Isla Ometepe

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I got to the pier for 1pm, as advised. I'd bought my 90C (it said you had 2 options but in the end, the lady explained the cheaper one was “commercial only”) ticket earlier that day, so it was pretty straightforward. When I arrived, I spotted Antoine, the Swiss guy I'd met on the bus the previous afternoon, so I went and let on. With him was another Roman Swiss called Baptiste. We got on the boat and sat down for the 4 hours ride to Isla Ometepe, a volcanic island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. The island consisted of 2 volcanoes, making it look a little bit like 2 islands joined in the middle. The main thing to do there was to hike up the volcanoes, roughly a 7 hours up for the small one and maybe 10 to 12 hrs for the bigger one. Personally, I didn't intend on doing either of those as I had been told they were most of the time in the clouds, which meant you wouldn't see anything from the top. Just climbing for the sake of it, or the personal challenge wasn't tempting enough. But on the island were also cold thermal pools, a waterfall, beaches, wildlife and 50km of quiet roads I could cycle on. That could definitely keep me entertained for a couple of days...
The boat was to take 4 hours from Granada to the main town on the island: Altagracia. Arriving at 6pm meant it was too late to catch a bus to another part of the island and we would have to stay the night. On the boat, I managed to sleep for a couple of hours and then chatted with the Swiss guys. Towards the end, I wasn't feeling particularly well, not to the point of being sick, but a mixture between hunger and sea sickness meant my stomach didn't really know what was going on. Eventually, we arrived at around 6.45pm and as we expected, as soon as we disembarked, there was a bunch of touts waiting for us to try and get us to stay in their hotel. We had one or two places in mind that were charging $5 for a dorm bed and we knew we had to get transport from the pier to the village. So when we met a guy who offered to stay at one of the 2 places we were thinking of for $4 including the lift up the hill, there was no hesitation and we piled up onto the pick-up.
When we arrived at the hotel, the manager wanted us to pay $5 but there was no way we were going to agree. Now we'd had our lift into the town, we were certain we could find somewhere for $4, so he had no chance of us giving in and finally had to agree our price. We were pleasantly surprised to discover we were staying in twin rooms rather than dorms, so the boys shared one and I got one to myself.
It was getting late and time to go and find something to eat. I had brought food with me but not wanting to leave the group, I decided to save it for the next day and went out for some 30C rice and beans with cheese (well, you're on a budget or you're not!). At the dinner table, we chatted about what we each wanted to do the next day. My original plan was to head to Moyogalpa, another town on that side of the island, where the ferry left from. From there I wanted to hire a bicycle to go around. But in the end, it seemed a bit ambitious to cycle the whole way around the island (the waiter seemed to think I was crazy) and stop at the pools and hike up the waterfall. The others wanted to go to the opposite side, to a village called Merida, so I decided to join them and do a smaller bike ride around the small side of the island. After agreeing to the next day's activities, we went for a walk around town, only to discover there were pretty much 2 streets and a plaza and that was it. So we returned to the hotel to get some kip.

The next morning, we were up bright and early to go and visit the museum (recommended by the guide-book), but it only opened at 9am. We went there then and paid the $2 entrance fee. That was the biggest waste of money I can think of... We took our time to look around and were still out of the door in 7 minutes, cursing Lonely Planet... Then we headed to the church, but they wanted $1 from us so we took a couple of sneaky pictures and got kicked out. It was time to leave Altagracia but the next bus going the way we wanted wasn't until 10.30. We decided to hop on another until the crossroad and then walk or hitch-hike (it is a common thing to do in Nicaragua) to the thermal waters. We got off the bus and started walking (with our rucksacks) and within minutes we managed to hitch a ride on a pick-up which nearly dropped us off to the pools, as it was a farmer whose land was off the main road and in the direction we wanted to go, so we ended up walking for only about 10 minutes.
The place was called Ojo de Agua (Eye of the water) and we paid our 20C entrance fee to go and sit by the pool. It was a much more organised affair than I expected. I was thinking we would get to a river or stream, but it was a man made pool, with the water running through it. It was surrounded by chairs and had a café and crafts stand to attend to all your tourist needs. We knew the next bus was going at 2.30pm, so we had plenty of time. We sat down and chilled for a while and went swimming (the water wasn't hot but it wasn't too bad either). We had brought some food with us so had some lunch, with a celebratory candle lit on top of the pineapple to celebrate Baptiste's 21st Birthday.
By 1.30pm, we were ready to move on, so we packed our things and walked to the road (the only road, it goes all around the island). At about 2 o'clock, a bus turned up but it wasn't going to our destination. They told us to get on anyway and that they would drop us off at the crossroad, as the bus to Merida wouldn't be there until 4pm. We thought they were just having us on as they wanted some money out of us poor tourists, but we hopped on anyway. We got off in Santa Cruz and waited. We waited and waited and waited. We met a French Canadian family who had been waiting since 12.30 and they were quite fed up of waiting. We thought we'd try hitch-hiking again but there was no sign of any vehicle going in our direction. So we waited some more. Eventually, at about 4.30pm, the bus turned up. We got on, squashed to near death for the hour long journey on the dirt road but finally made it to Merida.
As we left the bus, we were approached by a lady telling us about Rancho Merida. It was cheap, she said. We were planning to go and stay at Hacienda Merida, but seeing that they were next to each other, we thought we'd check them both out. The Hacienda had a chilled backpackers vibe to it, with its own pier onto the lake and a nice shared area with hammocks. It was $7 a night. The Rancho didn't have a view of the lake (but they said we could use the pier from the Hacienda) and the shared area was more like a restaurant. Other than that, there wasn't much to complain about. It was $4 a night.
Baptiste wanted to stay in the Hacienda and I wanted to stay in the Rancho. Antoine couldn't decide. So in the end, we decided to split and meet up later for some food. I was the only one staying at the cheaper place, but I had the whole dorm to myself and after watching the sunset over the lake at the Hacienda with all the guests from both hostels, I returned to my home for the night, where the boys joined me later for some food. All that for the nicer chilling area and they ended up spending the evening at the Rancho! Never mind... We had fun and Antoine even managed to find somewhere that would sell him a bottle of rum, which he kindly shared with us. We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so I wasn't even sure how he'd found a shop, but I wasn't complaining.
After a good evening, with much chatting, laughing and even managing to check our e-mails with the dreadful super slow third world internet connection, I was ready for a good night's sleep, but a little frustrated by how little we seemed to have achieved that day, due to the extremely slow transportation. I had also given up on my idea of hiring a bike for the following day as the owner wanted $10 from me. When I asked why (as it was no more than $5 elsewhere on the island), he said it was because the road was very bad and I wanted to go all the way around the small side of the island, so it wouldn't be good for the suspension... So that was the end of the bike riding plan...

The next morning, we had agreed to leave no later than 8am to hike up to the waterfall which was reasonably near: a 40 minutes walk along the dirt road, followed by the 1h30 hike up on farmland (you actually have to pay $3 to get onto the property, the owner must be laughing...) and in the woods. It wasn't too hard a morning but it was hot and the breaks to look at the wildlife were welcome. By the end of the couple of hours, we were wondering if there would be any water or not, but there was. It wasn't Niagara's falls but at least it wasn't dry. I dipped my foot in the water and decided to go no further and sat in the sun for a while.
The walk back down was easy and we stopped by the lake, which water was much warmer, but we didn't have so much time as we wanted to head back for some lunch before packing and catching the 3 o'clock bus back to the other side of the island. I would be spending the next night in Moyogalpa, in order to catch the early ferry back to the mainland and make my way to Costa Rica. The boys had decided to stop in a nearby village, with one leaving the next morning with a later ferry and the other staying on the island one more day. On the bus, I made the mistake of asking the price. The man said 25C, which I thought was reasonable for a 3h30 journey. But then, Antoine just handed 15C and the man didn't bat an eyelid. Then Baptiste gave him 10C and the man still didn't say anything. They were going almost as far as I was, so I wasn't impressed that they got away with it! The journey was uneventful and we said goodbye and good luck to each other as they climbed over some sacks full of food to get off the bus. I carried on for a few more kilometres and arrived in Moyogalpa at about 7 or 7.30pm.
I headed straight for the hostel I had picked from the guide-book as I wanted to drop my stuff and chill for the evening. I still managed to venture out into the town (which incidentally seemed bigger than Alegria) to get some cash and buy some food, but all the shops were closed. In the end I returned to the hostel and ate there. After 3 days of not eating the greatest stuff, I couldn't resist the “Giant Gringo Burger” with fries and a rum and coke... It was worth every centavo! After that, I went for an early night as I was hoping to catch the 5.30am ferry to San Jorge.

I was leaving Ometepe with mixed feelings. I liked the place and the fact that the road was mainly dirt tracks, but at the same time, I found it frustrating as travel around the island took forever. I had thought I would see everything easily by staying there for 3 nights, but in the end it seemed to me that I only really saw half...
The next day, I was heading towards Costa Rica, so this was also my last night in Nicaragua. Someone asked me what was my highlight of Nicaragua and I had to think about it. My answer was the boat trip around the isletas near Granada, but then I said the volcano boarding was a unique experience, so maybe that should be the highlight. After thinking about it for a while longer, I also thought about how much I loved Granada, so in the end, there was a lot to chose from. Still, this wasn't my favourite country of all and I wasn't so impressed by the population who seemed more interested in taking as much money from me as they could rather than be friendly and welcoming...

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Photos

The big volcano
That wa son the last day, 1st time it wasn't in the clouds

Comments

[delphine]

les iles volcaniques ont l'air superbes... une fois de plus ca donne envie!!! la piscine de Ojo de Agua est presque aussi jolie que celle d'Openshaw -:)

[notquiteroundtheworld]

ha ha! Oui! Ce n'etait pas vraiment la piscine paradisiaque a laquelle je pensais!