Ometepe Island

Once again I've been very negligent in my blogging duties--my apologies.  I realize that I haven't really posted anything about the various trips we've taken inside Nicaragua so I want to try to catch up on some of those.  Since I loved it so much, I thought I'd start with our trip to Ometepe Island.

When our friends Kelly and Giles were here visiting in July, we rented a 4x4 and travelled to the beach near San Juan del Sur for 4 nights, and then moved on to Ometepe for 2 nights.  Ometepe is an island in Lake Nicaragua (Cocibolco) that has two large volcanoes on it. Concepción is the larger, active, cone-shaped volcano on the northern half of the island, and Maderas is the extinct volcano on the southern half.



The smaller Maderas volcano.

Concepcion Volcano from the ferry.
 

To get to Ometepe you must take a ferry.  It costs about $2/person, plus around $20 for the car. There is one that leaves from Granada port, but it takes about 4-5 hours and riding that long on any boat is in no way appealing to me, especially a small one.  Instead, we drove down to San Jorge (a little more than an hour) and got the ferry from there. There are different carriers--we took the one that has the best reputation for safety and comfort.  The ferry carries vehicles and cargo as well as passengers.  It had three levels and was plenty comfortable, with lovely views.  We all had a great time on the 1 hour crossing (after I took my motion sickness medicine of course).

The ferry docking.

Loading up the ferry.

Me, Kelly, and Isabel.

Giles and Isabel.  You can see Concepcion in the background.

Life on the island feels like its from another time.  It is still pretty undeveloped, though I believe there is electricity reaching most places now, and is absolutely gorgeous. Its just lush and green, full of vegetation. There is only one road that goes around the island (about 3/4 paved) and most locals are on horseback, ox and carts, or bicycles. Everyone is very friendly and happy to converse and assist.  There are a couple small "towns", and 2 ATMs (it might be up to 4 by now). I would love to spend a good chunk of time there.

We drove out to a finca/farm for a hike to see ancient petroglyphs (the oldest on the island dates back to 1000 b.c. apparently), and had the luck to see a bunch of howler monkeys. There were also hundreds of butterflies--it was gorgeous. 

One of the petroglyphs.  I do not remember how old this one is.

Very hard to tell, but there are yellow butterflies all over the place.  Not sure about the cranky face.

We also took a kayak tour on a river.  The river is a ways down the launch point in the lake, and for a variety of reasons, we were not up to kayaking on the strong waters of Lake Nicaragua, so instead rented a motor boat to pull the kayaks and take us close to the river.  The waters were pretty low due to a slow start to the rains, so we had to hike for about 10 mins to get to the river, where a father and two young children were pulling our kayaks from the boat, through the mud, to reach us.  This was truly a new type of child labor that I had not experienced previously, but one that was definitely hazardous to these kids.  Despite this, we got in our kayaks and toured down the river, getting stuck in the mud/low waters fairly frequently, but seeing lots of gorgeous birds and scenery.  They had caimans but we didn't see any unfortunately.  While it was lovely, it was a bit stressful with the mud-sticking and Isabel in front of me trying to steer and wanting off.  Overall, she did a great job though.   

Pulling the kayaks out to the river.

The poor kids that had to haul our kayaks through the mud and plants.

The river

Being hauled back out to the boat on the lake after our kayak tour.

A view of Concepcion on the boat ride back to our car after kayaking. 

One other interesting thing about the island is that the only main road runs right through the middle of its one airstrip.  There were no planes when we were there (I don't think the airport is open yet, just private flights coming in), so we aren't sure how it works.  We drove right through the runway and assume that if a plane is landing or taking off that they would block the road.  It was kinda crazy to drive across it.

 After two short days, we headed back to Granada on the ferry.  I really hope we have the opportunity to visit again before leaving.  It was truly a magical place.

One final photo of the beautiful volcano.