Gannon Volleyball Nicaragua Photo Gallery (New Photos Added Daily)
We are still in San Juan del Sur. This morning started off with a delicious breakfast of café con leche, pancakes and fruit. We ventured off onto our hike to the statue on the mountain, Christ the Redeemer. The hike up took us about 20 minutes and we were at the top for a while, enjoying the peaceful view of the water and mountains. It was quite the experience being able to see such a religious landmark of the Catholic faith. We snapped a few pictures with the great scenery in the background, which will be great memorabilia for all of us.
When we got back to the hotel, we dropped a few things off and went right back out to the Zip Line Canopy Tour. I’ve only gone once before in the states and it was so much fun. I am so glad I got to experience it again in another country. A lot of it was similar, yet so much was different. There were howler monkeys in the trees above us and Morgan tried mimicking them, so one of our tour guys called her “mono chica”, which means monkey girl! I was proud of Bou and Hannah for doing the tour even though they are both afraid of heights. When we got towards the last few zip lines, our tour guides let us go with them one at a time so we could go upside down and do the “superwoman” pose.
We had such a great time together during these two morning activities. We had a few hours afterwards to ourselves, so a group of us went to the market for lunch and some shopping. Bou let us try some of the fruit that she got, which was different from anything we have in the States. We tried Lychee and Longyan and then used our leftover money from lunch to get some more for ourselves. Then we went to the beach with the whole group for a few hours, which was very relaxing. We even had some extra time for more shopping and or naps.
Next was our game against the Nicaraguan national team for the second time. We played at 7 p.m. under the lights on the outdoor court. We had a DJ playing songs during our warm-up and even while we were playing! We got a pretty big crowd for this match and it was cool to see some of the people that we have met and interacted with within the past few days. Although the environment was very awesome, it was also very different than what we are used to, so we had a difficult time adjusting to it. The first game was rough, the second game was a little bit better, but in the third game we picked it up and started playing more like Gannon Volleyball. We fought for these games, but we still lost the match in three sets, 14-25, 16-25 and 21-25.
We had a late dinner tonight and went to the restaurant that was next door to the court. The Nicaraguan team joined us for dinner consisting of chicken or fish accompanied by rice and salad. It was a very enjoyable meal and a great way to end the night.
Megan Wendel '15
Gannon University Volleyball
