The fist couple days here we spent in San Juan Del Sur, a cool little town on the Pacific near the lake, and surrounding beaches. The town was very relaxed and had an entertaining night life though the people at the bars were mostly westerners. Le beaches were beautiful though I would still rate the ones I saw in Costa Rica higher. After a couple days of that we decided we were sick of beaches and headed to Ometepe.
Ometepe is an island that formed in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua as the result of two active volcanoes. It’s a unique place with a small amount of cool jungle with monkeys and several species of birds that only live there. The lake itself is huge and is home to the only fresh water sharks in the world (though they have been hunted to near extinction). We found a very cool hostel with a lot of backpackers and offered activities to post up at while there. The second day we hiked to the top of the nearby southern volcano and into the crater to swim in the lake that has formed there. The scenery was incredible though the lake was about 4 feet of mud with 18 inches of water on top of it. The excitement began on the way down when three of us got separated from each other and the guide and ended up totally lost. One of the girls ended up on the wrong side of the volcano and had to take two buses to get back to the meeting point and one of the other girls and myself ended up having to cut through barb wire fences and cattle fields asking for directions to the road (we couldn’t remember the name of the hostel) from the couple cattle farmers we saw.
The third day we took out two person kayaks to see the two monkey islands nearby. Everything was going smoothly until one of the girl and the guy she was into the kayak with decided to get too close to the monkeys which turned out to be incredibly hostile. I looked over because I hear d screaming to see one of the monkeys jump off a tree into the kayak and begin shaking the crap out of Holly while another one jumped in and started grabbing for goods. They tried to fight the monkeys off with a paddle but it promptly stole it and jumped back to the island. They managed to get the little bastards off by paddling away from the island. The monkeys are apparently scared of the water and so jumped back to safety. The whole thing only took maybe two minutes and was one of the funniest things I have ever seen (as no one was actually hurt). It took almost 30 minutes to lure the devils away from the paddle so someone could swim over and grab it.
We got to Granada last night in time to meet some typically big, crazy, drunk Australians and go out and get wasted. Was the first time we have gone big in a while and we are all hurting now. We are checking out this morning and heading to Managua to watch a soccer game which we are told will be quite a scene as the teams apparently hate each other. It will be made more interesting by the hand over, lack of sleep and intense heat.
Pictures to come…
WOW - Monkey attacks, wading through mud lakes, vegas chicks and drunk Australians.....I'm totally jealous.
ReplyDeleteI can see you have fully immersed yourself in the culture since your written english is as broken as the locals..... ;) Hopefully you can teach me some new stuff in Spanish when you get back.
CHOLLA!