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.










Drug trafficking and volcanic eruption evacuation simulation

It seems like there is always something going on around here, but we never know about it until we stumble upon the event.  There are trucks driving around announcing upcoming events, but if you don't hear it, you don't know and there are no other local news sources.  At any rate, Raul and I decided to walk down to the lake this morning before it got too hot.  Once we got to the promenade/main road leading to the lake, we saw military men with big guns, and noticed the road was blocked off.  They didn't stop us so we kept going and saw lots more people and military in front of the lake, including the Red Cross.  We asked someone what was going on and they told us they were doing a simulation of two things:  an evacuation of Ometepe Island in the case of a volcanic eruption (we recently visited Ometepe and I'll write about it soon.  They have two volcanos but only one is active I believe); and an apprehension of drug-traffickers by the equivalent of the Navy or Coast Guard.  It sounded and looked interesting, so we found a shaded spot in front of the lake and settled in to see what happened.  Very unfortunately we did not have a camera so don't have any photos of the simulation.  However, I do have a photo of the sign for the volcano eruption evacuation route on Ometepe--I'd never seen such a sign so took a picture not knowing we'd actually witness part of a volcanic evacuation exercise.

The government had brought two large ferries to the Granada port that usually transport folks between the mainland and Ometepe island (you can see more about Ometepe here: Ometepe webpage ).  There is a ferry that actually goes from Granada to Ometepe that takes 4 hours, but there are other ports with shorter rides.  They also brought about 20 or so smaller boats that normally do tours in the lake. About 5 or 6 Navy or Coast Guard-type boats were also there, complete with well armed soldiers. A good deal of time was spent getting the volunteers/"evacuees" loaded on the various boats, and then they sent the boats far out in the lake to simulate their arrival in Granada after fleeing the volcano in Ometepe (remember this lake looks like the ocean because it is so big, so we could barely see them at one point).  On the shore, various tents were set up by the Red Cross, there was a line of emergency vehicles, and not sure who else was present.

While this was occurring, more and more spectators were arriving and it was getting hotter.  It took a long time to get the boats loaded, they went really far away, and then they seem to just stay out on the lake forever (this is my way of saying I was getting hot and tired of waiting for something to happen). We knew the most exciting/interesting part would be watching the arrival of the boats and the assistance to the pretend evacuees, but were discussing whether we should just leave.  Just as we were having this discussion, some real excitement began.  The military boats started speeding back towards the shore and we could hear distant gunshots.  There were two boats of "drug traffickers" and the military was trying to intercept and apprehend them.  There was no joking around--these guys were taking this very seriously and were going really fast and shooting a lot.  As they got close to the shore, there were gunshots from the shoreline also.  All of the boats landed roughly with the drug traffickers making a run for it and the military catching them, putting them on the ground, searching them, cuffing them and then arresting them.  Everyone on shore was cheering and running to get a better view.  We were told they were just shooting blanks (and I'm guessing its true or else a lot of folks would have been hurt), but it was still a little frightening, yet thrilling.   I definitely would not want to be around if it were a real drug chase.  Its actually interesting that they were doing this drill as we have not heard of cases of drugs coming in on the lake to Granada.  They definitely have drug issues on the Atlantic coast, but nothing to note here as far as I know.  However, its good that they are prepared if the situation arises :^)

We left after the drug bust as the boats started offloading people up the shore quite a ways from us.  While we didn't get to see how the eruption "evacuees" were rescued, we nonetheless had an unexpectedly interesting and exciting morning!