The tale of two volcanoes

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So I met up with my brother and sister last tuesday in Liberia, I ended up getting in about 45 mins after them because I missed the early bus out of Managua, oops. Rather than double back across the border we spent a day in Costa Rica at Rincon de la Vieja park. Tiff and Dane were getting used to the hot and humid climate while I was enjoying the cool, dry weather. It's definetely not 'honduras hot' here.

The park we went to was something different, there were cracks in the ground puking out boiling mud and geysers spewing out steam all due to volcanic activity. This might have been where doctor seus grew up! Theres a rig drilling holes there so they can use the heat out of the ground to make power, I actualy got a bit excited when I saw that for some reason. Then we hiked a few hours through forest and dry scrubland to get to a perfect waterfall complete with a turquoise pool for swimming and slabs of hot rock to lay on.

The next day we caught a 5 am bus to the border of Nicaragua, once our passports were stamped we began exploring our options for onward travel knowing the busses were on strike. Oil shortages have driven gas prices up and the price of food has also risen in recent months leaving people more than a bit frustrated. So we negotiated a taxi and payed more for it than we would normaly have, the drivers knowing we didn't have alot of options, it was still only 25 dollars for a one hour ride.

So we got to the ferry on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, which has sharks in it and is the twentieth or so largest lake in the world, and took the one hour ride to Isla de Ometepe. This island was formed by two massive cone volcanoes that erupted and eventualy joined themselves into one island. The shore is a mix of rock with nice beach sections and we found a realy nice place that was once owned by the Somoza family, who ran the country, and has now been converted to a hostel. We rented bikes one day and biked to a swimming hole that was realy nice, then the next day Tiff and I climbed the volcano that was behind the hostel. What a sweaty climb that was, but the view from the top was priceless. Dane had wanted to visit a town on the other side of the island so he did that instead.

From there we came up to the spanish colonial town of Granada on the shores of the same lake. The architecture is realy nice but I think an afternoon of wandering around it is enough. So tomorrow we're going up to a volcanic crater lake thats rumoured to be a real gem, and spending a night or two there. And something happened to my memory card in my camera, it stopped working, so I can't take photos or get them off my camera untill I find another one. But the bus strike is over now so we'll be able to get around without taxis!

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Photos

mud pits
watching water boil isn't much fun but watching mud is.