Nicaragua Conclusion

In class on Thursday we asked our instructor how to find the hot springs. He drew us a map and after class we went exploring. When we got to the place marked on the map there were no obvious hot springs. Luckily a local man was there to help up us out. I walked around in the area he pointed to but didn't feel any hot water. Since I couldn't understand what he was saying, he stepped into the water and scraped away some sand with his hands in shallow water, revealing some hot water underneath. No wonder we weren't able to find the hot springs during our kayak ride the other day - you have to actually dig for them! So we dug away, revealing warm water and in some cases burning hot water. Even ten feet off shore I was able to dig down into the bottom and hit warm water. Not exactly what I had imagined for the hot springs, but still pretty cool.

We were told that our activity on Friday was to go along with the manager of the Spanish school on a roadtrip to Leon to watch a graduation ceremony. Seemed a bit strange to drive 2 hours to watch a graduation...especially when we found out that it meant classes were completely cancelled for the day on what was supposed to be our last day of school. But we went along with it because we did want to see Leon and the situation sort of reminded me of when I was in elementary school...of course I'd rather go on a field trip than have classes for the day!

When we got there it ended up being a kindergarten graduation which started really confusing us because we drove 2 hours just to see it. And then suddenly the guy who drove us there stepped up to the podium and was the translator for the ceremony...and the English speaking people whose words he was translating were his parents. Turned out his parents are missionaries who organized building this school for poor families in the area. Sort of a random situation to find ourselves in, but it ended up being an interesting insight into some of the good things that people are doing to help out unwealthy families in other parts of the world. Still, quite random...especially since the guy didn't really mention any of this to us on our way to the ceremony...maybe he was just being modest. After the ceremony we checked out Leon, had some lunch in the main square of the city, and headed back to the school.

That night was our last night at the nature reserve so I insisted that we go for one last dip in the lake before dinner. After dinner we played some euchre, said our goodbyes (to people and pets) and headed to bed. We were up at 5am the next morning to begin the journey back to San Jose, a way point to where we're headed next - the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica!