Sunday morning I woke up at around 5 AM with throbbing pains in my stomach. After three hours of agony and the runs, I finally dragged myself out of bed and went to ask my home stay family for advice. I still think it was the ice in the water I had drunk the night before; though I knew the water had mostly likely been clean (I saw the server pour the water out from a bottle), the ice was less likely so to be clean. My home stay aunt remarked that I looked like I was about to die; she ran out and bought some sueros, essentially dehydration salts. Within the next three hours I gulped down about six packets of the salts, and feeling much better, walked down to the pool. I probably should have stayed home and recuperated, but I wasn’t about to let my only free day during my first week in Granada go to waste.
While most people were going on a tour of the volcano Mombacho, I was in no way ready to walk up a volcano in the searing midday heat and humidity. I met up with a few like-minded people and walked down to Hotel Granada, probably the nicest hotel in the city. The place was seriously nice and HUGE. I didn’t get too many pictures, since there was no particular place that was especially impressive, but altogether the effect was one of tropical luxury. When we arrived at the pool, there was almost no one there. It was like one of those mirages of paradise emerging out of the desert; after navigating several well-decorated halls, the pool seemed to magically appear, flat and still and blue, out of the palm trees.
It was probably the nicest pool I’ve ever seen: meticulously maintained, perfectly blue, just the right temperature, wonderfully decorated, great service. I’m still uncomfortable being served to, but I think I could get used to drinks being brought out for me. Throughout the day only a few people came to swim, so I had a relaxing day as a whole.
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| Yummy drink...plus the under ripe banana I picked from the nearby trees. |
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| The pool |
Once again, I encourage everyone to vacation in Nicaragua! Arian somewhat sarcastically asked whether it was him in the first world country and me in the third world, or the other way around. In addition, he seemed to disparage whether I was doing actual work during my eight weeks here. I don’t want to give the illusion that I’ve been relaxing all week; to the contrary, I’ve been working for about eight hours a day, not including walking time. The day before Sunday, we had been in the field, starting at 5:30 AM until about 4 PM. The rest of our six weeks here after the end of this week will closely resemble our schedule on Saturday. I’m not complaining about the workload; in fact, I look forward to it. However, I do think a well-deserved break is needed every now and then.
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