Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua

An unsuccessful attempt to spend a few nights in a National Park (the bus dropped us off in the middle of no-where and randomly pointed in a vague direction. We couldn’t even see the volcano the national park was on!),  led us straight to the docks where we met up again with our mate Michael. We can’t seem to get enough of him. Ometepe is the indigenous Nahuatl word for ‘Omete’ (two) ‘Tepe’ (mountain). The island was picture-perfect beautiful with the iconic volcano cone shape! The two very distinct volcanoes forming an island in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua. So excited to get there…

Lago de Nicaragua with Ometepe in the middle. I stole this pic from the internet because I forgot to take one myself!

 As we arrived to the docks on a lovely ferry we caught the most fun bus taxi ride to Balgue, a small town at the base of the lesser Volcan Maderas (1394m). We stopped for beers, listened to the worst quality Celine Dion while driving on bumpy roads, it was great fun!  We arrived at Finca Magdalena with horses everywhere! Can’t get away from them…a little racoon on a leash was playing around, and it was sundowner time. Cheers, we watched the sun sink slowly behind the bigger Volcan Concepcion and mingled with the other backpackers. Salud!

Sundowners on the roof of Finca Magdalena with our new mate Alistar.

 Finca Magdalena – what a fantastic hostel! $3.50 for a private room, comfortable and simple. The staff are friendly and the food is cheap and great! That morning we hired a guide to take us up Volcan Maderas for $5 each. He said it will take ‘mas o menos’ 5 hours…oh man, we miscalculated, it’s 5 hours up…and 4.5 hours down. We didn’t bring enough water. The Volcano is overgrown with structurally diverse vegetation that is distinctly separated in 4 ecological stages according to altitude. (Volcan Concepcion only has primary growth because it erupted and killed all the trees, so it’s barren but beautiful). We loved the walk, it was hot and humid in the beginning, but as we reached higher altitude the air was fresh and clean. We saw Wild turkeys, white-faced monkeys, howler-monkeys and of course the amazing view of the other Volcano. The only shitty thing was our group thinking it’s a race and were practically running up the volcano not watching the nature. I didn’t pay 5 bucks to see my feet  and the mud trail!

'Mirador' of Volcan Concepcion, a pleasant view.

 At the top the view was fantastic. Nicaragua is really an under-rated country, the people are friendly, the food is…well chicken & rice, but it’s good! At the view point we finished 90% of our water and still had over 1.5 hours left…to the top! Bad planning…Got to the top and had a great view!

No water, but we saw a Nicaraguan Wild Turkey!

On top of the World in Nicaragua!

 Then we arrived at the Crater Lake. I’ve never seen a Crater Lake before, it’s gorgeous. The vegetation is so lush and everything thrives here due to the incredible fertile soil. A great swim in the lake cooled us down, and got us dirty. It was so peaceful there, I wish we camped up here.

A tiny section of the Crater Lake on Volcan Madera.

 The ‘walk’ back was a breeze. We all unanimously decided cold beer awaited us at the bottom of this Volcano and literally ran down it! It felt like we were in Predator, running through the jungle, we could smell the beer…An almost 5 hour walk turned into about 40min! The guide laughed his ass off. What a great day!  And it was about to get better….

Rob and his machete are in a tight relationship now.  He bought it a few days before and has become disturbingly attached. We asked the Ladies at Finca Magdalena if we can get some coconuts from the plam trees that grew nearby. “Sure, if you can climb them!”. Little did the poor lady know that we had four ‘alpha’-males ready to show one-another what they’ve got! So Rob went up, got some coconuts. Michael followed, then Alistair and Nick…They were all successful and we managed to get at least 15 coconuts. It’s good to exercise to earn a cold drink.

Super Monkey!

And a cold drink it was! After all having a go chopping up the coconuts with the great new method shown to us on Tobacco Caye (Belize) we managed to collect a jug full of all-natural, fresh coconut water; perfect for the rum we had bought! The sweet ladies laughed and were very impressed (and maybe a little regretful?) to see how much coconut juice we got, and got us glasses and ice for a truly enjoyable sundowner. A good job well done!!

Rob's special technique!

We played several games with the other backpackers, Pass the Pigs, card games, 30 seconds and chatted the night away. This is such a beautiful place. The electricity kept tripping and the power failure sometimes lasted 30min at a time. It was a blessing, because out of the bush came hundreds of huge fireflies that lit up the veranda we sat on. What a perfect place…

Our sundowner spot, overlooking Volcan Concepcion.

 Next day we were absolutely determined to have a little braai on the ‘beach’. Rob’s machete is uber-popular and the boys just wanted to chop down trees and go wild! Of course, they did not, and we only chopped up wood we found on the ground…Alistair, Rob and Chrissie went to the beach and collected firewood, bought beers and were ready to make an epic fire! Well, easier said than done. We sucked! Everything was completely drenched from the torrential downpour we had last night, and the fire wouldn’t start. Epic Fail.

After trying & trying to light this damn thing it was a pleasant sight to see the sweet little howler monkeys play in the trees above us, watching us struggle with the fire. The alpha male was particularly interested in us and he kept moving position to make sure he had the best view. He positioned himself right above Rob trying to light the fire…and pissed all over him! Oh, I almost died of laughter! Rob jumped away like James Bond avoiding a death pit and escaped with only a minor Golden Shower by a monkey! (This may or may not be the reason why he got sick in Colombia).

A little more to the right...Rob's Howler Monkey!

Eventually the wood dried and the fire was ablaze. Next mission: get food! We anticipated the shopd selling chicken or something! Nope nothing…and after a third attempt we managed to get a huge (at least 2kg) of unidentified meat from some dodgy café for only $2, a bargain. I made some soasaties and we cooked the meat while watching the most spectacular sunset, chatting with some very friendly locals who gave us mangoes.

Using the wire from our braai grid we could make sosaties.

The food was alright, the sosaties were great. The meat was a bit iffy. Then Alistair found a cyst or something in the meat and we almost threw up, and tossed the rest of the meat to the stray dogs. Gross. Could’ve seen that coming!

Back at the camp we celebrated our last night on this fantastic island with more card games and chats with the great people. We cleared our bill - $55 each for 3 full days, of eating, drinking and hiking. Not bad!! We woke up at 4:30am to catch the local bus to the pier where we set off to Costa Rica. Good-bye Nicaragua, you are an amazing country.

Warning: you are on an active Volcano!