Ometepe, Part 1

Hello Dear Reader,
Now that I have finished my book, Fall of Giants, I can write a blog post about Ometepe. You've already heard of the fiasco with Sama’s SPOT, so now, I can relate the earlier part of our story.  That is, the relaxing part of our vacation. 

We started by leaving Cloudbridge and travelling all day to San Jose, because we had a bus to Managua at 6:00 am the next day.  We had some trouble finding a hostel near the bus station, and as it turns out, the latest Lonely Planet guidebook IS WRONG about the location of the Ticabus station.  So, we ended up at a hostel on the far eastern edge of the city, while in fact the Ticabus station is on the far western  side of the city.  Sadly, we noticed this error after we had already paid for our room, but luckily, we noticed before we had to go to the bus station.  We had Thai food for dinner that night; it was mediocre.  SO we woke up early the next morning, and walked half an hour across town at 4:30. 

When the Ticabus left, the air conditioning was blasting, and every single person on the bus put on winter clothes.  I don’t remember much until we got to the border because I was asleep for most of it.  Once at the border, we had to disembark and go through immigration on the Costa Rican side, get back on the bus, drive two minutes across the border, and then get out and wait for 2 hours (in the hot) for the Nicaraguan customs officials to look through everyone else’s luggage.  Sama and I got bored waiting for the customs official, so we went and stood by the bus.  They didn’t notice, and now Nicaragua has four extra bricks of cocaine.  Did I say that out loud?  We know for a fact that walking across the border is more efficient, because we fortuitously stumbled upon Casey on the Costa Rican side of the border, and as it turns out he got to Rivas faster by taking a chicken bus instead of waiting for all of the Ticabus passengers to pass through customs.  We decided we were walking across the border n the way back.  We finally did get back on the bus, and this time we were thankful for the arctic environment.

We disembarked in Rivas, a bustling town full of people and rickshaws (that will apparently rob you).  They have a chaotic market, but not really anything else, so most tourists don’t stay long.  For this reason everyone there accosts you, hoping you will buy their______(noun or service).  Mostly Taxi rides.  Once we found Casey as fast as we could, grabbed a bite to eat and looked for a bus to San Jorge, the town with the ferry to Ometepe. We asked three locals, and they all said that there was no bus to San Jorge, and that we needed to take a taxi.  They must have been related to taxi drivers, because there is indeed a bus to San Jorge.  We know, we saw it leaving the ferry as our taxi arrived.
Finally, now we arrive at the part where I actually talk about Ometepe.  The ferry across the small side of Lake Nicaragua (Cocibolca) took an hour, and this was our first view of the island:

The large volcano is Volcan la Concepcion, while the smaller one in the background is Volcan Maderas.  Concepcion is the one we climbed with a guide our last day, and last erupted in 1998.  Maderas is smaller, has a lake in its crater, and is muddier this time of year. 

After the ferry, we arrived at Moyogalpa, the capital of Ometepe.  It’s a town of 10,000, but feels much smaller.  This is where the volcano tours lead, but in retrospect, there is nothing of interest there.  Once again we were accosted by the locals trying to get us to stay at their hostel, but we finally settle on one called Yogi’s hostel after much pestering. 

We tentatively made plans for the week and ate at a terrible restaurant that was overpriced and slow.  The next day we left Moyogalpa and started exploring the island.  We hoped on a chicken bus, and soon realized we wanted to get off the overcrowded, slow-moving, hot bus.  We jumped ship at San Jose del Sur, and realized there was absolutely nothing there.  So we walked along the coast in hopes of finding a beach. We stumbled upon a dugout canoe, lots of people doing laundry in the lake, and a dog named Alejandro who followed us around for the rest of the day:

(It even acted like Alejandro)

It took a while of exploration, but we finally found one affiliated with a very expensive hotel.  We bought overpriced beers in exchange for the opportunity to swim and relax.  and we got one of the first clear glimpses of the Volcano from their hotel:

Next to the hotel was a little ecological park called Charco Verde, which was a patch of forest around a lagoon.  We saw lots of lizards, some howler monkeys, turtles, some waterfowl, and a Caracara. I made a sand Volcano erupting leaves.

 

That night we stayed at the party hostel called Little Morgan’s, where we watched the best sunset we've seen in a while.  After dinner we got drunk and decided I needed a haircut, so Casey cut my hair.  I looked like Tin Tin for a few days before I fixed it.

The next day we walked five km to Merida where we made our base for a couple of days.  On the Way, Casey offered some rum to local farmers, who accepted the offer despite the fact it was mid morning.  Then, we got to Caballitos de Mar and started to relax.  We took out Kayaks both days, once we went to the Monkey Islands and saw capuchins, and the next day we went to the river between the two volcanoes and saw lots of waterfowl.  Coolest birds we saw were Tiger Herons.  Sadly, we don’t have pictures because we didn’t want to get the camera wet.  But we did get a few of the beach during the sunset.

The next day we left Merida via a very tardy bus, and stopped in Altagracia, the cultural capital of Ometepe.  We stopped at a museum, got some brunch, and then walked halfway to el Ojo de agua (the bus needed repairs so we started on foot).  Ojo de agua is a crystal blue pool in the middle of the island fed by a spring.  Unlike the tepid lake water, the water here was cool and refreshing.  A nice place to spend the afternoon.

We caught the last bus back to Moyogalpa, and stayed at the Landing Hotel, eager to climb the Volcano we looked at all week. The Landing Hotel sucked, I slept in a hammock because the bed was so uncomfortable.  Obviously their location was better than their accommodations.

The next day we climbed the Volcano!  Not to fear, we took a guide.  The hike was fun.  In a nutshell, it started out flat, and then got very steep.  The first half was in the forest, and we saw lost of cool stuff.  We saw lots of leafcutter ants, and some of them were hitchhiker ants.  Hitchhiker ants carry leaves home to the colony to feed their fungus like normal leafcutter ants, but they also carry smaller morphs on top of the leaves that guard the worker from parasitic wasps that attack the line of workers.  Way cool!  We also saw a blue and green cicada, some disgusting grubs, a 300 year old Ceiba tree (national tree of Guatemala), and of course some monkeys (both Howlers and Capuchins).

Once we got out of the trees, we caught a brief glimpse of the trail leading up into clouds, and a deep gully directly to our left.  We waited for our guide and companions to catch up to us, and cooled off in the blowing breeze.  After a pause, we started climbing the second half of the trip.  A few hundred meters along, the trail disappeared and we started our ascent up the rock fields.  Up until now we didn’t think we needed a guide, but seeing the terrain here we were happy to have someone who knew where they were going with us.  It was still really foggy, but every now and then we would catch a glimpse of the terrain on either side, and sometimes we would even get a view down the slopes.

The the further up we went, the more it looked like a moonscape around us.  The footing was bad, as the loose pumice and scoria rocks provided little traction.  The shrouding mists obscured all but a few yards’ view, and we (luckily) had no idea how far we were climbing up.  Another 400 meters led us to the top, but we couldn’t see anything  except the inside of a cloud.

Sulfur vents released an acrid smell, and in some places the ground was quite warm (we knew because we were scrambling up on on hands).  We unsuccessfully tried to send a SPOT at the top when we got there.  At first sight, nothing was alive, but after the wind died down a swarm of bugs appeared!  An Entomologists dream come true!  In a square foot, there were probably 10 different kinds of beetles.  Here are some pictures of the coolest ones:

Soon, the bugs became too many to bear, and we ventured down.  The mist accumulated on our eyebrows and arm hairs as we hiked/slid down, but eventually the clouds cleared.  And when we got to the tree line, even the top cleared off! 

Once we went down, we promptly changed hotels, and tried to send a final SPOT (queue the Military and Sama’s blog post).

But overall, a really great trip!

Congratulations, you’ve made it through the longest blog post to date.