Advertisement
Published: June 23rd 2008
OK...so one of those was imagined... my last few days in San Juan del Sur should have been lovely, but then I caught a touch of "Sandino's Revenge," at least that's what I think you would call it in Nicaragua since Montexuma wasn't really present down here. Suddenly glad that when I left Hotel Estrella I got a private room, with a bathroom, I went through about fifteen hours of being convinced I was on the verge of death. Its times like these that it is a bad thing that Lonely Planet contains a health section complete with all the symptoms of every disease that you can get down here. By around hour 8, I was convinced that I had not only malaria and typhoid but also cholera...I like to call it maphera. Of course, I don't think that any of those diseases clear up in less than a day..but really, for 15 hours, I had maphera.
So given my delicate state, I decided to forego the surfing lesson, and instead go out drinking with the boys from Spanish school - alcohol kills germs, duh! I finished up Spanish school on Saturday (with a mild headache - apparently I get hangovers here), and came up to San Jorge to catch a lancha to Ometepe Island. I had heard about a place in Merida, in the south of Ometepe called Hacienda Merida, so when I got off of the boat, I grabbed a bus headed south. It was a great way to view a large part of the island, including the Conception Volcano.
Hacienda Merida is a small collection of buildings right on Lake Nicaragua, where there is pretty much nothing else but the hacienda. there are few other travelers here, and I hooked up with a couple from Switerland and guy from Israel immediately. We talked for hours last night about the upcoming US elections and Israeli-Palestine relations and just the state of the world, so you know that I just loved it.
This morning, i rented a mountain bike with the swiss couple and we rode out to a place where you can hike up to the San Ramon waterfall. there has been a lot of rain in the past 2 days or so, and on our way up, folks warned us that it was more of a mudfall, but we decided that we were enjoying the hike and so we would press on. We got to a point in the trail where there was some scrambling back and forth across the river. It was very muddy but we didn't think anything of it. We went around a corner, into a small valley, and were starting to climb further, when we heard a loud noise from further up the trail. Looking up, you could see a lot of mud and dust in the air, and we climbed up on the boulders for a better look, and its a good thing we did, because a minute or two after we did that, a big rush of water came down, bringing with it huge rocks. It knocked out part of the bridge that was just ahead of us, as well as the pipe that brings water down to the town. It was very scary knowing that if we had been further up the trail, or even not up on the rocks, we would have been in big trouble. Once that rush of water had passed - we figure there was a mudslide further up - we hurried ourselves down and out of there. Needless to say, I need some serious hammock and tona therapy.
I might hang out here for another day or so more, or I might meet up with the Israeli guy and head down to the Solentanime Islands at the southern end of the lake. I'm enjoying this lack of schedule life style...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.123s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.093s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
megs
non-member comment
i almost died on the turnpike during a typically ferocious florida thunderstorm this week--does that count? man, i'm envious of all of your adventures!