Ometepe & San Juan del Sur

Southern Nicaragua

06.07.2009 - 12.07.2009
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Ometepe is an island on Lago Nicaragua consisting of two volcanoes, Concepcion and Maderas, joint by a narrow strip of land in the middle. It's a beautiful place and we had a very peaceful, mostly relaxing few days on the island, at least when not dripping wet with sweat from the humidity.

We stayed at El Zipolote, an Italian hippy run ecological farm. It's lookout had great views of both volcanoes and the lake, there was a constant supply of free bananas, mangoes and passion fruits, and our cabin had a balcony complete with hammocks.

We climbed Volcan Maderas, or at least half way up to a lookout (maybe a bit lazy but it was cloudy higher up anyway) where we had a great view of Concepcion as well as some howler monkeys swinging in the trees.

We spent another day cycling along the very bumpy road that runs around the island, quite a painful return to mountain biking after several months off.

The beach even came with football goalposts attached.

On our final bus journey back to the ferry, I sat next to a man from the Caribbean coast who told me that he had been a 'special guy' during the war, and that he 'still knew how to hurt people.' He also lamented the fact that 'this generation may be smart, but mine's stronger.' Apart from that he was very friendly.

Our next stop was San Juan del Sur for a weekend of sun, sand and surf.

We took a lesson at Playa Romanso - our teacher was Alfredo, a Peruvian who proudly listed Kelly Slater as a personal friend (apparently they were at 'the academy' together in San Diego.) Several times he talked of how great the surfing was in Bude and that England was his mother's favourite country.

He was an excellent teacher though and we both made good progress - a lot more successful than recent attempts to surf on our own. As seems to be the norm when surfing, the van/jeep was over an hour late to pick us up though we got to watch some more talented surfers while waiting.