The Enchanted Isla de Ometepe

Yes, as of press time, meaning the time that I am writing this, I have already been there and seen the amazing enchanted and quite tranquilo island. This island is certainly not ordinary though. The people of Nica regard it with mystical skepticism and feel a real connection to their roots while on the island. It makes it even more amazing in that lies in the world's eleventh largest lake. I previously thought it was the tenth largest but I have since been informed that I was previously misinformed. I do think I should be a professional writer as well.

After a few uber tranquilo days in San Juan we headed over with a helpful cabbie to the docks to catch a ferry across to the island. It lays in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua and is the result of two volcanoes, one of which is still active. They are called Consepcion (1600m) and Maderas (1400m). We made it to the island and after a taxi, a ferry, a bus ride, and a van ride we made it to a town called Balgue from which the coffee plantation where we would be staying was about a 30 minute uphill walk. Amazingly this was quite a nice walk and we got a cheap watermelon that was never eaten but passed on to other hungry travelers. It was a nice walk mainly because the hour long van ride found us squished in with about 8 to 15 other people at any given time. Not pleasant and to make things worse the road was probably the most rutted out, rocky, and bumpy road of all time. Seriously not good. Interesting drive around Consepcion and through rainforested areas. The towns are all less than 100 people and just seem completely third world. We heard later that less than half the kids make it to 5th grade.

Up at the farm we found many folks we had run into in San Juan and figured we were officially on the 'circuit' (can't find the quotes on this damn Latin America set up keyboard). The reason people come here is to hike up to a lake in the dead crater of the volcano. The people we saw coming down were all moaning about how nasty it was and they weren't lying you could tell by their clothes and shoes. Absolutely filthy, covered in mud. A few smiling faces in the pack but not so many. After seeing this we decided we certainly had to give it a shot and a guide was set up for the next day. He charged us $5 each for a supposed 8 hour hike so we figured at that rate for a personal guide we might as well give him a shot.

Got up pretty early the next morning for our 730 departure on this daunting 8 hour, 1400m ascent. It turned out we left about 830 because the kitchen was notoriously slow and not good at keeping orders straight. It probably didn't help that all 3 of us went by David for the entire stay. So we meet our guide, Manuel, and he seems to be a spry, witty chap in high spirits and up for a good walk up the hill. He told us with all guys in the group that it would take 4 hours up and 3 down. Needless to say I know no Spanish so this is a complete guess, as is everything that I have ever imparted about central America. On the 5k walk up (straight up) we saw all kinds of cool things and met another expat American down helping the school development of Nica. We saw how they grow the coffee, some petroglyphs, some giant beetles, cicadas, parrots, a crab, and cacao trees, probably some other shit too that I don't remember. So the petroglyph we saw was for the rain god which is what the volcano was formed from or for or something but he told us a story that they came and prayed at these carvings for rain and if that didn't work they would actually sacrifice a human and give the blood to the rain god and that almost always worked. Seemed like quite a jump to me without a sacrificial goat or something in between but I guess you just don't know what was going on about 300 AD.

Further up the trail we encountered beetles where the big males were about the width of your palm. These guys were huge and they meant business. Actually they in no way hurt you but they have rhino horns on the front and we were told that men cut the heads off, cover them in silver or gold and wear them on a necklace to attract women on the island. I didn't see any evidence but thought it an interesting idea nonetheless. Further up we saw a random crab on the path (at about 1000m above sea level) and some other cool shit that I don't want to tell you about. The summit was very unimpressive because the volcano was covered in clouds but we hiked down and scaled down some cliffs to reach the crater lake. Which wasn't visible either. Ah well. After a tasty chicken sanny we headed out climbing the cliffs and getting really dirty slip sliding all over the place. We caught a few other groups of hikers because we were as fast as a rocket and the Canadian guy Dan and I took off down the hill jumping, sliding, and nearly running down the trail. We made it down in about an hour and a half nearly eating it on several occasions but at the bottom we were still fairly clean and that first Tona tasted like the sweet nectar of the gods that it is. Nuff said. Rolled out of the farm for another shitty ride back to Moyogalpo (the ferry port town) and had some pizza pie after we found that we had missed our ferry and if we took the next one we would miss the bus. Luckily we had heard about a fiesta, festival, bull fight sorta thing and decided to stay on the island another night. This proved quite an interesting decision...