Laguana de Apoyo - Nicaragua

Note: Mike Friend is a contributing Author to this blog post.

Granada, the three amigos (Mike, Judith, Myself) made a hop skip and a jump over to Laugna de Apoyo, a small lake 30 minutes in the back of a pickup from downtown Granada. Our hostel in Granada talked up the place and booked us into there sister hostel "The Monkey Hut." The Hut was a two story beach house set on right on the lake with basic dorm rooms, a collective kitchen, and a large hardwood veranda overlooking a secluded cove. It also had a small rocky beach with a diving dock and water platform. We spent a few hours sunbathing on the docks and taking a kayak tour of the surrounding coves, polishing it off the afternoon with a siesta in one of the veranda hammocks.

The Hut has a very co-op type feel where there is free collective use of the kayaks and sports equipment and everyone cooks together and is on the honor system for any drink or snacks they take. This sharing system allows you to meet and interact with all the other people staying there and this is what makes staying there so great. It is also what makes it so bad.

For the most part, everyone I have met so far on my travels have been stand up individuals. Even the Brits, who I had a pretty poor opinion of after a couple incidents in Thailand and Australia, were fun easy-going folk and change my views. I can attribute this trend to the fact that Central America is still not a big dot on the international backpacking circuit. Because, while it is establishing itself as a gringo-friendly destination, it isn't as traveled or developed as Europe or Southeast Asia. This means that while the true thrill seekers and adventurous come here in droves, the wankers and main streamers stay to the beaten track. But this brilliant sociological theory of mine came crumbling down when I met a girl from California named Jane.

An 18 year old recent high-school graduate, Jane stands just under five her Peruvian roots give her a stocky wide legged stance that seem to impede her as she walks. Her unkept curly black hair hides most of her flat disproportionately big face and head. Basically she looks like a troll. But, not one to judge on appearances when she engaged me in conversation, I was interested to meet a fellow Californian and get her toughts on Central America. She introduced herself and asked if the peanut butter I was holding in my hand was mine. I confessed that it was and she went on to lecture me about trans fats and how unhealthy it was, and that she grinds her own at home. Interesting I thought.

Then, while eating my Cup O'Noodles with Judith on the veranda, she told me how much sodium I was taking in and that, as a health conscious Californian, she knew better. I told her that I generally like to eat better, but, when traveling, found it to be hard and expensi- "Well, I manage just fine, you should try a little harder," she snapped back, "back home I grow my own veggies." At this point I could tell that she wasn't trying to have a conversation (or couldn't rather), but just wanted to hear herself talk. And, while Judith found her insults hilarious, I didn't and got up and left the table. Mike writes, "Scott was looking weary and disappearing into the dorm room. This turned out to be with good reason as he explained he was trying to "get away from that girl. She gives California a bad name". That girl turned out to be Jane and Scott turned out to be very accurate, although underplaying the exact nature of her annoyingness."

Later on that evening, after dinner, a group of us gathered outside for some drinking games and Jane decided to join in. Mike again writes, "The full extent of Jane´s ignorance started to emerge and she swiftly became one of those people whose very breathing would irritate you. Plus she has the table manners of an animal, lacks any social grace and her naivety is astounding, meaning that she has nothing to offer a conversation, coupled with the fact she doesn´t actually listen anyway. So the evening turned into everyone else conversing and her sat around the table, ignoring the fact she was being ignored and trying to claim some stake in the conversation unsuccessfully." We were happy to take leave of her the next day, heading south to Isla Ometepe, and be done with her... or so we thought.