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Published: December 19th 2006
ENGLISH
We left San Juan del Sur on an old yellow US school bus passing through Rivas, a kind of loco market/bus terminal on the way to the island of Ometepe.
After waiting half an hour for trucks with cartoonish loads of bananas to lumber off the ferry, we boarded in cattle class, which meant the lower deck where you get wet. An hour later we reached Ometepe and boarded the bus to Altagracia.
There were a few things, other than volcano, that stood out on that ride to our lakeside haven. There were 3 and 4 year old kids in shirts, ties and mortar boards or miniature lemon ball gowns on their way to what we understood were nursery school graduation ceremonies. Then there was the young woman heaving a graduation cake that was bigger than her on to our bus in a cloud of dust and who wielded said cake precariously over our heads for a few stops. An lastly an unfortunate guy boarded with his wife and kids and promptly began coughing, spluttering and finally turning green and coughing blood all over the place. It was hyperreal. His wife seemed to be berating him as he
tried to reach the back door, (to cough his last cough I suspect) and managed to shove him back to his seat where he continued to spew blood. One of the kids was trying to call someone for a good 15mins until they all got off in a worryingly remote spot...no doubt the furthest place from a hospital on all of Ometepe.
At the lakeside beach of Santo Domingo we wandered a little searching for accommodation as our first choice was full. The reception of the place next door was staffed by some giggling moron. She seemed to be overwhelmed by the sight of me, probably due to Ometepe's black population being limited to one. Whatever it was, she was unable to speak for laughing and though someone more capable tried to help us, we found somewhere else. As the sun set we went for a walk on the lake side just as the fireflies began to stir. There were millions (or at least a million) of them: little critters flashing green on the sand and in the trees and bushes, almost but not quiet illuminating a path as we strolled in the near darkness.
Finca Santo Domingo
Manuelo the guide
And also great storytellerdidn't seem so nice the following morning and we checked out pretty swiftly. During the night, while I was asleep, Nathalie had found an army of crawling things in the bed. Unusually, she was awake, washed dressed and read to go before me that morning, mostly because she couldn't sleep for counting ants and listening to odd scratching noises all night.
The short hike with our backpacks we started in anticipation of a passing bus turned into a three hour hike cursing the absence of any buses. As we stumbled up the last 400m of rocky trail to Finca Magdalena a pickup picked us up. What a touch! The farm/hostel Finca Magdelena is a co-op that produces organic shade grown coffee, beans, corn and other stuff. They also make money providing accommodation and guiding wannabee explorers like us up volcanoes: Volcan Maderas in this case. After the recuperating for a while we visited the coffee plantation, sucked on fresh coffee beans, learned about co-op life and then spent the evening drinking beer by the litre with Tom and Vicki (who we'd met on the boat and bus before), in preparation for our assault on Maderas the following day.
We were up early to finish what we had started in Arenal. 6:30am and the Maderas volcano, part swathed in cloud was just begging to be climbed. The guy we initially thought was our guide turned out to be the "famous" Berman Gomez of Beyond Boundaries (the BBC program about a group of people with physical disabilities who trekked across Nicaragua and climbed the other volcano on Ometepe - Concepcion). Unprompted the Big-I-am Gomez rambled on about Beyond Boundaries this, Ken Hames that. About how he was the first to do Concepcion 9 years before this and how frauds and upstarts were lying about eleven years ago that. Thankfully he was otherwise engaged that day, discovering uncharted relics and no doubt saving the world.
Our real guide Manuelo turned up and we started. Fours hours of up. Past cacao (cocoa) trees, coffee, howler monkeys, butterflies, the loudest crickets in the world, slippery roots, clay drainage channels, up into the dwarf cloud forest. How special is that. Not any old cloud forest but a dwarf one. It was a semi-tropical wet forest almost permanently wrapped in cool mist which made it a dripping, moss covered Indiana Jones, Lord of the
Rings, fairy dwelling like place to be. From time to time we reached a view point from where we could see the island coastline curving away to the other volcano. The view was impressive but the forest itself was incredible. We struggled, as this literally wasn't a walk in the park....but we'd baled Arenal and there were some girls going faster than us. At the top, instead of gazing down triumphantly at a tranquil pool of water as we'd imagined, there was slope down as steep as the way up, through more tangles of plants, trees, roots and mud after which the eerie crater lake appeared. We scrambled down and had lunch. And that was all we did as the swimming we'd planned didn't seem like such a good idea in the icy mist once we'd stopped sweating.
Manuelo spent lunch telling us why we were obliged to hire a guide to lead us up. Illustrating the point with the story of the tourists who'd gone up Maderas on their own and who hadn't come back. It's enough to say that the search party that found the pair after 9 days only knew where to abseil down because of
the vultures circling overhead!
We made it down but only after the descent turned out to be more of a nightmare than the ascent. The effort of battling gravity going up was replaced by struggling to stay on my feet while going down. Nathalie, Tom and the guide were graceful and well balanced. I, in contrast, was barely avoiding a wipeout every five to ten minutes (of a 3 hour descent) by grabbing any and everything in sight. We looked like pioneers when we got back. Litros of Victoria beer followed as we celebrated "doing" Maderas and not having slid, cracked skulled and broken limbed from top to bottom.
FRANGLISH
Installés au fond d´un vieux bus jaune américain, nous quittons San Juan Del Sur pour rejoindre la place du marché de Rivas, véritable plaque tournante Nicaraguayenne pour le transport des passagers... mais aussi des poulets, vaches et cochons. De là, petit saut en taxi jusqu´au port de San Jorge et nous voilà embarqués sur un (vieux) raffiot. Cap vers l´île aux 2 volcans: Ometepe. Une heure et quelques de traversée et nous arrivons à Altagracia. Encore un bus jaune qui secoue beaucoup et quelques scènes bizarres:
- des
Moss and mist
We're not sure exactly what's up with the camera. It could be the clouds and mist in the misty cloud forest écoliers de 4/5 ans (chemise blanche impeccable, cravate, cheveux gominés) se rendant à leur cérémonie de "remise des diplômes" pour fêter leur succès à la maternelle.
- une jeune dame traverse la route dans un nuage de poussière. Elle porte un gâteau à la crème 2 fois plus grand qu´elle et monte à bord du bus bondé : opération périlleuse mais par un miracle du ciel, le gâteau est épargné jusqu´à destination.
- Un homme qui se sent mal se lève tout a coup et se dirige vers l´arrière du bus. Il est tout vert et il tousse du rouge. Pas très joli a voir. Il descend finalement avec sa femme.
A la nuit tombante, nous arrivons enfin à la plage de San Domingo. Plus de place dans l´hôtel où on pensait dormir. Obligés de se rabattre sur une autre habitation vraiment (vraiment) bas de gamme, avec (Oh surprise ! Juste au moment de se coucher) une armée de petites fourmis dans les draps…
Le lendemain matin, pour une fois, je suis réveillée avant Jason et même avant le lever du soleil… En fait, c´est pas dur. J´ai pas dormi d´la nuit. Au premier rayon, je suis debout et
The lake in the misty crater
Or a crater lake in the mist mon sac est prêt pour partir ! Vamos !...
…Vamos !... Ah Merde ! C´est dimanche et y a pas d´bus ! Bon, ben… Il va falloir marcher avec nos kilos sur le dos (13,8 kg pour moi et 18 kg pour Jason, d´après la balance à l´aéroport de Gatwick). 1 km. 2 kms. En fait, ça va. On passe à travers quelques hameaux, attirant l´attention des foules. 3 kms. 4 kms… 6 kms. On y est presque. On arrive finalement à la Finca Magdalena, une ferme-coopérative qui produit café, haricots, riz, mais, bananes et autres. On s´installe dans notre « cabanne », nettement plus sympatique que le cauchemar de la veille. Repos le reste de la journée…
Le lendemain, nous voila engagés dans une nouvelle mission : celle de l´ascension de Maderas (1.394 m), le volcan au pied duquel se trouve notre ferme.
Nous commençons notre marche un peu avant 8 heures du matin en compagnie de Tom (Sud-Africain) et de notre guide Manuelo. Sur notre chemin : des plants de café et de cacao, des bananes, des singes au-dessus de nos têtes, d´énormes papillons bleus, de la terre glaise sous nos pieds, des arbres géants, des
Nathalie sniffing plants
This is just before Jason fell over lianes… A un moment donné, on atteint finalement la "cloud forest" (forêt de nuages). Au bout de 3 heures ½ de marche, on arrive au sommet du cratère... pour ensuite descendre encore quelques mètres plus bas, à l´intérieur, jusqu´à atteindre les bords d´un lac.
Pause déjeuner. Jamais un sandwich au "fromage qui tranpire/tranches de tomate écrasées/feuilles de salade flétries" ne m´a paru aussi délicieux. Manuelo nous raconte l´histoire sordide de deux touristes qui, l´année dernière, étaient partis sans guide et ne sont jamais revenus. Les recherches avait finalement abouties au bout de 9 jours, grâce à l´indice suivant: les vautours tournoyant au-dessus... d´un précipice. Gloomy story.
La descente ensuite... et la bataille contre les éléments. Le sol et les rochers qui glissent sous nos pieds et l´effet de gravité aussi... rendent l´exercice d´équilibre plus difficile pour certains. Ai-je vraiment mentionné le nom de Jason?... qui se plante au moins 7 ou 8 fois. Anyway, nous rentrons sains et saufs à 15h00 pile, dégoulinant de sueur et couverts de boue... Pour célébrer : un grand pichet de bière Victoria (la meilleure au Nicaragua).
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Rogelio
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A quienes hicieron esta pagina
Hola , bonitas fotos y bonitas historias pero quiero decirles lo siguinetes, no es justo que Berman siendo una persona muy umilde y muy repetuoso este siendo difamado por este pagina web, lo describen como una persona arrogante, pero en verdad NO LO ES, pudo haber estado emocionado y eso no les da derecho a juzgar a una persona ni mucho menos difamarlos.