Nicaragua - From busy city to lazy island life

I´m no longer in Nicaragua, but I´ll fill you in on the rest of my adventures.

I managed to find the USAC students and we went out in the evening but there wasn´t much to do, though I ended up dancing a bit of salsa. The following day in Granada I took a horse and carriage tour through the city and took a ton of photos. The place is indeed charming.

Narrow city streets full of color

Grand promenade

Stately buildings in the town square

Oldest house in Granada

Evidence of the fire that burned most of the city in the early 1900s

 
By mid afternoon I was ready to leave and headed to the ferry, bound for Ometepe, a large island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua.


The ferry ride was long, about 3.5 hours, but I took a long comfortable nap stretched out across a padded bench in an air conditioned room and watched a beautiful sunset. I met a guy who works at a hotel who convinced my to stay there for only $3 a night with a free taxi to arrive. The place was not exactly beautiful, but the people were so warm and friendly that I really enjoyed it. The cooking was fantastic as well.

I met two American girls who were also there and the next day we left the hotel at 4 a.m. to climb one of the two volcanoes responsible for forming the island called Madera. It was a 3.75 hour hike up and a 3.25 hour hike back down. The whole trail was uphill and steep, sometimes with huge steps and having to pull yourself up by tree branches.

Abby, me and our tour guide - clearly in better shape than the both of us!

We arrived at the top where the now-dormant crater is a lagoon and stayed for about an hour. It was gorgeous. On the way back down we stopped at a lookout from which the entire island could be seen. It was breathtaking (as if I hadn´t already completely lost my breath from the exhausting hike).

My legs were screaming the whole time but it was completely worth it. We saw howler and white faced monkeys and some beautiful birds. On the way back down we walked through a ranch that had stones with petroglyphs carved into them from the indigenous peoples who used to live there. They were fascinating. We returned to the hotel at about 4 p.m. completely exhausted and I had a long stretch session and popped some aspirin to avoid being unable to walk the next day.

That night I went to the central park to watch some recreational sports competitions and met a few locals, later falling into bed like a brick.