The Travelling Teacher: Nicaragua

October 29-31

Hello everyone!

Our final destination involved something a little different: crossing water to an island made up of two volcanoes…

Kayaking on Lago de Nicaragua, with Volcan
Concepcion in the distance

Welcome to Isla de Ometepe, a stunning and bizarre island located inside Central America’s largest lake: Lake Nicaragua. It’s Nicaragua’s candidate to be the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’. Ome means ‘two’, whilst tepetl means ‘hills’. Naturally then, Ometepe is ‘the place of two hills’. Apart from those hills being gigantic volcanoes.

Ometepe is 276 sq km, making it the
largest island found in a freshwater lake

The southern volcano is called Maderas

It’s also surprisingly easy to get to with a car, so long as you book a slot in advance on a ferry. There are more elements to it, of course. Firstly, you buy a ticket to enter the ‘park zone’ at San Jorge. Next you pay for your personal ferry ticket, before paying for the transportation of the car. Then, naturally, you pay at a separate kiosk for the tax for your car. Finally you can then board the small ferry, precariously reversing the car on in the process.

Taking the car on this was C420 each way - about $13

On the way back, I got trapped in
the car due to the number of cars!

I was also surprised by the quality of (most of) the roads on this island. Expecting a quagmire, particularly in rainy season, we instead had pleasant driving along the main, brick-made road which almost makes a figure-of-eight around the two volcanoes that constitute a lot of this land mass.

View from the infinity pool of Totoco Eco Lodge

Our first night's accom - a converted bus!

People have lived on this island for a long time. This is evidenced by a number of random petroglyphs, rock carvings whose date of creation is unknown - possibly over 3,000 years old (others put them between 800 and 1200 years in age). The early Indians considered the island of Ometepe as their ‘promised land’.

The patterns match those found elsewhere in the region

I see a butterfly!

I didn’t find any of the statues but did locate four sites near our second hotel on a short, slightly muddy walk. I found what the internet tells me are anthropomorphic or zoomorphic motifs which show a variety of possibly-human or possibly-animal connections. They are not remotely protected, making me very surprised that they have lasted this long.

Some archaeologists refer to Ometepe as the 'Island
of Circles' due to the prevalance of these patterns

This was one of the four sites - the petroglyphs are on those rocks!

Any walk would have seemed short when compared to the hike we had done the previous day. That volcano below, the really tall one? Yeah, we peaked it.

The lake is 33m above sea level. Concepcion's peak...1,610m...

At the highest point we could go, about 1,600m

I wanted to do some hiking on this trip. For various reasons, the only ‘hike’ had been a quick walk up a volcano to dodge the rain before sandboarding down in a storm. Climbing one of Ometepe’s two peaks, either Concepción or Madera, is a fairly common activity.

The most recent eruption was in 2010

It starts off very green before
becoming barren and rocky near the top

We did some reading about it the night before, finding that:

Many people don’t complete it;
You rarely see anything at the top;
It’s supposed to be quite challenging.

A timely reminder that we chose to do this hike

Concepcion is one of five active volcanoes in Nicaragua

Nonetheless, we set off on our jolly a little after 6am on what seemed to be a dry, slightly overcast morning. We hiked for a while, going up some steep sections, before getting to…the entrance. Maybe this was going to be hard after all.

My GPS kept losing signal so I will assume
that the distance on this sign is correct

Being led by Enrique, our guide who
seemed capable of running up the whole thing

We were hiking Concepción, the taller (and less muddier) of the volcano siblings. At three-and-a-half hours including some much-needed breaks, our hike up took less time than anticipated. The views on the way up were also incredible, taking in the other volcano and the lake which started to shimmer as the Sun threatened to come to play.

Trying not to know that the volcano has erupted 25 times since 1883...

One of many spectacular vistas

It was tough at times, particularly with the rain that had lashed the island the previous day, but we weren’t crawling up the bare section near the peak like I had anticipated. The views at the top? Almost non-existent. The feeling of accomplishment, though, was great.

A slight, yet not overpowering, sulfuric smell greeted us at the top

Enjoying cold Coke Zeros which I had lugged up - I was
thankful for a lighter pack on the way down!

Of course, what goes up must come down. And boy, was going down hard. I lost count of the number of times I slipped - and that was even before the downpour we were subjected to in the last half hour. Fatigue was kicking in, making every step that little bit harder and resulting in slips, trips and falls that much more likely. The only saving grace was a section we hadn’t gone up (thankfully), which was majority black sand and ash. On this, we could half-run, half-ski down the slope.

Just take a second to appreciate that view...

Lots of interesting vegetation grew higher up on the volcano

Not that it made it any faster. We took the same amount of time to come down as we had to scale the 1,610 metre monster that makes up most of the northern half of Ometepe. I’m glad we did it - I wouldn’t do it again. And you do need to be fit to scale it.

The dark bits are my tracks from run-sliding. It took
multiple washes of my trainers for them to recover.

Snapshot of a less enthusiastic moment!

Other more leisurely pursuits are situated around the water. We made use of our inflatable kayak and paddleboard on the first afternoon to paddle around part of the western shoreline before briefly popping up the Istian River. It was a world of tranquillity and greenery, only punctuated by the chirping of birds and the flapping of fish. We didn’t see any of the caiman that apparently line the river. In an inflatable toy, that was probably for the best.

The river is in the narrow isthmus connecting the two volcanoes

Adventuring in the shadow of a volcano

We also didn’t see any of the bull sharks which Lake Nicaragua bizarrely houses. They apparently made their way into the lake by swimming upstream from the Caribbean via the Rio San Juan. Hunting during the 20th century drastically reduced their population, making the water safe(ish) to swim in. Plenty of other wildlife - the video below was at night, when frogs and other insects were making noises like lasers.

This was the one day when we the
weather was nice enough to use our toys

Is that a shark??

What lovely water as well. Indeed, what a lovely place. A very different experience to Leon and Granada, but one that has made me really enjoy and appreciate our time in Nicaragua. The ‘Land of Two Hills’ is truly special. Not that I will be climbing one of those hills if I ever return…