Ometepe Island

08/08/09 - 11/08/09

After bidding Tortuga a fond farewell the night before, we were up early the next morning to catch our usual ride in the back of a pick-up truck, not to San Juan this time but to Rivas, almost two hours away. The last part of the journey from San Juan to Rivas was a lot faster than we are used to as there is a proper road connecting the two towns, and it was so windy! From Rivas we took a cab to the port of San Jorge (which we had to pay to get into) to catch a small boat to Ometepe Island. The boat ride took about an hour and was so bumpy that we both felt quite sea sick...or lake sick to be more accurate :)

The island of Ometepe is situated in Lake Nicaragua (the biggest lake in Central America) and is the biggest island surrounded by fresh water in the world. The boat dropped us off in the port town of Moyagalpa, but having heard that Altagracia was smaller and more charming, we got straight in another cab and within the hour we were finally at our hotel. What a journey :) That night, we went out in search of a good restaurant to celebrate Vic´s birthday with a nice meal and a few drinks, but it seems that good restaurants are few and far between in Altagracia, so we had to settle for a not-so-nice meal. Sorry Vic :( Luckily enough, the next evening, we found a great place to eat. It wasn´t a restaurant as such....the tables were actually out on the pavement and some even in the road. I don´t even know if they had a kitchen there because they do all of the cooking on a big bbq outside...it smells great and that is what first caught our attention. You can choose either chicken, pork or beef and it comes with some salad (which wasn´t very nice) and tajadas, which are crisps made from bananas and which we loved :) We went back there for dinner for the duration of our stay.

One morning we took a walk to the port in Altagracia to enquire about the boats heading for Granada, which was to be our next stop. It seemed to make a lot more sense to us to get a boat from here, rather than going all the way back to Rivas to get on yet another bus. The walk was long but took us past stretches of banana plantations and along the lake shore, where we saw groups of people washing their clothes! When we got to the port it was actually closed but a security guard was able to give us the information we needed so it wasn´t a wasted trip. That afternoon, we decided to rent bikes from our hotel for a few hours and visit the beach of Santa Domingo. The bikes were not in the best of condition...we couldn´t get all of the different gears to work meaning that whenever we went uphill we had to get off and walk up because it was just too hard to pedal. And the brakes on my bike were awful too, so whenever I went downhill I had to squeeze them so hard to make them brake even a little bit and they squeaked the whole way down. It also didn´t help that the majority of journey was over a dirt road dotted with rocks...we felt every bump :) Having finally arrived at the beach, we were a little disappointed to see that it wasn´t all that nice, and having taken so long to get there we soon thought it best to head back. The journey back was actually a little easier, apart from the huge hill we had to get back up...we did it on foot of course, but it was still tough. I was so relieved to get back to the hotel.

There are two volcanoes on the island: Volcano Concepción and Volcano Maderas, and tourists usually go to see one or both of these. We decided we had seen enough volcanoes for now, so instead we arranged to go on a small hike up to a look-out point from where you have a great view over Volcano Concepción. The look-out point is actually situated on the way up to the other volcano, Maderas, but luckily you don´t have to go to the top :) I´m so glad we decided to do only the small hike, as it was more than enough for me. It was only 2km, so compared to the 25km we had done in one day at Chirripo in Costa Rica, it was nothing, but it was quite muddy and hence slippery, and it was also very humid, so not at all easy. The walk was interesting though and took us through fields planted with rice, corn and beans, and we also saw different types of fruit tree, a few tropical flowers and our first petroglyph, depicting the God of Water.

The petroglyphs are carvings in the face of rocks, which are attributed to an ancient tribe called the Niquiranos. There are several petroglyphs in this area of the island and they are between 900 and 1200 years old. The Niquiranos believed in several Gods, such as the God of Water and the God of Fire etc. and the aim of depiciting, for example, the God of Water in stone was to appeal to this God to send them rain. We also found out that the tribe used to offer sacrifices to the Gods and there were two different methods of sacrifice: one method involved cutting the veins of the person to be sacrificed on a sacrifical stone, and the other method was to simply throw the person into the volcano! The Niquiranos also believed that the island was a present from the Gods and for that reason only the wisest of the tribe had the privilege of living on the island and carving the petroglyphs....the unwise ones apparently got left behind in San Jorge or Rivas :)