Festival de los Aguizotes and Laguna de Apoyo

Friday morning I packed up and caught a bus for Masaya about 45 minutes away by chicken bus. I arrived at the central market where produce vendors abounded. I was fully intending to walk to the hotel but the heat and the backpacks were making it difficult so I took shared taxi for 20 Cordobas (that $0.75 US) and was delivered at the door of the hotel where I was meeting up with the Italians for the Festival de los Aguizotes. I was already planning on going to the festival so it was lucky that the Italians were coming as well. It’s always nice to have someone to hang out with, especially at a large and rather rowdy festival. The festival is a huge Halloween-like parade, complete with elaborate costumes. Well, some elaborate costumes and some more simple with painted faces or scream masks.

 I wandered down to the Central Park while I waited for the Italians who were supposed to arrive about 8 pm. I wandered around the park for a while but I ended up making a dash back to the hotel when the rain threatened to fall. I got back just in time as the sky opened up and poured for the first time in several days. The rain lasted about an hour and I settled in to wait for the Italians. Luckily, it was a good place to be because the hotel was on the central street and many people in their costumes passed by on their way to join the parade. So I got to see all sorts of costumes from the classics to two half naked people (I'm not sure if they were men or women) with glitter all over their bodies. Also, one of the boys from the family that owned the hotel was dressed as death in this huge black dress with these huge wings pointing out with a reaper in his hands. His other friend was dressed as death’s bride, I would assume, in a bright red dress with a mantilla covering his face. They both had elaborate makeup.

The Italians arrived about 9:30. In addition to the seven of us staying at the hotel, several other friends had come for the evening as well. In all there were two Paolos, two Marcos, Andrea, Alessia, Silvia, Flavio, Lorenzo, and one of the Paolo’s Nicaraguan girlfriend Michelle and her daughter. Luckily, right about the time they arrived the parade started passing within a block of the hotel so we all scrambled out to watch it pass. Large groups passed for about an hour with everyone decked out in the various costumes, some of them from traditional Nicaragua folklore, although I have yet to learn these stories. There were chicken feet and pig feet on sticks and little cans with flame pouring out they would spray with aerosol cans of something to make giant jets of flame shoot into the air. One guy had a live rat that he was using to scare everyone alongside the parade route. Multiple groups of musicians walked and played as the parade goers danced and hollered their way down the streets. Every time the streetlights flickered off for a few minutes at the intersection we stood at, everyone in the crowd would whoop and shout. Walking along in the midst of all this were vendors pushing carts with beer and food that you could by as you walked and watched the parade. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel comfortable hauling my camera around with all the craziness.

After the groups started to thin we walked down and found another group of Italians and Nicaraguans that everyone knew and we hung out and chatted with them before heading down to the Central Park to get some food. After grabbing something to eat, we wandered around the park where large numbers of very animated dancers surrounded groups of musicians playing guiras (a cheese grater like instrument that they play with a stick), drums, and marimbas. It was getting late and the crowds were getting a little rowdy as the alcohol levels rose so we headed over to the house of one of the Italians who lived nearby with his Nicaragua wife and met up with everyone else. We hung out there for a couple of hours before heading back to our hotel for the night.

The next morning we had breakfast a little bakery down the street and made plans for heading to Laguna de Apoyo for the day. We started with a long walk to the bus station. Every time we asked directions people kept telling us it was only five more blocks to the bus station. It wasn’t that they were trying to give us bad directions, it was mainly that they just didn’t know how far it was and didn’t want to appear unhelpful, and they were at least pointing us in the right direction. Regardless, we made it eventually albeit a little more hot and tired than we had thought we would be. Luckily for me Marco had been quite gentlemanly and carried one of my backpacks for me much of the way. The Italians had only brought overnight bags since they planned to only be gone from home for a couple days, but my home away from home are my two backpacks that go almost everywhere with me. Although I’ve gotten rid of a few items of clothing that were less than ideal, they really aren’t super light, so I was grateful for Marco’s help.

We hopped on a bus that was headed for Laguna de Apoyo, or most of the way there it turned out. The drive was quite lovely up into the hills outside of Masaya going through these lovely little communities on winding roads. The bus dropped us off at the top of the hill above Laguna de Apoyo and we began the 4 kilometer hike down to the lake. It probably took us 45 minutes or so to make it down the hill to the lake. It was a beautiful walk down a steep forested hill to Laguna de Apoyo, a crater lake in an extinct volcano that was 283 meters (928 feet) deep. We unsurprisingly saw some howler monkeys on the way down as well. They really do seem to be just about everywhere in this country! I was unfortunately wearing the wrong shoes for the long walk down the hill. I hadn’t realized we would be walking down such a large hill to the lake and I had a big blister on the back of my heel by the time we arrived at the lake.

We were all pretty hot and tired but we took a few minutes to admire the view of this lovely crater lake from the public beach we had arrived at. Unfortunately, it was already after 2 pm when we got to the lake so we only had a couple hours to enjoy the lake before we had to catch the bus back up the hill. But luck was on my side this time and there was a bus that came all the way down to the lake at 4:30 so we wouldn’t have to hike back up the hill.

As I hopped in the water I was surprised by how warm it was. While I hadn’t expected it to be like a lake in the Northwest by any means, I had hoped it might be somewhat cooler than it was. In fact, the top several inches of the water were decidedly hot. Although after the walk down the hill in the humid air, any water we could jump into felt pretty good. We swam around for a while and then shared a watermelon we had picked up at the market before heading out for the lake and dried off a bit, then headed up to wait for the bus about 15 minutes early so we could make sure to get on it and that it was coming. The locals assured us it was. And so it did about 30 minutes late. We piled on with everyone else who was heading out from the lake for the evening. It was quite crowded. The bus powered up the hill in slow motion it seemed. We almost could have walked faster. Once we reached the top the bus picked up speed as it headed downhill to the main highway, at which point we had to jump off and hop on another bus that would take us on to Granada where we would be staying for the night. This bus driver decided that he wasn’t going to take the bus all the way downtown and so dumped everyone off on the edge of town. Even the Nicaraguans were grumbling about this turn of events.

So we were back to walking again. 15 blocks later we arrived at a little hostel where a couple of other friends of the Italians were staying for the night. I was exhausted and starving. We all got rooms in a dorm and as soon as we could rally everyone (which in my food-deprived state took much longer than I would have liked), we headed out to a little restaurant nearby where we all gorged ourselves on a typical Nicaraguan meal with chicken, gallo pinto, ripe plantains, salad, and some beer to wash it down with. Then we headed out to La Calzada, the pedestrian only street that was lined with restaurants and bars until we found one that had a good deal on beers. Then we had to stop by a karaoke bar so Francesco, a half-Costa Rican, half-Italian and Marco’s roommate, could show off his skills which were indeed quite impressive. However, we were all exhausted from the day by this point so we headed back to the hostel to call it a night.

The Italians took off early the next morning for more adventures, but I was exhausted so I headed to another, nicer hostel with a pool a few blocks away and proceeded to relax for the next couple of days. Hostal Oasis is really lovely and there were a large number of tourists there that were really quite nice and staying for a few days so we got to chatting with each other, which was fun. It was definitely more social than either of the other two hostels I’d stayed at and there were a lot of travelers who were staying for longer period of time or doing the whole Central American tour. It was really interesting to hear the stories of their travels and where they’d been, what they liked best, what problems they’d had, etc.

I ended up heading with a few of them out to Laguna de Apoyo again a few days later, to the partner hostel of Oasis, called Hostel Paradiso. Several people spent the night before heading on, but Jack and Chris (my favorite British couple from Birmingham), and I just did the day trip. The beach at the hostel was lovely and, in addition, for a modest entrance fee we could use the inner tubes, kayaks, paddle boards, and floating dock to play in the water for the day. The water, food, beer, and company were great.

Jack and Chris left the next day but I met a policeman named Jason from BC, Canada and we had dinner that night before he headed out to San Juan del Sur (the popular beach town) the next day. We had an interesting conversation about the legality of certain things and the stupid things people do when they’re about to be caught breaking the law. 

Now, lest you think I’m partying all the time, you should know that there are many quiet days in between all the excitement I keep writing about as well. And even when I do drink, it’s usually only a couple of beers with a few people, not some crazy party. I’ve made a point of avoiding the crazy parties that can be found in a city like Granada. But many days and nights are quiet and I largely keep to myself. I’ll read, or write, or watch a movie, or call home. I’m getting quite comfortable having dinner by myself as well. Sometimes hanging out with people is quite fun, but at other times it can be quite overwhelming and it’s necessary to hole up for a day or two and regroup.

And as for traveling from place to place, I’m almost always traveling alone. On the one hand it can be quite trying, figuring out where the buses are and their schedules, hauling my backpacks around and trying to figure out how to stash them on the bus so that I can be moderately comfortable, making sure I get off at the right place for the next connection, and trying to figure out my way around a new town to the hostel or hotel where I’m planning on staying. But there are some positive things about it too. For instance, I’m only in charge of getting myself from point A to point B, without worrying about a large group that can be unwieldy to manage. In fact, I’ve avoided traveling with a large group (other than with the Italians) because of that. It’s so difficult to make a decision with a big group and it feels like it takes twice as long to do anything, much less making sure everyone in the group stays together since without fail someone will stop to look at something or some people will walk faster than the rest of the group.

I’m also grateful for my Spanish skills. I can’t believe how many of the other travelers I’ve met (long-term travelers, not just people in Nica for a week or two), have either very little or virtually no grasp of the Spanish language. Perhaps it’s brave of them, but even I still have miscommunications with the differences in the way things are said here compared to the Dominican Republic, and getting around this country is not easy. I think I would be struggling a lot more if I didn’t speak Spanish as well.