Merry Christmas Island style with a twist. Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua.
An island in the middle of a massive freshwater lake formed by two volcanoes on each side connected by lava flow. That is what I was first told about Isla de Ometepe from my retired buddy Al in Bocas del Toro Panama. I had never heard of the place but it sure sounded surreal. With Christmas coming and already having been in San Juan del Sur, I figured what the hell Christmas on an island, that would make six in my life, not bad. So, it was back to Rivas where I stayed the night again even though it was only 45 minutes away. I like the place what can I say. The next day it was up and out, bright and early (10´ish, getting back into island time), and on my way to the port town of San Jorge.
Now, it should have been a short little 10 minute jont, but when you make rookie mistakes, even after five years on the road, shit gets out of hand rather quickly. When I went to the semi hectic bus station, I listened for the call out for my destination. I knew it was for San Jorge, but when I caught the tail end of “metepe”, I asked the guy if the bus I was standing next to was for Ometepe. He shook his hand and waved for me to get on. Cool, first bus and I was getting on. It was standing room only so I had to throw my backpack on top of the bus and then crawl through the back into the standing room only back section. No worries, ten to fifteen minutes is nothing. Finally we are off and make our way out of the busy center. We hit the main road and are going in a different direction than I imagined. I knew where the turn off to San Jorge was and we were definitely not going that way. I figured since it was such a short direct route that maybe we do a few outside stops before looping back. No worries. At that same time I went into no worries mode I shot straight into panic mode when I didn´t have a bulge in my pants. No, I hadn´t lost my sexual excitement for getting stuck in the back of a chicken bus, but rather the shock of remembering that my money belt was still shoved in my pseudo hiding spot on my pack. When I leave my room and don´t want to carry my passport and spare cash, I fold up the money belt and shove it in a little hiding spot where the lower backsupport is on the bag. The money belt isn´t completely hidden as it sort of hangs out on both sides, but usually when I have the back lying down it is covered and all the open compartments are facing up so any would be thief would doubtfully lift the back up to see the back side. Well, everything I had excluding a couple of Cordobas to pay for the bus as I had splurged the night before for some chicken take away, was in the money belt including my passport, around $600US in different currencies, and my debit card which was my only form of currency option. I gushed sweat. My heart was in my stomach. I couldn´t breath. Everything felt claustrophobic. There were a couple of young guys up on the top of the bus pulling things up and dropping things off. I could just see them sitting there with this money belt that had just been sticking out of a bag. They had dollar signs in their eyes and with Christmas a short time away all their dreams had come true. I saw myself with the ability to pay for the bus and then not enough to even make an SOS phone call. I was fucked. To double the stress, as we were now on the road for almost a half an hour and I was seeing signs for Granada and Managua, I was starting to think that things were going incredibly wrong. In the beginning I had saw the stickered name plate that ran along the top of the front window. The first letters were scratched out but the rest spelled metepe so I figured it had to be okay. Now I was worried. We had doubled the amount of passengers and now I had been pushed against the back of the last row of the seats. I was trapped on a bus going to who knows where, my money and everything important in my life was just blowing in the wind for anyone who wanted it, and there was nothing I could do. We were about 25 kilometers out when I spied a guy rolling one of those huge water cisterns. It was massive and I knew it would take a bunch of time and people to get it on top so when a couple of guys jumped out to help load the thing I verified with a girl pressed against my cheek that this was in fact going to some place called Jimenotepe and I was on the wrong bus. I pardoned myself as I pushed my way outside and screamed at the guy to give me my bag. I had to throw a 20C at him before he gave it to me as they drove away, but I could see as he was dangling it the little pouch poking out the side. I got the bag, grabbed the money belt and just sat on the side of the road happier than I have been in a long time. That was the best gift that I could ever get from Santa Claus. A half an hour later I was able to flag down a shared taxi which took me back to Rivas. From the taxi driver I learned that I could just pay 20C and have a taxi take me directly to the port. After my episode, I was willing to pay 50 and was quickly chauffered to the small port town of San Jorge.
Timing was on my side and I caught a small ferry five minutes before it left the dock. I was on my way. The views were amazing, two big volcanoes sitting next to each other connected with a low stretch of land. Nice. After an hour getting bounced around on some 1-3ft swells we pulled into the port town of Moyagalpa. I hadn´t been on the road very long and could of made it to many of the other towns on the island, but as I was in no rush and wanted to check out the non touristy village, I stayed the night at a little restaurant hospedaje. A big fish dinner and a walk around, it was a nice way to end a hectic day.
The next morning I picked up an early bus heading to the other side of the volcano side that I was on. I was actually targeting the center stretch of land between the volcanoes as that is where the best beach is located, but as I was not worried about having to walk a few kilometers I took the first bus and got off at the turnoff. It was a couple of hours of walk from basically the edge of the volcano to the center of the strip, but it was early and I was in a good mood. The walk was hot and dusty as it was strictly rough dirt and rock infested road. Finally, I came ùpon the most heavily touristed area of the island. There were six places with lodgings and one little tienda run out of someones house. That was it. Luckily there was one reasonably priced hospedaje where I got the last of the $10 rooms and was in the water about two minutes after dropping off my bags.
I spent the rest of the middle of the day alternating between swimming and drying out on one of the many hammocks strewn along the large patio beach area. For lunch it was another Tilapia fish plate and a long siesta. I decided that I should do a walk before the sun went down and figured I had enough time to walk to the other volcano which was about a five kilometer walk the other direction. It again took a couple of hours and I finally made it just as the sun was beginning to lower. After a quick drink at a little tienda where the road split heading around the alternating sides of the volcano, I started to head back. Just down the road I ran into three guys who had just checked into the same guest house where I was. We did our hellos and they invited me to go with them to a fiesta that was happening a couple of kilometers down one of the roads. I was a bit wore out, kind of looking forward to getting back to my hammock and was already leaning down the road back to the guesthouse when my mouth said “sure”. So off we went to a big fiesta which I sort of doubted as I hadn´t seen anything that could be considered big on the island. They had met up with a local guide who had told them about the fiesta and had become our sort of friend/guide. We walked as the sunset and finally came upon a sort of football field which was lined with booths pretty much like a carnival. There was music blaring from a bunch of booths and christmas lights lit up the field. We headed to a rickety old corral with a rickety platform which I guess was the bull ring. Inside there were a bunch of teenage guys running around with another bunch of guys on horses all of them sort of tormenting a half dozen scared and partially bored bulls/toros. It was a lackluster spectacle as the bulls wanted no part of it, so when they were roped and tried to be seperated so they would attack or do something, they did the smartest thing which was to fall over and take a nap. It was funny, all the guys wanted them to fight, the bulls just didn´t give a shit and just went pacifist on them. We were bored after only a few minutes as it went completely dark so we headed to the bar area for a few drinks and some loud blaring tunes. One of the waitresses came over and hang out with us explaining what was going on (the fiesta ran every night for the month of December). After that it was a search for anything edible and then on to a gringo party we were told was going on up in the jungle at a local tourist finca. Apparently there was a mud pizza oven where they pumped out Italian quality pizzas amidst the jungle so after a half an hour of threading our way along a bunch of barely manageable paths we ended up at a sort of hippie hang out centered around a nice wood fired mud oven. We hung out there for a few hours late into the night until we were the last ones there eating pizza after pizza and drinking all the Sangria they had left.
After a good night of socializing with both locals and other backpackers, we decided to walk the entire way back along the beach spotlighting crabs, frogs, fireflies, and anything we could take photos of.
We made it back just after Christmas had started so it was quickly to bed just in case Santa decided to do some island hopping (all I got for Christmas was about twenty mosquito bites from sitting in the jungle wearing shorts and flip flops with no insect repellent.)
The next morning the plan was for the other three to get up at 5am to climb Volcan Concepcion (1610M) while I swam and dried off on a hammock. They were all into doing shit which I just wanted no part of. The next morning when I rolled out of bed and headed to the beach, they were there as there were no buses running on Christmas so no way of getting to the volcano. They of course could have walked, but apparently their drive wasn´t so much after a late night of drinking. Instead, they followed my plan which was to rent a bike and ride the couple of kilometers to the Ojo de Agua, a pristine swimming hole in the middle of the island surrounded by the jungle. We lolligagged around and had a late lunch finally leaving around noon. It was a fairly short ride to the Ojos so after a couple of hours of frolicking in the pristine clear water we decided to be adventurous (they decided to be adventurous, I was all sorts of against the idea) and figured we should ride to the far side of the Volcan Maderas to a waterfall. I don´t like waterfalls anymore but like the other night, my brain said “no” but my mouth said “ok”. So off we went on one of the most spirit breaking ride that I had been on. It was hot, the road was shit, it was late, and it was fucking far. By the time we got there the sun was getting low and the guy at the gate was not wanting us to go in as the average was two hours up the volcano to the falls and then another hour back. The guys were exhausted as well but still gung ho and told the guy we were leaving the next day and it was now or never. He finally said okay but we had to run. I was not wanting to go, but I did agree that we busted our ass to see the stupid thing so we might as well finish it off. Then the guard told us it was $3 bucks and thats when I said screw that. I wasn´t going to pay shit to say a freaking waterfall, so I bowed out. It was all that one of the other guys needed to quickly follow my lead. The other two took off and we ended up hanging out at a really nice dock area which had a diving board and some fantastic views.
When the sun got down to the point that it was going to soon disappear, we went to the guard to tell him to tell our friends that we were heading back and would meet them at the split. We headed off with tired legs and sore asses and grudgingly made it about half way before the sun totally disappeared and we were bombing down hills by moonlight praying we didn´t hit anything or fall into a hole. After a gut wrenching ride we finally made it to the split. After some brief calculations we figured at best the other two were two hours behind and fuck if we were going to wait for them. So off we went for the last spirit crushing five kilometers. I had unluckily picked the only bike which had no cable to adjust the low medium and high gears. I had to use a stick to lock the chain in middle gear so that at least on the flats I could keep up. On the up hills I was screwed and had to walk it up a few of the bigger climbs. It kicked my ass. I was so happy to be back at the lodge and after a shower and huge plate of spaghetti we were feeling mighty fine. Soon after the other two showed up having ridden the whole thing in the dark and stopping at the split for dinner. It was one ass kicking Christmas.
The next morning, one of the guys had to head up to meet a friend up by El Salvador, and the other two were going to try and climb the volcano. Since there was only a really early 5am bus and the next at 9am, they all had to catch the 5am in order to accomplish their goals. When I rolled out of bed around 10am I went to go for a swim to find that the two who had went to climb the volcano had gone, but as there were no shops open that early they weren´t able to buy supplies so they had come back. The other had gone on his way. They had met up with some people that told them the best thing to do was to move to a hostel in the start off point town and where they could just walk to the beginning point. As I had done pretty much everything that there was to do, I decided to tag along with them to at least check out another area of the island.
We hopped on a bus and went to a small locals hostel run by a really cool family. As we had the day free we decided to go for a short excursion the owner had told us about which entailed visiting a sort of marsh lands, hill hiking, and swimming in a deserted beach. That night we ate at a local bbq and then spent the rest of the night searching for trekking food as most places had closed down in the little village. After finding some bread and sardines it was back for a little more chill time and then an early sleep.
The next morning the two headed off with a guide to climb the volcano. I rolled out of bed again at my alotted mid morning, had a big breakfast with a couple of still drunk Brits, and figured that I would hike up to the entrance to the volcano and meet up with the guys as they came down. The lower areas around the volcano were basically dry jungle, with a more wet and cool jungle as you climbed the slope. At a certain point the vegetation drops away with only some thorny massively leafed bushes the rest of the way until you reach the top where there is only volcanic scree before dropping into the still active volcano. They were guesstimating about 8 hours there and back so I timed it so I would be at midjungle by the time they came down and I would be able to come back with them. Well, they ended up taking 11 hours which meant I hiked up to about 2/3´s of the way at just around the 1000M mark where the trees stopped and it was only the low lying big leafed scrub. I waited there for around an hour with the top probably only a couple of hours away. I had only brought a half a litre of water since I hadn´t planned on doing any extensive hiking and was down to my last sip. Finally, I figured that they must have took another route down so I gave up and started down. About a half an hour later I heard them calling out. We met up and limped our way back to the hostel.
They had made it to the craters edge so we celebrated with more bbq and a bit of a hang out as we were all too tired to do much of anything
The next day it was back on the bus and boat back to the mainland. We all had different routes we were taking so at the bus station we said our goodbyes and headed off in three different directions.
Tags: 1, Nicaragua
