Nicaragua - San Juan Del Sur, Isla Omatepe, and Rio San Juan

Central America Caribbean
May 17th 2010

Published: June 28th 2010

Edit Blog Post

LukeStableford

San Juan Del Sur

from Casa de Oro hostel roof bar

San Juan Del Sur

I rushed down to San Juan Del Sur on the other side of Nicaragua in the South to meet Angela, a friend of Tina's we met in Guatamala. She was working in a yoga resort just outside of San Juan and was only there for another week so I decided to go to see her first before visiting the places in between.

San Juan is probably the most touristy place in Nicaragua. It is an attractive fishing village in a crescent shaped bay which has now been taken over by Gringo businesses and developments, but still retains quite a bit of charm. Despite that the nearest surfing beach is 20 minutes away, it is a popular surfer hangout and the hostels are full of ripped American, Australian, and British surf dudes - surfing, drinking, shagging being the activities of choice. Sadly, I was on antibiotics so couldn't drink and found it a little difficult to relate to some of the travellers here. I was also staying in the biggest party hostel in the town to really rub it in and one evening there were three different couples having sex in my dorm.

I spent

San Juan Del Sur

From hostel roof bar

most of my time with Angela and her friends Mark, Katyanna, Kristin, Emily, all of which are working long term in San Juan. They are incredibly welcoming and friendly and I felt one of the group very quickly. We had many interesting conversations in the Black Cat, their daytime cafe hangout of choice. I did very little else while I was there except convalesce, relax and take some yoga classes at El Camino Del Sol, the place where Angela works and managed by Mark. The classes were Ashtanga based and taught very well by Katyanna. I became inspired to restart my daily yoga practice and have maintained it more or less since.

One afternoon I walked with Angela, Mark, and two of his visiting friends Jake and Chris to the lookout point at the top of a cliff at the end of the beach. In typical Latino fashion they have built a large very tacky statue of Christ on top of the cliff looking down on the population, but it makes for excellent views of the town and the bay.

Isla Omatepe

I was fortunate that Mark's friends were here as he decided to take them to

San Juan Del Sur beach

From the Christ

Isla Omatepe and they invited me along. We went in Kristin's, a friend of Mark living in Costa Rica, SUV - an ideal way to travel around the island which has unsealed roads and unreliable buses. Ometepe is an island formed by two volcanoes connected by an isthmus in the middle of the huge lake Nicaragua (3191 sq miles). We stayed at Finca Magdalena, a coffee producing farming co-operative on the slopes of Volcan Maderas and a convenient starting point for climbing the volcano. Both volcanoes can be climbed but Maderas is more interesting and shorter.

We climbed for three and a half hours in the rain along slippery root protruded tracks through dense cloud forest to arrive at the summit shrouded in cloud. We were already aware that there wasn't going to be much of a view - this is common on both volcanoes especially in the rainy season and one of the reasons why I didn't bother climbing the other volcano, Concepcion. The highlight of climbing Maderas, after the ascent through beautiful cloud forest, is the steep treacherous descent through ancient twisted trees to the misty and murky crater lake sunken within the rainforest. Guidebooks describe it

Angela and Me

as Tolkienesque - straight out of Lord of the Rings. A beautiful, mystical, and rather eerie sight. I decided to swim in it so I stripped off to boxers and was quickly followed by most of the others. From maybe 20m into the water the mist loitering over the lake almost totally obscured the trees.

Fortunately, the beauty of the lake more than made up for the punishing, perilous and wet return in the rain to Finca Magdalena, which took just as long as the ascent. We gratefully arrived back at the Finca, rested, and had dinner at Santo Domingo beach - a beach situated on the Isthmus with striking views of a volcano on either end. It's wonderfully undeveloped with a few restaurants and a couple of hotels but very few people. Save for the wet weather we could easily have been on a quiet Caribbean island.

El Castillo

The next day the others returned to San Juan Del Sur and I took the night ferry to San Carlos on the far Eastern side of the lake at the mouth of the river San Juan. From that remarkable town I took a Panga (speed boat) up

Isla Omatepe

Volcan Concepcion to the left and Maderas to the right

the river through pristine rainforest to El Castillo - a fortress settlement built to protect the city of Granada, situated on the Western end of the lake, from marauding pirates (aka the British Navy). The Rio San Juan links the Lake of Nicaragua to the sea, passes through large swathes of untouched rainforest and forms the border with Costa Rica.

El Castillo was a very pleasant small town: surprisingly tidy, unsurprisingly friendly. I arrived with Adrian, an Australian backpacker, and Tom, a German chap, and we took a trip to visit the fort presiding over the town. We had an amazing lunch of giant river shrimp - a local delicacy, and I'm told sustainably fished. Definitely the nicest food I had in Nicaragua. The following morning we took a boat trip further down river catching sight of Alligators, Cayman, and Turtles on the way, and did a guided walk through the rainforest at the Indio Maiz reserve where we saw many brightly coloured birds, jewel like frogs, and howling monkeys.

That afternoon I took the boat back to San Carlos, stayed overnight and caught the bus the next morning to Rama, en route to Bluefields on the Caribbean