Dear followers, I apologize for my near week long absence. It’s like I was stuck on an island or something. I was, in fact, on the AMAZING Island of Ometepe. Too much to write about so I’m sum it up and throw on a bunch of photos.
First, Ometepe is a large bioreserve island in Lake Nicaragua. It’s about 2 hours by bus and another hour by boat. On the island are two volcanos: La Concepcion (active and the second largest in Nicaragua) and Maderas (no longer spewing boiling lava). Two volunteers from my training groups someone snagged the pleasure of living and working fulltime on Ometepe. Figuring that the volunteers pretending to pull Gilligan’s Island were getting lonely and bored (they weren’t), 12 of us came to visit them.
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| La Conception |
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| Leaving the Island |
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| Sun setting over the mainland |
Thursday. After 3 bus rides, 3 taxi rides, a boat and a hitchhike, I arrived at Altagracia. As luck (or great planning) would have it, it was Altagracia’s turn to host the monthly part on the island. It was a great night of eating great food (chicken salad sandwich with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and onions), $0.38 mixed drinks, and salsa dancing outside.
Friday. Noelle (the PCV that lives in Alatagracia) was celebrating her birthday with her host family. In true Peace Corps fashion of never refusing an invitation, I tagged along. We went to Ojo de Agua which was a natural mineral spring. With palm trees, hammocks, cabanas, boca mixtas (beef, chicken, French fries and salad) and a couple cervezas, it may have been one of the most relaxing places I’ve ever been.
Saturday. My friends Julian, Zac and I formed a 3 man wolfpack and went to a coffee farm for breakfast and a hike. On the hike we saw petroglyphs left by the pre-Colombian inhabitants.
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| Zac and I hikin' |
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| Huge spiderweb |
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| Breakfast at the coffee farm |
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| 3 man wolfpack |
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| Snake! |
Now I’m not sure how many of you have watched Lost but we were paralleling the islands all weekend. The similarities became a little disturbing when we wandered upon this:
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| The sounds were coming from... |
HOLWER MONKEYS! It was so cool. We wandered across a family of 12 monkeys enjoying the great weekend weather up in the rain forest canopy. After some more great food (hummus, pate, and bean soup with wheat bread and tortillas) we called it a day because…
Sunday. THE MARATHON! And by ‘marathon’ I mean 12k race (Nicas use ‘marathon' for any length footrace). Despite being hospitalized a couple weeks before and running only a handful of times since, I decided to participate anyway. I mean honestly, how many times will I have the opportunity to race around a volcano on an island? It was so much fun even though my time was terrible and I’m still sore.
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| See gringos go! |
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| No big deal, just running past an active volcano |
In short, it was a great trip and I recommend that all of my stateside readers visit!
Thursday is thanksgiving with the ambassador, more details to come!
hahahaha I love LOST!
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