Monday, March 16 - Kathleen Garman

On Monday, we had half a day to explore Granada before heading to San Juan del Sur, where we would be working with our entrepreneurs.  Although there were no officially-planned activities, the whole group decided that we wanted to spend the morning doing a boat tour of the volcanically-created islands scattered throughout Nicaragua Lake.  Accordingly, we dragged ourselves out of bed early on our day off, packed ourselves in a small van, and headed out to the boats.

Because our group was large, we split onto two boats that followed each other around for a three-hour boat tour.  Our tour guide didn't say much, but pointed out islands of interest, like the one owned by former president of Nicaragua, Violeta Chamorro, and the island belonging to the family that owned the famous and well-loved Flor de Caña brand.  We saw islands that were for sale and islands with vacation homes that sat on their tippy tops in case of rising water levels.

One of the most popular stops on our tour was to Monkey Island, an island with a large variety of monkeys living on it. The most exciting part? For a small offering of food, the monkeys would come visit people on their boats. A mother monkey and her baby came onto our boats, and made friends with Olu and Max in particular.  After a short visit, our tour guide navigated us back to Monkey Island's shore and the monkeys hopped back to their home.

Another favorite stop on our tour was when we docked on a private island featuring a restaurant.  Some people ordered snacks, others swam, some explored the island, and still others took small naps in the many breezy hammocks. We stayed on the island for a while, but eventually had to leave so we could return to shore, get to our bus, and drive to San Juan del Sur.

After a rather quiet two hour drive to SJDS (most of us napped on the bus), we arrived at Villa Isabella, the hotel that we would be staying at for the duration of our time in San Juan.  We dropped our stuff off quickly so that we would have time to catch the sunset on the beach, which was a short five minute walk away.  After enjoying the sunset colors over the boats and the water, we returned promptly to the hotel to get ready for dinner, which was our first opportunity to meet our entrepreneurs in person.

Meeting our entrepreneurs over dinner was very exciting. Not only did we get to meet them and get to know them, but we also had the opportunity to get started on asking questions about our projects and our work. It was a little frustrating not being able to speak Spanish, as I was really interested in getting to know the ladies I would be working with.  That said, the wonderfully-patient Spanish speakers in our groups translated for us and made it easy to communicate despite the language barrier.

We ended our day excited to get to work with our entrepreneurs the next morning!