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¡Hola!
So, we´ve been staying at this place a la Laguna de Apoyo called Proyecto Ecologico, which is a biological research field centre, a Spanish school and a hostel. There´s a resident scientist here from the US called Jeff, and another Nicaraguan dude called Lorenzo who is a diving specialist, plus a handful of staff that run the hostel. They do research into the local populations of bats, birds, butterflies, rodents and fish, including some that are endemic to the lagoon. The lagoon itself is about 20,000 years old and sits in the crater of a dormant volcano. The guests here are a mixture of college students doing placements, interested birders or butterfly enthusiasts, and people wanting to dive or learn spanish. We´ve been here for four nights; Sarah has been learning Spanish each day and I´ve been doing a bit of relaxing, diving and helping out. I´ve done one or two lessons too.
There was a lovely Canadian woman here called Christine who had brought over a beatifully organised library of books to donate to a little school round the corner, so I helped to take this round and install it and take some photos and videos... it was a really wonderful thing to do and it was quite inspiring; we will have to do something like this one day.
The lake is a really amazing place to swim; so crystal clear and calm. We went there last night in the dark and it was even more magical. The diving here is really different too. Its freshwater so you dont need a weight belt, which makes it dead easy to walk about and drop in from the shore. Weve done a mixture a recreation diving and installing markers and recording data for the ongoing research project into the fish here. The lagoon is still essentially development-free at the moment, and so the unique ecosystem is still intact; but this was all change when they start building hotels etc here. There are already a number of bars here chucking out that ridiculous clown music that seems to be so popular in Nicaragua... the locals really dont know how to do tranquility!
R&M
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Jeffrey McCrary, FUNDECI/GAIA Our website is www.gaianicaragua.org and our blog, www.lagunadeapoyo.blogspot.com. Please visit us!