Mooching Masaya and the Laguna de Apoyo

Straight after our tour of Tabacalera Santiago we got on a bus straight to Masaya. A typically Nicaraguan town, it has a famed mercado artesanal that draws in the gringos. We had a couple of nights there, mooching around the town. We walked down to the lake and the baseball stadium- baseball is the national sport and we really want to go and see a game. There was none on here, though we were told that there would be one in Granada, yay!

Lunch with a view!

'Tostada', a typical Masayan dish. 

We'd heard that the artisan market was open late on Thursdays so we had a quick mooch round in the day but thought we'd save it for the evening. Mistake! When we got there most of the stalls were closed and you had to pay to get in as there was a local folk festival on. Well, we still wanted to look around the market, so we sucked it up and did end up watching some of the dancing and bands playing. But if I went again I would definitely go in the day and skip the night time 'festivities'.

Which is what we did the next morning when all the stalls were open, before heading on to Laguna de Apoyo!

Laguna de Apoyo is between Masaya and Granada and we'd read it was a nice place to hang out for the day. We went to one of the hostels there, where you can pay $6 for the day and use their kayaks, boat and inner tubes on the lake. As luck should have it we bumped into Alicia, who had been on the Tacuba waterfalls hike with us! She was now travelling with her friend Susie, and we hung out with them for the afternoon before heading on to Granada - we didn't feel the need to spend the night there as there wasn't much to do. But maybe we'll see Alicia and Susie in Ometepe as they're heading that way too. Ah, the gringo trail!

Getting out of Laguna de Apoyo is a bit of a mission. You have to take a bus out of the lake's national park to the PanAmerican highway, and then change onto a bus for Granada. The first part isn't really walkable as it's all uphill and apparently there are frequent robberies. So, we were waiting for the bus when we saw some workers leaving the hostel in their pickup, so we asked if we could get a ride up to the highway. They said yes, and it was so lucky that they did! The bus would have taken over an hour to do the same trip just to the highway, so we would gave gotten to Granada really late and in the middle of a downpour.

It's customary to offer some money to someone if they give you a ride and the driver wouldn't even take any. Super nice, it made me so happy. I should start logging acts of kindness!