Ometepe Island

Today was the Best Day Ever, then the worst, then the best again – several times. It was a pretty busy day, so settle in; this post is going to be a long one.

We started out for Omotepe Island early this morning because we wanted to catch the minibus at seven and the ferry at nine. We waited for the minibus forever and the ride was actually pretty cushy for a minibus, but I’ve got plans for a whole series of posts about the different ways to get around in Nicaragua, so I’ll save the details of the minibus experience for another time. All you need to know is that it took two hours to get from BaseCamp to the port in San Jorge.

The excitement really began when, after a fair bit of confusion about different ports, ferries and fares, we saw the boat we’d decided to take. It was rickety to say the very least, but that goes for most transportation around here. It’s hard to describe exactly what the setup was, but imagine a couple of benches stuck on an open deck with a few railings and you’ve pretty much got it. There are a bunch of photos in the album for this week (here), but the one I was most excited about getting was this one of an adorable Nica boy and his family. Making faces at him distracted me for most of the trip – which is probably a good thing, because I was going to do enough worrying later on in the day anyway.

We arrived on the island and made a beeline for the Aly Hotel, which was mentioned in one of our guidebooks for its delicious breakfasts. Since we’d already been holding off on breakfast for four hours, they probably could have served us anything! As it were, the food was delicious, but disaster struck while we were waiting. I have these handy little combination locks for both the zippers on my daypack because I was pretty sure I would lose a key and you can reset the combination! 

Unfortunately, Jason and I must have done just that when we were struggling to lock one of them on our way to the ferry because it wouldn’t open. At all. We’d somehow managed to lock ourselves out of my backpack, which had rather important things like sunscreen, bathing suits, water and most of my cash for the day: Worst Day Ever. Jason went off in search of something to cut it off with while I resigned myself to systematically trying combinations: 1-0-0, 2-0-0, 3-0-0… When I grew tired of that, I set it back to the original combination and gave the numbers a spin.  It opened. I had happened upon the new combination we’d set by accident and it was officially the Best Day Ever!

Unfortunately, that title didn’t stick for long. After a lot more confusion about where things were on the island, how far away the active volcano was (which is not the same as asking how long it takes to climb all the way to the top of said volcano) and what kind of cost we were looking at for a tour, we headed over to a place where we knew someone spoke English. In fact, the guy there (we nicknamed him Mr. Miyagi for reasons that remain mysterious to most of us) said that we could rent scooters from him and take them around the island to see what we wanted to see! The problem was that he said this to Jason while he was hunting for tools; by the time we’d finished our breakfast and come looking for him, he was gone.

Enter the people across the street. They also had scooters and would give us a deal! (Ha.) First we had to sort out what we could actually do – could we get to the Ojo de agua (Eye of Water swimming hole) on the scooters? Could we get to the volcano? Could we get to both? – and then how we were going to do it. As it turns out, it can be hard to rent scooters for a day with no ID, no licenses and no credit card. I’m kidding – they were actually pretty willing to give them to us, even with a deposit totaling roughly $27. 

Things got tricky when we actually got the scooters. There was, in fact, only one scooter, which Brianne would ride with me behind her. The other two were more like dirtbikes, which John and Jason would ride. Chaos ensued when John answered the questions “Have you ever ridden an ATV?” and “Do you know how to drive standard?” with a disconcertingly relaxed, “Nope!” The owners of the scooter/dirtbike company were not thrilled – and neither was Mr. Miyagi, who had come back at some point to join the confused collection of tourists, bikes and Nicas in the middle of the street. (We had to move over every once in a while for the occasional bus, car or dirtbike.)

Jason stalled about six times before he got going. (Did I mention the bikes were parked on a hill?) Brianne and I stood in the beating sun, wondering if the worry we were feeling was still at “This is scary but it will be an adventure” or if it had progressed to “This is the worst idea we’ve ever had.” When helmets were shoved into our hands and I watched John look inquisitively at the controls on his bike, my thought process was more like, “My parents are going to kill me for doing this. I better wear this helmet. I don’t want my skull cracked open, buuuuut I don’t want lice. I wonder if there’s a hospital on this island?” (In case you can’t feel the fear, frustration and heat exhaustion through the screen, the day was back to Worst Day Ever by this point. It might be a good time to take a break from reading, too – there’s a ways to go.)

Just as Jason was giving his word to Mr. Miyagi that we would be very careful with the bikes despite John’s lack of experience, John revved the engine ever so slightly and dropped the bike in surprise. Things were not looking good. And yet, we didn’t stop. Though the threats of death, injury, bankruptcy and itchy scalps grew more and more apparent, we stuck to our plan because we wanted to go to this swimming hole and we wanted to do it on the scooters, okay?! The four of us – John and Jason on their own bikes, me clutching desperately at Brianne’s waist – made our way slowly up the hill (cobblestone street, of course) and turned into the gas station. I can’t imagine what the person working there thought, because we then proceeded to do about a dozen veeeeeery slow laps around the gas pumps, trying to convince ourselves that maybe we could do this after all without dying.

Yeah, we couldn’t. I’d been saying for a while that maybe this wasn’t the best idea and finally said that actually, it was probably the worst idea ever. We’d spent an hour trying to get these bikes sorted out and it was clearly not in anybody’s best interest.

So we trudged back down the hill to ask for our money back and asked Mr. Miyagi if there was another option. There was! In fact, he would take us to the swimming hole, wait for us there, bring us back and tell us stories in the car for only forty bucks! It was a steal even before we’d set eyes on the swimming hole. On the way there, squished happily into the back of his vehicle, we listened to stories about Chico Largo, a witch who turns people into animals if they go back on their agreements with her. We also learned that we shouldn’t take red fish from the lagoon  (we’ll be struck with a desire to live on Omotepe forever) or pick white flowers on the Island (we’ll never find our way back home.) In the midst of all this storytelling, we a) got a few great shots of Concepcion, the active volcano and b) realized that we would have gotten about three minutes down the road, then pulled over to fight, crashed while trying to pull over and had the bikes stolen while we fought. We’d made a good decision.

When we got to the swimming hole, we realized that we’d made a really good decision! If you ever happen to be in Nicaragua and want to go to Omotepe Island in Lake Nicaragua, spend some time at the Ojo de Agua. It’s a pool with crystal clear water, a few cool little streams, beautiful foliage and a Tarzan rope. What more could you ask for? (If you said piña coladas, they had those too.) After spending close to two incredibly hectic hours trying to make our scooter plan work, it was absolutely wonderful to spend some time swimming around and playing with my camera’s underwater capabilities. We were back to the Best Day Ever.

Then we got a ride back to the ferry, noticed some sunburns, hitched a ride in the back of the pickup, took the minibus home and finished the Best Day Ever off with the Best Shower Ever.

The End.

PS: I'm not going to frolic around like this for the whole eight weeks - there are still three weeks of Spanish classes left before my placement starts, but I'm going to start watching surgeries and helping out this week anyway.