Nicaragua Day 3

Our second full day in Nicaragua and our last in Las Peñitas was just as exciting as the first. We met up in the morning just down the road not far from our hostels. There was a little cove protected by a sand bar where the local fishermen docked their boats. We met up with some of these fishermen who operate a tour guide company and help spread awareness about protecting the mangroves nearby. On the south end of Las Peñitas is a mangrove forest with a long island running along the coast and buffering the forest from the sea. That island is named Juan Venado or in its English translation, John Deer Island. I was confused when the tour guides called this area an estuary, but also told me that there is no freshwater river flowing into the mangrove. An estuary is the transition zone where freshwater meets seawater, so they are obviously mistaken in the use of the term estuary. Although they may not have an education in biology, they are contributing a lot to the conservation of the mangroves. There are some local people who are cutting down the mangrove trees for wood and hunting the resident fauna for food. These human influences are causing negative impacts to the ecosystem. Mangrove trees provide protected breeding habitat for many fish species and help to filter contaminants from the water. With the loss of these mangroves the fishermen will be without a job and food, which is why they are taking action. They petition their local government for protection of the environment and lead groups to help replant deforested areas with new mangrove trees. Having learned of the mangrove situation from our tour guides, we set out by boats on a three hour tour. Yes, that is correct, a three hour tour on a boat. Thankfully, we had two professors with us to solve any problems should we have found ourselves stranded and nobody was named Gilligan. The tour was quite fun as we saw some green iguanas, giant web building spiders, a variety of birds, and men harvesting wood from the mangroves. Our tour guides exchanged a few words with them in passing. We made our way to the turn around point, where we actually were allowed out of the boats. We were told that everyone was to connect with their ancestral past and walk through the mangroves like the monkeys do. I joked that if I connected far enough into the past, I would be swimming! We followed single file through the mangroves staying on the strongest branches. At one point, we may have been about 10 ft above the water. It was a memorable tour that did last three hours, however we did not get stranded. The rest of the day was spent enjoying the beach, preparing to leave for Ometepe in the morning, and an eventful evening exploring the city of Leon where some of us were unsuccessful at getting dinner. That is a story for another time.