Ometepe - Island of the Two Mountains

Aaahhh...just got back from a lovely 5 mile jog/walk with Joe.  We woke up at 5:00am and headed out to the lake, took off our shoes and walked in the water along the shore line with the horses and cows that were out there.  Wow, it was gorgeous - the sun had just come up and the water level (now that it's the rainy season) has covered all the garbage that could previously be seen along the shore. What a wonderful way to start the day.  And Joe even offered to wash our sweaty, stinky clothes when we got back, which made it even better :)

My apologies for the blogging fast I've been on around here!  I have no excuse other than that when I put it off for one day, it's easier to put it off for another - as with most things in life :) And I guess the fact that our ipod touch is no more has put a damper on things too.  It's no fun to post without pictures.  But we've started getting used to taking Joe's phone with us every once in a while so we have pictures to share again. Hopefully that will help me get back into this blogging thing :)

So, we did this Ometepe trip like 2 weeks ago and we lost all of our pictures of it when we lost the ipod, so the pictures in this blog were ones I found online that were pretty much identical to the ones we had taken.

Ometepe island is an island in Lake Nicaragua that is made up of two volcanoes: Conception and Maderas.  The people that live there mostly farm and fish, but it has become a tourist must-see in recent years, so we decided to give it a try.

That morning we caught a chicken bus to Rivas - 1 1/2 hours away.  The ride was beautiful; we passed rice fields, banana plantations, animals grazing along the road, little houses with grass roofs, everything that is normal Nicaraguan.  And I felt very blessed - again - that we can be in this beautiful country. When we got to Rivas we walked the two miles to San Jorge, and caught a ferry to the island.  The island is really not that far from the mainland, but it took 2 HOURS to get there. We sat on the top and enjoyed every minute of it.

The volcano in the background is Conception - the higher of the two.  It is usually covered with a cloud forest, like it is in the picture, because of its humidity and altitude.  A cloud forest happens when the clouds just stay right over the tree tops.  Can you imagine hiking that thing and not even being able to enjoy the view from the top???  Pretty cool to see a cloud constantly hugging the top of a mountain like that.

When we got to the pier we pulled up alongside the end of it, the workers threw two ropes to some guys standing on the end of the pier who tied them around a stake and then the boat used them to back up perfectly to the cement docking point on the left so the cars could drive off.  We thought it was ingenious :) And obviously someone else did too because they posted this picture of it online :)

We only spent about 5 hours on the island.  Most tourists spend a few days swimming, hiking, horseback riding, etc., but we were satisfied just seeing it and Joe was anxious to get back to programming.  The only paved road is around Volcano Conception, so we took a bus around, stopped in a little town, saw a park there, and then jumped back on the bus to complete the loop.  In the park was a 3D map of the island...

As well as some ancient lava rock carvings they've found on the island.

 We got back to the town of Moyogalpa, where the ferries leave, and spent a couple of hours looking through the shops and finding cover from the afternoon downpour.  When the rain stopped we went down to the shore to walk around, and out in the water we saw groups of women out doing their laundry! There were little laundry stations every so often - we probably saw 6 or 7 of them - and the kids were out with their moms playing in the water and the women were in little groups washing their laundry and chatting away.  So cool! I had to get a close-up picture of them, so Joe and I rolled up our shorts and waded out.  This online picture shows this group pretty close to land, but the groups we saw were probably 100 yards out because it was so shallow.  They let us take their picture and we took pictures of the kids too.  It was definitely the best part of the day. 

 We caught the 4:00 ferry to go back to the mainland.  This is the view leaving the island. 

On the way back we met a tourist from Denmark, really neat guy.  He owns a magazine and does a lot of world traveling to write articles on different countries, cities, restaurants, etc. We spent quite a bit of the ferry ride back looking at pictures he had taken from all over the world.  We decided he should sell them to National Geographic or something, they were incredible!  When we reached the port he offered to let us ride back with him because he was staying in Granada and had hired a driver to get him out to the island and back.  We thanked him and jumped into the taxi that we thought was his hired driver, but a few miles out, a taxi pulled in behind us honking.  Turns out that that was his hired taxi and he had gotten into the wrong one.  He was so embarrassed.  We jumped out in the middle of traffic and climbed in the other taxi and sped off for Granada.

It wasn't until we reached Granada and were walking home that we realized that the ipod was gone.  It could've fallen out of our pockets in either of the taxis or I could've been holding it, set it down on the seat, and in our hurry to change taxis we didn't check the seat to make sure we got everything.  We knew we had it when we got in the first taxi, but after that it's anyone's guess.  We were sick.  Really sick.  All of our pictures from Ometepe and the week before were lost as was our camera for future pictures. 

But it made me feel better to picture some poor family finding it - 3 months or more worth of wages - and praying in thanksgiving that night that they had found such a treasure :)  Maybe the mom will listen to my music while she does the daily laundry, like I did.  Hopefully she likes the Carpenters :) If I had to lose it somewhere, I'm glad I lost it here where the people can really use the money.  I'm just hoping there wasn't any information on it that's going to hurt us in the future if it wasn't a good person that found it...