Escape to Nicaragua...: Laguna de Apoyo

Last weekend Raul, Isabel and I traveled a whopping 30 minutes from Granada to spend Friday through Sunday at a hotel at the Laguna de Apoyo. The hotel sent a taxi to pick us up at our house and drop us at the hotel for $10. Day trips are possible to the Laguna (which we will do in the future), but we wanted to spend a couple of nights in nature, away from the noise of the city. Laguna de Apoyo is a gorgeous volcanic crater lake that was formed over 20,000 years ago, that is currently within a protected nature preserve. The waters are crystal clear/blue and are always comfortably warm due to thermal vents at the bottom of the lake. The hotel/lodge we stayed in (San Simian:
San Simian Eco Lodge situaded between Granada and Masaya in the Crater Laguna de Apoyo)
is a series of five different stand-alone bungalows on the hill leading to the lake, most with outdoors showers and baths. They have a restaurant on site and provide kayaks and tubes for hanging out in the lake. Everything was really professional and nice--we'd highly recommend the hotel.
The tourism industry has started to invade the Laguna and we saw construction for houses/hotels, though I understand it is somewhat restricted at the moment since it is a nature reserve. Its still relatively sparsely populated. I would LOVE to have a house here and tried to convince Raul that we should move there for a few months. Its within 20-30 mins from both Granada and Managua so we'd have cities close by. He wasn't convinced unfortunately. The houses are already priced out of our budget anyway.
It is currently the hottest and driest month of the year so there isn't much greenery in the photos. Once the rains come next month though, everything should come back to life. Even in the heat and dryness, we saw probably 5 or 6 different brightly colored tropical birds, 2 owls, a couple different lizards, a bright green snake, bats, frog/toad and a number of insects. There are monkeys but unfortunately we didn't see them. While we were there on Friday, there were only a few other people which was lovely. On Saturday, because you can do a day pass there were more, but still not crowded or overwhelming (though I would definitely prefer the people-free weekdays).

Looking down at the lake from the hotel hillside.

More of the hotel grounds.

Isabel enjoying the few flowers that remained.

Shore of the lake in front of hotel. We had to wear our Keens because of the rocks.

Hotel pier. Apparently when the rains come, the water will rise to the top of the ladder.

Dad and Isabel going out for a swim.

A tired little monkey after a morning of swimming.

Raul contemplating the nature and beauty around us.

Isabel and Raul kayaking.

Heading out on the Kayak.

Relaxing and riding the waves in an inner-tube.

After we left the hotel on Sunday, we went up to the little town of Catarina on the rim of the crater where they have a "mirador" (lookout) where we could look out over the whole laguna. After having spent a couple of days inside the crater it was really cool to look at it from the top. The mirador has a lot of restaurants and stores set up, and also have horse rides of varying length. Isabel loves horses so we spent the dollar for the short ride. Unfortunately she chose the biggest horse they had and subsequently I had to ride with her. That did not go over well at all, so we had to do a second ride where she was allowed to go by herself on a smaller horse. It was a really nice place to have lunch and enjoy the views and the breeze. We didn't get a chance to walk around the town but will plan to do that next time. I didn't get any photos, but the town is known for its greenhouses and gardens--folks come from all around to buy their plants in Catarina. We saw probably 20 or more nurseries driving through.