The Three Musketeers

Well, here is the long awaited second installment in the adventures of the Pavlik clan in the southern territories. And yes, the title has been cut down to a three theme, for our fourth rider has fallen. A moment of silence. To be honest, he had not fallen, but had simply failed to associate himself with our possey of hooligans for this second bit. Austin, we missed you. We would like to think it was mutual.

This second chapter in our Nicaraguan experience primarily deals with our excursion to Ometepe, an island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua housing two volcanoes. It is a very surreal experience to be on a small island in the middle of a gigantic lake, and in the shadows of two immense volcanoes. We took the chicken bus down to Rivas, then a taxi over to San Jorge (the port town) and then from there arrived in San Jose del Sur on Ometepe. One of the memorable moments in transportation was when we were searching for a taxi to get from Rivas to San Jorge. What you need to know is that upon exiting the bus here in Nicaragua (possibly especially as a gringo) you are immediately swarmed by a small army of mosquitoes and a slightly larger army of taxi drivers, both of which are out for blood. The taxi drivers are known to 'offer' quite elevated prices to tourists for the most part, so it is always a game of chance and bargain. Our little taxi driver took in to a whole new level in the realm of chance. After a bit of bargaining and arguing and walking away and being persued he said that he would flip a coin: if it landed on heads we pay $100.00 (~$4.00) córdoba in all for the trip, if tails we pay $80.00 (~$3.20). We agreed....he got lucky. Anyway, it must have been some unprecedented and legendary victory on his part to win over a tourist in such a fashion, because on our return trip when we reached to bus station to catch our bus back to Granada we saw every taxi driver in sight flipping coins all over the place for a fare, or simply flipping them to practice while waiting. Our 'amigo' came up to us and reminded us of our defeat a few days ago, introduced a few of his friends to the original suckers, and then offered to flip a coin for a rate back to Granada. We got a huge kick out of the whole thing, chatted a bit, and then safely boarded the bus back to Granada.

But without further ado, to the pictures!

Gives you a little idea of where we were and our travel route

The ferry

Our first sight of Ometepe...Conception Volcano on the left, Maderas volcano on the right

From the moment we saw Conception, we knew that was the one that we wanted to try to summit

 

Conception with an interesting cloud formation going on by it

The door to paradise... just waiting for us to exit our hostel room

Our first night we stayed at a place called Playa Martha in San Jose del Sur. It was dark when we arrived on the island and it was quite an adventure trying to find this place

Conception...always a presence, always within sight

Our lodging that first night

Preparing ourselves for a day of fun

...and off we go!

In case of volcanic eruption...

Breakfast in Moyagalpa at La Esquinita Caliente. San Jose del Sur was extremely small and there was nothing there, so we took a bus to Moyagalpa, which was much larger and gave us many more possibilities. The bus was remarkably packed

The activity we decided on was to rent scooters for the day and do a little exploring and self-guided touring of the island

This was Saturday, we decided that Sunday we would make our summitting bid

Conception from La Laguna de Charco Verde, a natural reserve that we walked around a bit in

 

Maderas Volcano, visible from the lake side of the reserve. This turned our to be quite the satisfactory swimming site

We were lucky enough to spot some Spider Monkeys in our walk around the lagoon.

We ended up seeing a total of 3 different species of monkey in the wild during our stay in Ometepe. The next day, as we were hiking Conception our guide pointed out a few Howler Monkeys and then later on a Capuchin Monkey

El Ojo de Agua. A natural spring that has been converted into a swimming site

Grabbing a quick dinner at a comedor on Playa Santa Domingo

Maderas with a cool sky en el fondo

Sunday summitting attempt: reached the halfway point of 1,000 meters...the total elevation of the volcano is about 1,610 meters. So technically this was more than halfway, but only in meters we would later figure out

Unfortunately, most of the time the upper bit of Conception is blanketed in clouds

Visibility was an obvious factor

It is required to have a guide in order to summit either volcano. Many tourists have died attempting to do so without one we heard. However, only Germans have ever died on Conception...so that wasn't bad, we felt safe enough. We didn't want to push our luck though, being born in Germany and all.

 We ended up turning around with 300 meters left, due to fatigue induced danger. The last 500 meters consisted of simply hiking up volcanic rock with absolutely no vegetation. Or,more accurately, searching for solidly grounded volcanic rock to step on, as much of it was small or not connected to the ground and extremely slippery. Our guide informed us that we should try not to slip, because if you slip is is very hard to stop sliding and due to the incline and you might just keep going. We took his advice. However, when we reached the point where we had 300 meters left and he said that it got steeper, we realized that we might not have realized what we had got ourselves into, and the best choice would be to turn around. He had told us that only 10% of people hike to the summit and that they are almost all alpiners, but we didn't quite understand what "alpiner" meant until we got up past the 1,000 meter mark a ways. All in all we chalked the experience up as an extremely bittersweet success. We learned a lot and were not necessarily prepared for that caliber of a hike, but we felt defeat as well.

My shoes after the hike. We ended up doing the whole 1,300 meters up and down in a little less than 5 hours

The church we attended in Moyagalpa

Example of the type of bus that "chicken bus" refers to

....we still could not excape the now smirking form of Conception

Chilling out on our ferry back to San Jorge

A last look at Ometepe...

...as we planned a later victory over Conception one day

The Fantastic 4

Hello again world outside of Nicaragua! Big news this week: I have recently seen off two visitors from my hometown of Farmington, New Mexico after their two week stay here with me in paradise. That news is big, but what is even bigger is that they were none other than my brother, Nathaniel, and my cousin, Eli! They came down for a couple weeks to learn a bit of Spanish, live Nica style with a host family, and get a little taste of what Nicaragua has to offer in the way of adventures. They were remarkably successful in all 3 areas! We packed too much into the two weeks to fit into a single blog entry, so this first one will just cover the first week or so. Here is their story in pictures and a few words:

We started out the touring with a walk down to the lake with Christian, one of the host brothers of Nathaniel and Eli

The epic walk down the lake front...no, this wasn't staged, I just caught them looking this cool

Break from the merciless Nicaraguan noon hour sun

Eli testing the waters in Nicaragua

Eli going out on a limb in Nicaragua

Nathaniel and Eli with their first bagged drink. This is something that is very common if you would like a soda to go, as the glass bottles can be returned for a little money

 You may have been wondering why this post is titled "The Fantastic 4" and not "The Terrific Trio" or something of the like. The reason is because Austin, a Casa Xaltevan student joined the three of us in many of our endeavors this first week, so we were indeed four. And yes, we were indeed fantastic.

Subiendo el torre de La Iglesia la Merced

 For our first weekend we decided upon the destination of San Juan del Sur, a town on the coast of the Pacific well known by tourists for its beaches and surfing, as well as a very happening night scene. There aren't any pictures of it, but the during the night that we spent in the hostel in San Juan del Sur there was a concert going out literally right outside our lodging on the street. It went until 2:30 in the morning. You were able to hear it going until 2:30 in the morning through our walls.

Not great quality, but it gives you the idea

We had a fancy bus on the way from Rivas to San Juan del Sur and were able to watch some of the most well known Spanish music videos. I guess they were meant to get us in the mood for the beach scene.

A nice $C50.00 ($2.00) breakfast at a local place in San Juan del Sur. This picture is post consumption unfortunately.

Making a stop to cross the Golden Gate Footbridge of San Juan del Sur

...Rio de Janiero Jesus' baby brother was watching the whole ordeal...

Maderas beach, a very popular surfing location. The waves there that day got up to 5 meters (about 15 feet) tall I would think). San Juan del Sur was also the location of this year's world surfing championships.

Off to try our hand (or maybe feet?) at the whole surfing thing. We weren't able to take lessons, but by the end of the  day we had all stood up a few times

The epic question: to surf or not to surf? Eli ended up ripping up the waves a bit.

From the balcony of our hostel, you can see a few of the tents from the night before's concert

...and in the other direction we see the ocean.

Off to tour Las Isletas

Our guide feeding one of the monkeys on Monkey Island

Pausa para comer frutas

...and later a coconut break.

Mombacho volcano from the water

The bike ride back into town.

Start.....

.....your....

.....engines!!!

This was a week of climbing church towers. This is on the way up the tower of the cathedral.

The stairs got narrower and narrower the further up you climbed

The cathedral from arriba

La Iglesia San Francisco...newly painted

The boys taking a look at the museum next door

Ending the week off with a nice refreshing visit to Euro Café to wind down a little and get ready for the next round of frantic activity

To be continued....