Isla de Ometepe

Isla de Ometepe is an island on Lago Nicaragua, central americas biggest fresh water body as well as home to a freshwater shark, originally thought to be endemic but later discovered to have migrated from the Atlantic. And lo, it is the bull shark. The island itself consists of two volcanoes having grown together, and now supports a tropical ecosystem and sandy beaches on it's shores. Our plan was to climb the Madera peak, which is the easier one, while the effort needed to reach the summit of Conception rivals that of running a marathon. And for someone who cannot even run 10 km let alone 42, this was a nobrainer choice. Plus on Madera there is a nice crater lake.

However due to me being sick, no climbing would be happening. And as fate would have it, the lake's water level was so high that all the beaches were under the waves completely. And since the local bus traffic is only a few per day, doing sightseeing proved difficult. We stayed the first night on the Madera side, mostly sleeping and talking to a parrot outside the room. For the second night we returned to the Conception side and didn't do much more. Small amount of walking around in shade was all I could muster. For the evening we got a lucky deal on a room with a cable TV which was just perfect for recovering. We'd order a pizza and eat it in bed while watching Halloween I-IV in a row (happy happy Halloween).

After the short island tour we moved on to Leon, the country's former capitol, on our way north to Honduras. Booked 2 nights at the local backpacker haunt Via Via to hopefully finish off the fever (going down already) to face the new challenges in a new country. Simple restocking such as replacing broken sunglasses and looking for new pair of Converse sneakers (pair of converses here 20$; they didn't have my size. crap.), beyond that just cooling off in the garden pub of the hostel reading books and paying bills.

It's now been a month since we left Helsinki.


See all the pictures from Nicaragua here!



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