Ometepe Island

The view of Volcano Conception from the ferry

We arrived on Ometepe in the dark and quickly were shuffled into a taxi headed for Altagracia. On the ferry however, two competing hotel reps were convincing us to stay with them but neither would fully agree to the price we wanted. Once we drove up the terrible gravel road we looked at the competing hotels but neither were satisfactory. We settled on Hotel Kencho. While registering a young man approached us offering to be our guide if we wanted to go on any hikes in the morning. After some hard bargaining and finding one extra person to come along we booked him for the day to hike up Volcano Maderas.  

At four in the morning we met our guide, Mel, and boarded the bus. The hike featured many wild howler monkeys, as well as urrakkas and frogs, a fire salamander, and many other animals and plants. The hike was on a nice trail for the first kilometer, and then became much steeper and more slippery as it followed a stream bed full of slightly damp slick clay covered rocks. The hike took a long time as Rigel, earlier easily able to lead the way, fell behind due to the slow and deliberate steps required to keep from falling in his slick worn out crocs. Probably should have brought hiking shoes on this trip....

From the top, took a quick descent into the crater lake at the top hoping for lunch and a quick swim to clean the mud from the climb off. The lake was so silty that you could easily sink in up to your knees and, as we eventually figured out, there were no deeper areas to swim in and the mud was both cloying and omnipresent. Climbing back out was challenging as the crater rim is very steep. Also on the way down the volcano, Kacie slipped and fell bruising her wrist, everyone's shoes got covered in mud, and Rigel took even longer.

At the bottom after slowly trailing in we went for food at the place we bought our park access tickets at before hitching a ride on a pickup truck to Playa Santa Domingo. At Playa Santo Domingo, kids were playing soccer in the sand on the beach, the wind was whipping pretty good so the waves were a bit bigger than you'd expect in a lake, and there were many people walking, swimming, and playing on the beach. Here we waited for the bus that seemed to have broken down or something because it took an extra hour and a half before arriving fully loaded.

Our next day was spent swimming in the Ojo de Agua ( eye of the water) which was a beautiful cool water spring with very clean cool water in a shady spot next to old petroglyphs and many animals in the forest. Afterwards we made our way to a restaurant on the beach where Rigel took a quick swim in the big waves; it was very windy. Instead of waiting for the bus that might come, we hitched a ride back to Altagracia.