, giving us a gentle splatter instead of a total drenching.

Laguna de Apoyo, take 2

We had meant to go for a walk with Lea and Maria’s families today, but James came down with a bad stomach bug overnight, so I took a microbus out to tell them we couldn’t come. Microbus to calle 8 (which is actually a neighborhood, not a street), then walk to the first coco (coconut tree). What a charming address! Actually, all the addresses in Nicaragua are kind of like that: no street numbers in the whole country! Nicaraguans are kind of amused that foreigners find this difficult.

Then we latched onto a trip people were taking to Laguna de Apoyo: some people took public transport there, we rode in the back of the camionetta to a place called the Monkey Hut, which was not great for the children, since there was just a dock for diving off of, so I started off walking with the children to San Simian, where we had been two weeks earlier. Jeremy did very well: we told a story about mama squirrel and baby squirrel to help the 2k walk go faster. Mama squirrel was terribly whiny and kept wanting to stop, but baby squirrel encouraged her and sang to her and helped her keep moving.

Zoe had a nice time on the kayak and Jeremy “coached” Jackie on his dives. The warmth of the Laguna meant that everyone spent the best part of five hours in the water.

Over dinner, Lisa tried to coach us on working with Jeremy. James keeps asking for advice on setting boundaries. I think we need to make things more fun….