Isla de Ometepe

---

---

The next morning on Ometepe was early for Darío. He had to meet his hiking group at 6.45am to catch the 7am bus to the next town to start the trail. I had a smallish sleep in until 8am. I had a very lazy morning, I spent almost 2 hours at breakfast so i could catch up on internet usage, so ate very slowly to use the wifi at the restaurant. Plus they have a laundry there so I caught up on that too. I went and did some essentials shopping including postcards and water before deciding it was maybe time to go and hire a bicyle and do some exploring of my own. Robinson, the guy who owns a motorcycle rental place and organised the tour for Dario was where I wanted to hire my bike from. It was 1pm and I went up to his shop and it was all shut and locked up! so I went to the restaurant where I had bumped into him earlier and asked there and the nice owner lady called him for me.
He came and picked me up on his motorbike to drive the 3 blocks back to his store. The bike was pretty good! gears even and working brakes which is not what i was used to seeing in central america. I got a map and headed to Punta de Jesus Maria, about 5km out of Mayogalpa and then down a dirt road for 1km. It is a little point that apparently used to have quite a large beach area (all black, fine, volcanic sand), but it rained a lot here about 3 months ago and the lake rose and took over the beaches here. But it is still pretty, trees and 2 shops selling cold drinks etc with hammocks. The end of the point is a small strip of sand where the small waves break on both sides and then the water washes over the top. I went for a quick swim and ended up playing for 20 mins with a couple of local kids who were swimming there too. I left there and dried off a bit on the ride to the highly recommended Museo El Ceibo, about 13kms out of town. The road is paved, so a bit bumpy with lots of horse poo to dodge as there are lots of horses here. On the ride I saw kids riding around on them, men carrying loads on them and some pulling carts. The turn off was easy to find, but the dirt road that led to the museum was hard to navigate, the sand got so deep i couldnt ride through it on occassion, but i eventually arrived and was the only visitor. I paid the entry and included is a guide.
There are 2 museums to see here, one building is full of the monetary history of Nicaragua, originals of all the coins, notes etc that have been used, going back to the 1600´s! of course its not totally complete, but just about! Apparently with every new president that comes to power, they produce their own notes and coins, so there are lots of different ones. The next 2 storey building is full of the local archeological history, very interesting. On the farm that the museum has been built there were some amazing finds, hence the museum. Archeologists found items dating back to before christ of settlements here. Funerary urns where they dismembered and buried their dead, toys, jewellary, weapons and a few items of pottery that have been traded from places such as peru and el salvador which is cool. It was all displayed well, separated out into the eras they were dated to and the places they were found. There are lots of petroglyphs around the island too, but noone knows really what they mean yet. The people here were not Mayan, or Lencan, they were slightly different but had later influences from the Aztecs.
The ride back to town was hard, my but really hurt already, luckily the roads here are basically flat so it wasnt all too hard. I got back to the shop at about 4.45pm and Robinson said Dario should be back soon. I went back and had a shower and waited, only 10 mins until Dario returned completely exhausted from his trip up the 1610m volcano Concepción.
Dario:
I had to get up early to go climb a volcano and left Jess snuggled up in bed. I had bought bread, cheese and ham (all of which were cheap and tasteless) for my lunch the previous day. My breakfast was a couple of very forgetable sandwiches and unfortunately I had 3 more for my lunch. I was picked up first by the guide and his mate on a motor bike. We met up with the rest of the group as we waited for the bus to the start of the trail. At this point we were 10 and we arrived at the path at 8am.
The trail began as a dirt road and after 15 minutes we turned off onto a stony path that started to climb at a heart-rate-rising pace. As we went futher the path got steeper and the vegetation thicker so that it wasn't long until we were using trees as hand rails to pull ourselves up the path. The vegetation began to resemble a rain forest and it was quite humid so that we were all sweating profusely and needed regular breaks. The guide told us that we were still at the easy bit, but we didn't beleive him.
At the 1000m mark we hit the wind. In just 50 meters or so the trees went from full grown to stunted to shrubs. Our guide informed us that this was due to the wind inhibiting the height of the trees. There was a lookout at this point which normally would give us a great view of the island, but unfortunately we were in the cloud and couldn't see much. We took a longer break here, snacking on fruit and trying to stay out of the wind.
The next section was indeed more difficult as the guide had said. The last of the vegetation ended at the 1000m mark and from there on it was loose rocks and gravel. To make it worse the path was even more inclined changing the walk into more of a rock scramble. The constant incline began to hurt my (and everyone else's) calves as I was constantly walking on my toes. We lost the first team member here, an isreali girl who had had enough by that point and opted to stay at the lookout.
As we ascended the way became even steeper, with parts almost vertical climbs up the rocks. Rock falls started becoming a serious danger, especially if someone above you slipped and sent a rock falling down. We were all constantly slipping and sending large rocks tumbling that would gain speed very quickly. The cry of "ROCK!" was something that we had to continually shout at each other over the roar of the wind.
At around 1300m a group went past us coming back down. An argentinian girl made way going towards a ravine. Suddenly the rocks she was holding onto slipped out in her hands and she started slidding down towards the ravine. The guys that were passing her quickly grabbed her and were able to stop her falling in. Very lucky as it was a 5 or 6 meter drop. She was so badly shaken that she turned around and returned with them.
We kept scrambling up with a few near misses from some bloody big rocks hurtling by and slowly the remaining guys reached the consensus that what we where doing really was stupid. At around 1500m we arrived at a small flat area in a crevace that sheilded us pretty well from the wind. We where in thick cloud with only a few meters of visability and pretty strong winds. Most of the guys said that that was far enough, as they wouldn't be able to see anything from the top anyway.
And then we were three, the guide, an isreali leftenant and me, pretending that we couldn't feel the wind and that we wern't affraid of the prospect of a rock appearing suddenly from the cloud to come flying towards us. We had to crawl to the top as the wind made standing impossible. The rocks became warm then hot under our fingers and we could see colours in the dirt from the minerals the volcano was bringing up. When we finally got to the very top we had to take our guide's word that we had arrived. The visibility was only one or two meters and we sat at the top and the guide took a photo of us at the top.
The way back down was more of a slide than a walk or crawl. The angle was so steep that I couldn't stand without slipping and so I simply slid down a see of gravel to where the rest of the guys were waiting 150m below us. When we got to the crack that cut out some of the wind I was able to get my breath, put on my knee brace and have a quick snack of water and an energy bar I'd taken along.
The path back down to the lookout took a long time. We all managed to send some big rocks down and to minimise the risk we all formed a diagonal line going down the volcano so that we would not hit each other. I lost count of the number of times I slipped and fell but at one point I got very frustrated at the lack of secure footing. Luckily the going got better as we decended and the slips and falls diminished. At around 1200m we exited the cloud and were greeted with an amazing view of the island of Omotepe, the lake Nicaragua, the mountains along the Nicaraguan coast and in the far distance we could see the Pacific Ocean some 50km away.
We pretty much fell exhausted at the 1000m lookout and had a good rest, lunch and we reunited with the others in the group that had fallen behind. We stayed there from around 1:30 till 2.
We decended the forest path at pace as we had a bus to catch at 4. We did stop to look at a group of howler monkeys in the trees above the path. Some had new borns with them and I took a couple of pictures to show Jess later.
We returned to the town at 5 and I limped back to the room as I was exhausted.
That night we had pizza and then crashed early! we were both pretty tired. Next morning we got up to have brekky and take the bus to a town on the other end of the island called Balgúe. The chicken bus took about 2 hours and the last half hour was on a horrible dirt road with lots of huge potholes, mud and rocks. We arrived not knowing where we were going to stay and sat down to lunch at a comedor, yummy chicken and tacos. Dario then rented a bike down the road to ride to Finca Magdalena a few kms away as we tried calling their number listed in the lonely planet and it didnt work. There are lots of places to stay around here but we wanted somewhere nice for 2 days to just chillout and relax with a view.

---

Photos

crossing to the Isla
on a rickety old ferry!

at the top!
only 2 of the 8 and the guide made it this far!