Last day in Granada

The iPod is back! Not sure how it happened, but when checking out of the hostel today, I did one last ditch 'lost and found' search, and sure enough, there she was. I checked the lost and found the day that it went missing with no luck, so sometime between now and then it was returned. I suspect either the guy found out it had no battery left and couldnt recharge it, was overwhelmed by guilt or this has all been a malaria dream. Regardless, it made me a happy little gaffer. Many thanks to the team back in Vancouver that was preparing to send down a new music player for me, would have been nice to avoid this entire hassle, but alas. I was actually quite excited about getting a new mp3 player, as the battery life of my ipod has been a sore point for me, and I know it's just waiting to completely die out. Enough about that. Tuesday I took a day trip out to the Laguna de Apoyo, which is a crater lake about an hour out of town. Granted, the hour is based on a bus ride, then being able to hitchhike from the main road to the lake. The only people that passed me barely had enough time to laugh at me before speeding past, so it took much longer than an hour to get there. It was well worth it though, and I spent the day floating around the eerily warm lake in an innertube, looking for any kind of motorized craft to tow me, without luck. Yesterday was actually the day I was supposed to leave, but decided instead to do a volcano hike with Ry and 4 other guys. Once again, its supposed to be about a 2 to 3 hour thing, if you get a truck to take you to the top, but the thought of taking a truck to the top kind of defeated the whole purpose of a "hike", so we hoofed it up the mountain. 7km (5km from the main booth) later we had climbed a staggering 1000 metres vertically and I hope to god I never to have repeat the task. The actual volcano was fairly underwhelming. Where I had pictured rivers of lava and acidic ash spewing out of geysers, the reality was a jungle filled hole that hadn't so much as farted in the last 3000 years. We hung our heads in shame and began the walk back, the highlight of the trip being the numerous gigantic, dead snakes we found squished at the bottom of the mountain. Got back to the hostel and subsequently shaved Ry's head (a spur of the moment decision he reached when sweating profusely atop the volcano). Private Lang and I then joined the rest of the gang for dinner and our nightly pool games. Heading to Ometepe in about 3 hours, if you look at a map of Nicaragua, find the island in the middle of the gigantic lake, that's Ometepe. Plan is to stay there for two nights, then head down to playa del coco to meet Dev, Dani and Michelle! Probably won't get another blog update for a while...but I've said that before. Adios!

Pictures! A shot of the laguna. Never actually been in a crater lake before, but as you can see from the picture, the walls of the lake basically just drop straight down....like a...crater...

A snake! The fact that this is the picture I decided to show you from our entire volcano trip, should speak volumes as to the quality of the volcano.