Laguna de Apoyo

Sunday the 17th, I went with two of my site mates and one of their host brothers to the Laguna de Apoyo.  It is pretty close to where we live. We met outside my house at 8am to head over there by mototaxi. We took it to Catarina. We picked up one of the host brother’s friends and started the trek to the Laguna.  We are training in towns pretty close together so we saw two of the other aspirantes while they were on their run (they live in the town next to Catarina).  My host family kept telling me that it was a pretty tough hike and I thought I was prepared.  It was almost all downhill and pretty rocky. We took our time and eventually reached the bottom, the lagoon. Along the way we took some pictures of the view and the famous monkeys. 

According to the guide books, the Laguna de Apoya is one of Nicaragua’s cleanest places to swim.  It’s a lake that formed over 200 centuries ago in the drowned volcanic crater of the now extinct Volcano. The lake is deep, 200 meters in the center, which makes it the deepest in Central America.

While we were at the bottom, we ran into 3 more aspirantes who were also there with their host brothers. It is always nice to see some different faces. We had all just seen each other the day before so we caught up on what we did Saturday evening and what our plans were for Sunday night, exciting stuff!

The walk back up was brutal! We were in a rush because the two Nicas we were with had a football game so we had to walk as quickly as we could, which ended up not being that quick. We had to take a few breaks to catch our breath.  Of course the two in shape soccer players had no problem making it up the steep trail. In the end, we all made it, thankfully. 

It was definitely a beautiful place. I would love to go back. Hopefully next time we can go and get a ride up. Being down at the lagoon was extremely relaxing. Fingers crossed we have time to go back.