Volcán Concepción

The hotel that had arranged the guided hike to Volcán Maderas was not offering trips to Concepción during my time on Ometepe. The volcano had been grumbling a little bit, and had vomitó un poco the week before. (In Nicaragua, the word vomitar, meaning "to vomit," "to throw out," or "to disgorge," is sometimes congugated to describe an eruption. I think this is fantastic.) I got lucky, however, the guy working the front desk at the hotel introduced me to another woman trying to arrange a hike to Concepción at the same time. She had met a guide while walking on the beach earlier in the day, and we arranged to climb the volcano with him. Because of the recent volcanic activity, tourists were not allowed to climb past 1000 meters in elevation (Concepción is 1,610 meters, or 5280 feet). Our guide told us that he would not take us any higher than this, and that we should not ask him to.

The tour started at 5:00, when I met the two other hikers (one Columbian and one Swiss) and our guide to take public transportation to the start of the hike. The bus showed up at 5:30, and after a bumpy 15 minute ride we set off down a dirt road toward Concepción. We passed the mandatory pigs and chickens, rows and rows of banana and plantain trees, and several campesinos on horses or donkeys.

The road turned into a path and started to climb. After about a mile, we reached a small hut with a few benches outside, cobbled together of sticks and wood from the surrounding land. A 35-40 year old Nica man stopped his work and came to join us, and he and our guide began to tell us about their workers' movement and the new organization of guides and others in the tourist industry on Ometepe. They are standing up to the hotels, demanding better treatment and better pay, and they go to trainings once a month to learn how improve their interactions with tourists and better perform their work. Things are much better now, they said, since they have organized; but there is still a lot to be done. After some time we left and continued our climb, eating bananas given to us by our host.

We kept hiking - the trail getting steeper and rocky - and taking long, frequent breaks. At about 600 meters, I started to worry that if we kept taking long breaks like this, we would end up hiking down in the heat of the day - what we woke up at 4:30 am to avoid. At our next break, at 750 meters, I asked the time. It was only a quarter to eight.

After more climbing and more long breaks, we reached 1000 meters to find the lake below shrouded in fog. We walked a few meters further to find a place in the shade to wait, and relaxed on a flow of lava rocks from a past eruption. After an hour, there had been no change in the mist below, so we began our decent, stopping frequently as the clouds shifted and the views improved.

After the hike, I split with the group, the rest returning to the hotel while I made my way to Altagracia to meet my parents. I asked when the bus would come, but the guide told me that the bus wouldnt come for half an hour or more, and that it was less than a kilometer walk. I confirmed his directions, making sure I understood, turned down an offer by a 12-year old boy to take me there on his bike, and started to walk. I hadn´t walked more than 100 meters when the bus pulled over to pick me up. I sat down, and after about a half kilometer, the driver waved me up, pointed at my hotel (I hadn´t said anything more than "gracias" when he picked me up), and seemed a little suprised when I asked the fare.

Volcán Maderas

My first night in Ometepe, I arranged to climb one of the island´s two volcanoes with a guide from a nearby hotel (the place I was staying was a little too barebones to have a guide - although we did have a scorpion in one of our rooms).The trip to Maderas began at the hotel at 7:30 a.m. The group consisted of two couples (one from Canada and one from New York), two guides, and myself. We drove for about a half an hour down a dusty, potholed dirt road, and parked at the Finca Magdalena, where we paused to use the restrooms and fill up our water bottles.

We left the farmhouse and started hiking, climbing gradually at first through low farmland, passing coffee plants and then cacao trees. The trail very quickly turned into a steep hike through thick forest. We passed howler monkeys and blue jays, and stopped to rest at an ancient petroglyph.

Distance was marked at every kilometer, and it was supposedly only 5km from the farm to the lake, but it seemed much longer. The first two kilometers were steep, and I was sweating buckets, but the trail was fairly solid and well maintained. The second half of the trail was just as steep, but a slippery slog through ankle deep mud. I had made the mistake of wearing a white shirt, thinking it would be cooler in the heat. The shirt was ruined by the end of the day, and I could not for the life of me figure out how I would get down without breaking my ankle.

As we headed towards the crest of the volcano, our guides gave us a choice: the hard way with a view of the crater and lake, or the easy way, without a view. We chose the hard way, and he wasnt kidding. Aerobically, we werent working any harder than we had been all along, but now the trail had disintegrated and was half trail, half bushwack. Within 15 minutes, we reached a bald patch of rock and could look down a the crater lake below. It was somewhat unstriking - it looked more like a bowl of pea soup than a cool mountain pond you would want to swim in - but we climbed down just the same.

My guidebook had promised me icy-cold water filling the basin, but what we found was lukewarm, muddy bathwater. You had to squelch through several steps of goo just to reach the water, and nearly halfway across the laguna, I could still reach down and touch the bottom with my hands as I swam.

The way back down the mountain was not as treacherous as I expected, although I did have a few near misses on slippery, mud covered rocks. When we got to the bottom, we had to wait about an hour for the hotel vehicle to come and pick us up, so we hung around the Finca and watched backpackers and hippies mill about.

I returned to the farm the next day with my parents, thinking we might tour the coffee operation or just have lunch. The bus let us off along the main road, about a kilometer from the Finca. We walked up the long drive, watching the campesinos harvest plantains and deliver them, on horseback, to a waiting truck. Several locals were walking up or down the driveway as well, and after a few minutes my mom glanced back to see a machete in the hand of the campesino walking a few meters behind us. I looked around, trying to get a better sense of our situation, but after about 100 meters he turned into a row of trees and returned to work.

We wandered around the farm/paradise, side-tripped down dirt roads and trails to see more petroglyphs in the area, and returned to the large farmhouse in time for some of the best food I´ve had so far in Nicaragua: it was all comida tipica - roasted chicken, rice, beans, and salad - but the farm fresh chicken hadn´t been cooked to a point beyond recognition, like most I´ve encountered in Nicaragua, and the salad consisted of more than just cabbage and beets.

We finished lunch just in time to sprint down the driveway to wait for the bus, which came - depending on who you asked - at either 1:30, 2:00, 2:15, 2:30, or 3:30. Everyone wanted to help, but no matter who I asked, I never heard the same answer twice. We waited for about 45 minutes or an hour - watching pigs and chickens foraging at the side of the road, and a dog waking up every now and then to bark and chase the pigs as they wandered by - until the bus showed up at around 2:45.

Imágenes de Ometepe

Ometepe

La Isla de Ometepe is about an hour´s ferry ride from mainland Nicaragua, and a world away. The ferry was pretty small, with three decks for passengers, the largest not more than 200 square feet, and room for two or three trucks and a couple of cars. Under one truck, the driver had slung a hammock and was napping for the duration of the ride.

When we got off the boat, my dad found a taxi-driver and we headed for his car. The taxi turned out to be a red pickup truck, with an extra railing around the bed, at about the height of the top of the cab, and a wooden plank laid across the sides of the bed, as a bench. Dad rode in front and practiced his Spanish, while Mom and I rode in back with the luggage.

The ride across the island was like a jump back in time. We quickly left behind the requisit backpacker ghetto of Moyopgalpa and sped along a perfectly paved road, passing bikes (each with one or two extra passengers balancing on the crossbar), banana-farmers on horseback, oxen and horses pulling wooden carts, and recommissioned Bluebird school-busses serving as public transportation. Pigs, chickens, and goats wandered alongside the road.

Any vehicle will pass any other vehicle, motorized or not, at the first possible opportunity - and may drift into the oncoming lane two or three times to check if it´s safe to pass. You soon get the idea that there is no "right" or "wrong" side of the road to drive on. Everyone stays generally in their own lane, unless there´s someone slow in their way (which is about 15 percent of the time) or a pothole (about 20 percent of the time); at which point they swerve into oncoming traffic without a second thought.

Drivers in Nicaragua also use their horn as often as possible. A honk might mean "get out of my way" or "I´m about to pass you" or "stay on the sidewalk." Sometimes it means "I´m coming up to the intersection" or "I´m about to round the corner, so you´d better get back on your side of the road," and sometimes its just a greeting. Its never an angry or blaring horn - just a light tap as a matter of course.

San Juan Del Sur, part II

The guidebook I have been using, Moon Handbooks Nicaragua, suggested several excursions in the San Juan del Sur area, one of which was a hike up to a nearby lighthouse. In general, the book is fantastic, but directions for its walks and hikes have been noticably lacking. This hike was no different, and as my parents and I attempted it, we ended up asking for dirrections from nearly everyone we encountered. After our first wrong turn, a group of coast guard/military-looking types - wearing blue camoflage uniforms and not one over 18 years old - pointed us in the direction of the trailhead. We passed a dilapidated old shack, pieced together of rusty corregated metal, and a man older than time working in the back yard. He had an outdoor sink, and several mugs were drying on a small tree in the yard.

The dirt trail we followed was lined with garbage. Goats, pigs, and chickens wandered in and out of various fences and across the trail, snacking on the rubbage and anything else they could find. The trail divided in several places, and we asked at several shacks if we were on the right track. At one point, my mom and I were standing at a fork in the trail, wondering if we trespassing, while my dad went to ask for instructions at a shack a few meters down the hill. While we waited, a man walked out of another little hut, and offered his help. We told him we were looking for the lighthouse, and he pointed the way and offered to accompany us. "Like a guide?" we asked, unsure we understood his Spanish. "No, un compañero." A companion, not a guide. Dad returned, and our new friend led us up the trail.

We continued hiking, sweat dripping from every pore (it was about noon, close enough to the equator, and at least 90 degrees) and hoped the views were worth it. The garbage thinned, and then disappeared, and when we neared the top, we could see all the way to Costa Rica to the south, and to the north, a string of perfect beaches. We kept walking, practicing our Spanish, and reached a solar-powered lighthouse at the end of the trail.

San Juan del Sur

We arrive in San Juan Del Sur on Saturday afternoon, around two o´clock. Immediately we are convinced it is paradise. Brightly colored shacks line the roads, its hot, with an ocean breeze, and the beach is a long, curved stretch of sand lined with open air, thatched-roof restaurants serving seafood and beer. In what the guidebook says is the most touristy part of Nicaragua, there are few Americans to be seen. If this is considered touristy in Nicaragua, no hay problemma. We´re staying upe street from a charming, bright yellow church, a woman barbequeing chicken and plantains just across the street

We had lunch in one of the shacks along the beach - about five dollars for a whole grilled fish, and it was good - and headed out for a swim. The beach was mostly empty, save for a few local boys playing futbol and a few other Nica groups hanging out on the beach. The wind was brutal, however, if you tried to sun yourself the sand blowing into your skin would quickly change your mind.

Once we´d showered, and went out again at night, there were Americans EVERYWHERE. All the surfers had come back from their beaches, and there´s a huge expat community. We had ice cream for dinner, went for a walk, and ran into the expats´ Valentines day party. They kept inviting us to join them ($10 donation and you get a T-shirt!) at their party - full of old drunk white people dancing up a storm - no thanks, we´d prefer to sample the local culture. The money goes, apparently, to some monkeys near an expensive hotel in town. I kept thinking, you want me to donate money to help you fund your zoo? And then they told us they had hired a vet now full time, and it would help pay for him too. I was like, ok, you want me to "donate" to the healthcare for your monkey collection? Seriously? But finally, I figured out that no, the monkeys are on a nature reserve, and the vet was hired to nueter all the stray cats and dogs in town, among other things. Regardless, they were annoying, and braggarts, and we left as soon as we could.

Granada, Nicaragua, 9:30 am

I'm sitting in Granada's central plaza on my second day in Nicaragua. A procession of uniformed schoolboys is walking by, and a selection of mid-ninties American music is blasting from a nearbye radio. I've already been approached by a child selling bird-whistles, a man selling tours, and a student from my parents' Spanish class. A man across the square is yelling what sounds like "echo, echo, echo" over and over again, and a bell rings repeatedly, anouncing the sale of ice cream. It's 9:30 am.

Later, I walk to Lago Nicaragua. It looks like it could be an ocean - I can't see all the way across. I walk along the Malecon until I pass an older man in blue briefs doing his laundry in the lake. I turn around and head to the market for bananas.

Mexico 2006

Barra de Navidad and Melaque, Mexico