Isla Ometepe, Rivas and Goodbye Nicaragua
Trip Start
Oct 10, 2006
1
33
110
Trip End
Ongoing
Isla Ometepe ***,
Nicaragua
Thursday, February 8, 2007
After leaving Granada, we hopped on a boat to make the four hour journey to Isla Ometepe. The island, which is located in the Nicaraguan lake, is primarily made up of two volcanoes, the Madera (wood) volcano and Concepcion (conception) volcano. Interestingly, the existence of these two volcanoes is how the island gained its name. The name is derived from an ancient idigenous language called Nahuatl, where "ome" means two and "tepelth" means mountain. The Nicaraguan lake plays host to the only fresh water shark in the world (I think!), the bull shark. Luckily, we didn`t have any encounters with any of such creature!
We went to the island mainly for a look and to climb one of the volcanoes and naturally, we opted for the smaller one, Madera volcano...one that our hostel owner Mario entitled "the climb for a woman!" It was nothing of the sort. (hostel Ortiz on Altagracia by the way...comes highly recommended by...me!..not even in the LP bible!)
Although measuring a mere 1,394 metres with a base of 24 metres, it was a tough climb...mainly because we were climbing through mud past our shins (or knees in my case!) most of the time. We had to ascend a semi-steep mountain for the most part and then slip and slide (quite literally) our way down to the crater lake. Upon retreat, we had to go back the way we had come, which meant a bit of a climb and then a massive descent back to the island`s base.
I found the descent a lot more difficult than the ascent cos it was so painful on my left knee...
made the mucky hike worthwhile
Plus It was very slippy and trees blocked your way meaning the only way to navigate a safe crossing was under or randomly straggled branches. I fell on my ass bout 5 times and if it weren`t for my fashionable hiking boots saving my ankles on a further two falls, disaster would have been spelt with a CAPITAL D! It was actually quite scary sludging down cos I felt as if you could easily slip over the side. The slippiness wasn`t helped by the fact that the aforementioned hiking boots have barely any grips whatsoever. This combined with my inherent clumsiness meant trouble.I was fortunate that there was a rather unfit Belgian guy in our company who stalled the ball for us all every half hour or so but I still found it quite difficult to walk the next day. You would imagine that I would be gaining some level of fitness by now but my body always seems to cave in when I need it most..grrh!
The crater lake was interesting, a strange shade of bottle green with more mud than water really. The next morning, we had two unusual encounters with insects in our room. Collins discovered a deadly spider, known locally as the arano pico de caballo...the spider who bites the horse..is a loose translation. Collins discovered it while I was in the shower...and so I didn`t know what was happening when Collins and Mario, the hostel owner, panickly barged into our room (after a "polite" knock!) and me there standing in only a towel!
Anyway, got that cleared out. Then bout 15 minutes later, I was packing my bag when out hopped a scorpion...I calmly brought it outside and disposed of it. OH YEAH! How cool and collected am I??! Mario blamed us for bringing them from the town of Granada cos apparently, they are not found on the island..But don`t care where they came from...eh a scorpion is a scorpion!! And the horsebiter spider is well...a horsebiter spider! But Mario`s son said that I was like the man out of Collins and I!!! Oh YEAH!! Calm and collected alrite!
We had another very unpleasant experience with animals that evening when we arrived into the port in Rivas, a little Nicaraguan town near the Costa Rican border. I saw two monkeys in the trees beside the port and wondered to myself how two, obviously very tame, monkeys chose to make their home in trees beside a busy port...but as we edged closer, I realised they were chained to the trees by a collar round their neck. They had houses made out of barrels for them in the trees. I nearly started crying, it was soo cruel.
They were swinging from one branch to another but their chains only allowed a certain amount of leverage. Apparently, they belong to the man who owns the "queen of the sea" boat. The office beside the tree was closed and wouldn`t be open til 8 the following morn. Our bus was leaving at 7. I contemplated waiting over but I felt soo helpless.
I see it every day, we are travelling through an area where the majority have no respect for their animals or their environment. They throw litter everywhere, monkey often appears on dinner menus and they consider a dolphin to be a fish rather than a mammel. I knew that they would think me a stupid gringa if I tried to approach them about it.
It reminded me of the time that I was in Romania (yes that`s Romania who are now in the modern and rights conscious European Union) and we were in a town where they had a bear chained to a railing so people could pay to take photos of it. The American girl that I was with thought it was great and took bout five photos. Likewise, there were a load of tourists smiling and laughing at the monkeys` chattering, whilst they clicked with their cameras in Rivas. If modern, western world people think it`s ok to have an animal accustomed to the wild chained like that to one spot, what hope was I going to have with a Nicaraguan boat owner??...and in Spanish-
We stayed one night in Rivas and left the next day. I wasn`t really sorry to leave Nicaragua..The people didn`t impress me and although we only did the western side of the country, it was nothing major to write a travel pod home bout!
It`s gas when we`re travelling. One week feels like such a long time when you`re going somewhere new every day. We´re gone from Ireland exactly four months today (the 10th) but it seems like a year and lots of what happened last week seems like a few months ago, or in some ways, like they never happened at all.
