Ometepe
The island the residents refer to as an oasis of peace is also often called the "Jewel of Nicaragua," which for those of you in the Bay Area is akin to explaining Lake Merritt as the jewel of Oakland: it doesn't sound really impressive to an outsider at first gasp, but once you've seen it, you get it. Ometepe is cool.
It's also one of the few places I've been where the "friendliness of the locals" (most overused guidebook phrase of all time?) lives up to its reputation. Example #1: Bus service across the island is spotty (there might be one every three hours), and my first day there, I was attempting to walk from one town to another with a heavy backpack. Five minutes after I took off, a family in a pickup truck pulled up next to me, asked where I was headed, and then encouraged me to get in the payload. Half an hour later, when they dropped me off and refused the money I offered, I realized that their kindliness was just par for the course.
Ometepe, if you haven't bothered clicking on the links above, is the product of two volcanoes that emerged from the middle of an enormous freshwater lake, with a narrow land bridge between the two cones--overall, it looks like a figure-eight/infinity symbol. Volcán Concepción, to the west, is still active and perfectly conical; Volcán Maderas, to the east, is extinct with a crater lake (from collected rainfall) at the summit.
Hiking up Maderas is easier (7 - 9 hours roundtrip, as opposed to 12) and is generally acknowledged to be the more rewarding between the two, so it was a rather simple choice. I set out in the morning from Finca Magdalena, a farm/cooperative on the north side of the volcano where I'd spent the previous night, and the going was good. August is the middle of the rainy season (they call it "winter," ha), and when you're hiking up into a cloud forest, the air is moist and slightly cool already. In addition, I was carrying a largish backpack* and grunting my way up a fairly steep trail, so I was close to soaked within the first hour and a half. The trail was rather hard to follow--in many places it wasn't "marked" so much as "suggested," and once I apparently left the trail altogether and had to climb through some trees to get back to it--and after a little over two hours, I found myself completely unable to figure out where it was going. So I did what I always do in that sort of situation: I wandered about for another half-hour.
That didn't really do me any good. I found my way back to where the trail theoretically ended and assessed the situation. The mist in the air was rather thick, and it wasn't clear which way was "uphill." So I did the next best thing: I climbed a tree (still carrying the largish backpack) hoping to get a better view of my surroundings. By the time I got about 20 feet up, it was clear I wasn't going to see any more up there than on the ground. So I looked down.
At this point, I should mention that the trees (and everything else around me) were sopping wet, and coated in mossy/ferny growths. I'd managed to get up via a series of branches that were no longer accessible--having, um, knocked a few of them off--so I figured out that the only way to get down was to wrap my legs around the trunk and slide.
(Fast forward past recovering from the pain and getting up off my back. )
Standing there in the silent mist, option three presented itself: yell for help. I'd heard some rustling off in the distance, and--incredible luck--I came across a guided group of a half-dozen Spaniards and one tagalong Canadian. They had just gone down into the crater and were about to hike back down the outside when I'd found them. The guide, a thirtyish local whose name I later learned was Nelson, advised me to join them since the trail was an ugly mess and it was unlikely I'd find my own way back down. I was curious about how close I'd gotten to the lip of the crater, though, and the Canadian pointed to a misty drop-off 20 feet away from where I was standing.**
So we started heading downhill, and Nelson was hurrying us along because the Spaniards had to make a 4:00 ferry back to the mainland; as we descended, I noticed that the trail was nothing like the one I had been on earlier. Nelson asked me where I was headed, and when I said I was going back to the finca, he looked at me funny and started laughing. We were heading down the south side of the volcano. Apparently, in my wandering around near the "summit," I'd managed to circumnavigate halfway around the crater without ever actually seeing it.
Nelson found this hilarious (I supposed) and stopped our progress a couple of times in order to announce to the Spaniards just how lost I was. What a dick, I thought.
We made it to the southern shore at about 3 (by this point, I'd been on my feet for nearly six hours straight), and had to chase down a bus in order to send the Spaniards and the Canadian toward their respective destinations. Nelson turned to me and said that he actually lived not far from where I was staying and he could walk me back. OK, well, cool. I was still soaked, muddy, and exhausted, but at least not lost or stranded.
So we walked back along the main road for a while***, and he offered to show me a shortcut. We cut through the backyards of various farmers, and he stopped to say hello to a number of neighbors and acquaintances. In one clearing, we apporached an older man standing in front of a wooden shack, and Nelson turned to me to say, "This is my father. And this is my house." He told his father just how off-track I'd been, and I figured out then that he wasn't making fun of me so much as marveling at the fact that I'd earlier gotten off one trail and somehow managed to find another one.
Nelson offered me dinner (it was 5 by this time) and after he went inside to serve up the beans, rice, and plantains already simmering on the stove, I was left outside with his father. I looked at the wooden shack (dirt floor, corrugated-iron roof) and asked him how long they'd been living there.
"I was born here," he replied.
After we ate, Nelson pulled out a guitar and he and his father sang me a couple of nice songs about the beauty of Ometepe. We chatted for a few more minutes--they told me about the islanders' resolutely peaceful history compared to the mainland--and then he showed me the way back to where I was staying. I offered him some money (for the food, at least) and he looked at me funny as he reluctantly took it.
I think I might just have to go back some day.
* holding three (3) liters of water, sunscreen, camera, reading material, foodstuffs, extra clothes (just in case), and useless crap
** He also mentioned having heard that an another American had gotten lost up there for two days recently, with his family chartering a helicopter to come look for him. Apocryphal?
*** He told me that he only occasionally works as a tour guide, since his main occupation is permaculture, which is gaining popularity in the region.
It's also one of the few places I've been where the "friendliness of the locals" (most overused guidebook phrase of all time?) lives up to its reputation. Example #1: Bus service across the island is spotty (there might be one every three hours), and my first day there, I was attempting to walk from one town to another with a heavy backpack. Five minutes after I took off, a family in a pickup truck pulled up next to me, asked where I was headed, and then encouraged me to get in the payload. Half an hour later, when they dropped me off and refused the money I offered, I realized that their kindliness was just par for the course.
Ometepe, if you haven't bothered clicking on the links above, is the product of two volcanoes that emerged from the middle of an enormous freshwater lake, with a narrow land bridge between the two cones--overall, it looks like a figure-eight/infinity symbol. Volcán Concepción, to the west, is still active and perfectly conical; Volcán Maderas, to the east, is extinct with a crater lake (from collected rainfall) at the summit.
Hiking up Maderas is easier (7 - 9 hours roundtrip, as opposed to 12) and is generally acknowledged to be the more rewarding between the two, so it was a rather simple choice. I set out in the morning from Finca Magdalena, a farm/cooperative on the north side of the volcano where I'd spent the previous night, and the going was good. August is the middle of the rainy season (they call it "winter," ha), and when you're hiking up into a cloud forest, the air is moist and slightly cool already. In addition, I was carrying a largish backpack* and grunting my way up a fairly steep trail, so I was close to soaked within the first hour and a half. The trail was rather hard to follow--in many places it wasn't "marked" so much as "suggested," and once I apparently left the trail altogether and had to climb through some trees to get back to it--and after a little over two hours, I found myself completely unable to figure out where it was going. So I did what I always do in that sort of situation: I wandered about for another half-hour.
That didn't really do me any good. I found my way back to where the trail theoretically ended and assessed the situation. The mist in the air was rather thick, and it wasn't clear which way was "uphill." So I did the next best thing: I climbed a tree (still carrying the largish backpack) hoping to get a better view of my surroundings. By the time I got about 20 feet up, it was clear I wasn't going to see any more up there than on the ground. So I looked down.
At this point, I should mention that the trees (and everything else around me) were sopping wet, and coated in mossy/ferny growths. I'd managed to get up via a series of branches that were no longer accessible--having, um, knocked a few of them off--so I figured out that the only way to get down was to wrap my legs around the trunk and slide.
(Fast forward past recovering from the pain and getting up off my back. )
Standing there in the silent mist, option three presented itself: yell for help. I'd heard some rustling off in the distance, and--incredible luck--I came across a guided group of a half-dozen Spaniards and one tagalong Canadian. They had just gone down into the crater and were about to hike back down the outside when I'd found them. The guide, a thirtyish local whose name I later learned was Nelson, advised me to join them since the trail was an ugly mess and it was unlikely I'd find my own way back down. I was curious about how close I'd gotten to the lip of the crater, though, and the Canadian pointed to a misty drop-off 20 feet away from where I was standing.**
So we started heading downhill, and Nelson was hurrying us along because the Spaniards had to make a 4:00 ferry back to the mainland; as we descended, I noticed that the trail was nothing like the one I had been on earlier. Nelson asked me where I was headed, and when I said I was going back to the finca, he looked at me funny and started laughing. We were heading down the south side of the volcano. Apparently, in my wandering around near the "summit," I'd managed to circumnavigate halfway around the crater without ever actually seeing it.
Nelson found this hilarious (I supposed) and stopped our progress a couple of times in order to announce to the Spaniards just how lost I was. What a dick, I thought.
We made it to the southern shore at about 3 (by this point, I'd been on my feet for nearly six hours straight), and had to chase down a bus in order to send the Spaniards and the Canadian toward their respective destinations. Nelson turned to me and said that he actually lived not far from where I was staying and he could walk me back. OK, well, cool. I was still soaked, muddy, and exhausted, but at least not lost or stranded.
So we walked back along the main road for a while***, and he offered to show me a shortcut. We cut through the backyards of various farmers, and he stopped to say hello to a number of neighbors and acquaintances. In one clearing, we apporached an older man standing in front of a wooden shack, and Nelson turned to me to say, "This is my father. And this is my house." He told his father just how off-track I'd been, and I figured out then that he wasn't making fun of me so much as marveling at the fact that I'd earlier gotten off one trail and somehow managed to find another one.
Nelson offered me dinner (it was 5 by this time) and after he went inside to serve up the beans, rice, and plantains already simmering on the stove, I was left outside with his father. I looked at the wooden shack (dirt floor, corrugated-iron roof) and asked him how long they'd been living there.
"I was born here," he replied.
After we ate, Nelson pulled out a guitar and he and his father sang me a couple of nice songs about the beauty of Ometepe. We chatted for a few more minutes--they told me about the islanders' resolutely peaceful history compared to the mainland--and then he showed me the way back to where I was staying. I offered him some money (for the food, at least) and he looked at me funny as he reluctantly took it.
I think I might just have to go back some day.
* holding three (3) liters of water, sunscreen, camera, reading material, foodstuffs, extra clothes (just in case), and useless crap
** He also mentioned having heard that an another American had gotten lost up there for two days recently, with his family chartering a helicopter to come look for him. Apocryphal?
*** He told me that he only occasionally works as a tour guide, since his main occupation is permaculture, which is gaining popularity in the region.
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