Las Isletas

I'm a little behind on posting these but this last Sunday I went on my first excursion! I went on a tour to see Las Isletas. The Islands. The volcano here in Granada is Volcan Mombacho, which is now inactive. However when it was active and it erupted, it spilled into the nearby large lake, Lake Cocibolca. Thus creating Las Isletas. The volcanic ash and what not created over 300 islands in the lake. Most of them are uninhabited but a good bit of them have people living on them too. Sort of like their own private island. Some wealthier people even built some really nice homes on their "own" island.

The tour provided us with bikes which we rode down to the dock, about 20 minutes, and then we boarded the boat and took off. It sat 20 people and didn't go very fast so it was a pretty leisurely boat ride. The first island we stopped at is known as Fortress Island. Sadly I couldn't tell you much about the history of it. Next we stopped at another island which had a little restaurant there and they gave us each a plate of fresh fruit and a coco loco. Rum in a coconut. Rum is huge here; advertised everywhere and definitely the most popular liquor. These were the hugest coconuts I have ever seen.   Bigger than my head. There was a hole drilled in the top and they gave us a bottle of rum, Flor de Cana, and we all passed it around pouring it into our coconut. It wasn't too sweet because it was with pure coconut water. We then cruised by monkey island which was sadly uneventful but I was proud of the picture I captured with one monkey swinging from tree to tree. It was pretty hard to see them.

Here are some pictures from my day:

 

 

One of the mansions on the islands.



One of my roommates, Molly from London, and I atop Fortress Island.



My coco loco!

When I walk to school, I walk through the barrios which are the extremely poor and governmental housing neighborhoods. A vast majority of the houses look just like this (except on dirt roads).

 

 

Monkey in the middle! (Spider monkey)