Nicaragua and the volcanic islands

Having gotten through immigration so quickly we hopped on a local bus to the town of Rivas (again our lack of Spanish again causing some fustration, but in fact it has never resulted in anything bad happening, things always work out quite quickly). The bus station here was all a bit mad, dirty and hectic but we were on our way again within 20 minutes.

As Nicaragua is one of the cheapest countries in Central America I decided to check out a couple of the countries highlights - first up was the Isla de Ometepe. This island is formed from two conjoined volcanoes sticking straight up from the fresh lake of Lake Nicaragua (it`s the biggest fresh water island in the world). So once at Rivas we needed to get a taxi to the ferry port in San Jorge in order to get the boat across to the island. We had a bit of time to kill waiting for the ferry, so we relaxed on the shores of the lake and some lunch looked out at the incredibly perfect cone of the bigger of the two volcanoes.

The one hour boat ride gave us fantastic views of the volcanoes as there wasn't much cloud, and the main volcano really is an impressive sight, being prefectly conical. The boat brought us directly to the main town on the island, and I decided to stay here rather than move to another part of the island (the guidebooks recommend other places as being nicer, but we were only staying for a couple of nights so I didn´t fancy the hassle of moving about). I thought the little town was quite nice anyway, and our hostel was friendly and cheery, being basically just a family home with just thin curtains for some of the main walls!

The next day we rented bikes and waited for the bus to take us and our bikes to the far side of the island and just cycle back (the bus was later than we´d been told, another example of locals not having much of a clue about their own buses or boats - it´s just another fustrating trait that has emerges while travelling, but more so it seems in Central America (while I´m on the topic, another annoyance is the total lack of street signs in some places, even major cities. Apparently lots of these places have no postal service, and so no need for addresses. So locals give directions in relation to well-known local landmarks, which is useless to tourists of course, and they have often never seen a map of their own town so they can´t even tell you where you are currently standing!).

Anyway the bus brought us to the other town and after checking out the local church and it´s pretty cool ancient stone statues in the grounds we rode off back towards the main town. We took a 8km detour to check out some local petroglyphs (more ancient stone carvings, these ones mostly weird shapes and symbols), and what is supposed to be the best beach on the whole island, Playa Santo Domingo.

There was no beach, or at least nothing I'd call a beach (the guidebook calls it amazing!), just a very narrow stretch of black volcanic sand at the base of a lovely hotel (maybe the lake is tidal and the tide was in or something). We had a small lunch and a drink at the fancy hotel and then I changed into my swimming shorts for a lovely swim in the very shallow lake (Sarah wasn't tempted - the weather was overcast all day, and we had drizzly rain most of the time. It was very warm though, so the rain was actually quite nice and refreshing). The lake was perfectly flat and calm, and it was weird lying back and watching tiny fish jump from the water all around me.

Then back on our bikes for the long ride back to the town. Luckily this was on a good road, as the 16km roundtrip detour to the beach and petroglyphs had been on a rough dirt road, and so we getting tired. It was a pity the weather was so overcast, as we never really got good views of the volcanoes, but the landscapes were lovely and the little villages we passed were cool.

Next morning we got the ferry back to the mainland (again being told the wrong time by the family we stayed with), and it was a quick enough jaunt to the colonial town of Granada.