Ometepe

After a much needed detox me and Garrett blasted out of the Naked Tiger. Hired a taxi and headed 30 minutes inland to a place called Ometepe. Ometepe is a large 2 volcano island surrounded by lake half the size of lake Michigan. Only way to get out there is by a ferry. After the taxi dropped us off we walked to the ferry and waited for it to arrive. Practiced my spanish with some local street vendor, laughed at him while he laughed at me. Finally the ferry pulls up. Crammed with people, cars and 2 large shipping trucks. Right when it docked everyone runs in. No lines, not even the word polite could possibly be in these locals vocabulary. To top it off, I have my surfboard, so running up and down the stairs on the ferry was fun. Got situated on the top of the ferry and waited. Some of the local kids were climbing up the ferry and jumping off. I went over to chat with them and laugh at there failed 2 rotation flips. One of the kids took a picture with me and his friend, must of thought I was somebody I'm not.

Still waiting for these 2 shipping trucks to drive off, one got stuck and nearly tipped the boat over. Everyone is on top of the boat and now two of the trucks were on one side of the bus and not evening things out. The caption kicked everyone off the bus so we wouldn't die. Once again, we waited and watched the truck struggle to get out of the ferry. To this day, me and Garrett still have no idea why the driver didn't just gas it and drive out. Nothing looked wrong what so ever. But they have there weird ways in Nicaragua.

2 hours later on the ferry we arrived at Ometepe. Like idiots we didn't read any books so we had no idea where to go on this island. The island had about 7 mini towns and we just didn't know which one to go to. We jumped onto some other tourist van and headed out. Met two new friends. One is Rose from San Francisco who is living in Columbia and on her holiday and another guy Juan from Spain. Both work together and travelling together for a few days. We all ended up at the same hostel in the town of Santa Domingo. Instant friends we went out and grabbed some pascada (fish) at some random restaurant. A long hour later we got our gi-normous fish and stuffed ourselves. Next day we all decided to venture the island.

Day 2

Woke up and rented some bikes and headed to ojo de agua (eye of water). This place was a really nice natural swimming pool full of locals. We swam and relaxed for a little bit and then headed out. Our main mission was to find this waterfall. The locals said it was impossible to do both ojo de agua and the waterfall in one day. We ventured out to prove them wrong. We road our bikes for a few hours down some sketchy gravel/large rock roads, never finding any end. Each time we asked a local how far it was they would say between 10 minutes and 2 hours. No one ever knew. By the way, that is how it works out here. You ask a question and they always say 10 minutes.

We finally ended up at some fruit stand and Juan chatted with these people for a while. They were selling bananas for 1 cordoba (maybe 10 cents), calalas (passion fruit), honey and naranjas (oranges). All for the cheapest I've seen on my trip. Finally saw a passion fruit tree for the first time and was in heaven. This is my favorite fruit so I pretty much bought the whole tree from them.

Long story short, Juan negotiated a volcano tour with this guy. Instead of going through a company we hired him to take 4 of us up for $15 total! After we settled our deal we took off looking for this waterfall. We road our bikes for another 1/2 hour on this unforgiving trail. We ended up at some random beach and decided to call it quits. Jumped in the water and noticed a few kids pulling fishing nets out of the water. We headed over to see what they were catching. A few photos later and a bunch of fish we decided to buy 7 of these bad boys off of them. Each fish was 10 cordobas each! (50 cents). Unreal deal we couldn't pass up. Only problem, our hostel didn't have a kitchen and we had not tools to gut the fish except for a small pocket knife. We bought them anyways.

Got back to the hostel and started to ask the lady if we could use there back kitchen to gut the fish. Well, better yet, Juan is doing all of this work. Fluent Spaniard using his charm with the village ladies. They said no. He would go back and say "can we use your knife?", then go back "can we use your cutting board", "yada yada". Finally the lady just says she will cook us dinner if we give her two of our fishes! What a deal. She ended up cooking this incredible fish soap and we ate it with her family. Juan suckered her in and she ended up doing everything for us.

Day 3:

Woke up at 4:30 to to hike this volcano. Word is, this is a really hard climb. I just did Acatanango and that was hard but easily do-able. We hoped on a chicken bus at 4:50 and headed to Santa Cruise. From Santa Cruise we walked down that gravel/rock road for the next hour. Finally arrived at the fruit stand where our 18 year old guide "Kevin" was waiting for us. We stocked up on fruits and bread and headed up the volcano. The first hour was flat but that was because we were walking towards the volcano. All of a sudden we passed all of the farmland and arrived into the deep forest. No path and only a machete making our pathway we started to go straight up. I mean straight up. The only stair sets were the roots of the trees. The noises we made woke up the monkeys in the distant and they would yell at the top of there lungs to scare us away! haha. This hike straight up didn't end for the next 6 hours. No reference on where you were except large drop-offs that would tear you up to your death. Sometimes you would get a sneak peak of where you were, but we were surrounded by clouds so visibility wasn't in our favor. It reminded me of medieval times, lord of the rings steez and plain old savage manly stuff. We were doing it. Half way up the clouds started to rain and all of the ground turned into clay and mud. My Nikes were destroyed at this point but there was no turning back. Rose was in so much pain she was just crying while she was hiking up. She actually thought she was going to die. Some of the crossings we had to balance on tree roots just to get pass quick sand. The earth was moving and the winds were howling. It was quite a surreal experience. All worth it. Everyones main concern was getting down this mountain. Its easy to climb up but going down looked like a mud slide to death.

Arrived to the peak with zero visibility. Nothing to see from the top except clouds rushing pass us about 50 mph an hour. I loved it. The top of the mountain had a crater that blasted off when the volcano exploded millions of years back. Now its covered with crazy looking trees and a lagoon at the bottom. From here on out we hiked down this trail to find this secret lagoon. Since the surrounds changed, new plants filled the ground. Fern like plants that were white and black instead of green. The ground turned into weird looking rock and again if you fell your sure of death. One hour into hiking down and into this majestic crater we arrived at this lagoon! Still covered with clouds moving like the lord all mighty just sneezed we relaxed our jello like legs and ate lunch. Photos upon photos were taking and a sense of relief was accomplished. Right when we were about to leave the clouds randomly lifted and the sun popped through. The area was open for us and we could see the whole lagoon! As we headed back up the crater the skies slowly but surely lifted and we could see the whole island. Across from us was the other volcano and massive amounts of trees.

So far we have had maybe 1/2 hour of rest and had to head back down the mountain before the sun set. The second half of the adventure began as we all turned our tarzan like instincts on and hurled ourselves down this volcano. If you were holding onto a tree root going down, you fell into mud and skidded down for a while. Funny but scary watching the others fall. My tarzan was like donkey kong. Still parts of my Nike's were clean and was proud of that. 13 hours into the decent the skies were going down and fast. We still had lots to climb. We had to make it down to the lake and we could still see boats that looks like ants. We were screwed. Luckily, I brought be headlamp. Finally got down after a 15 hour hike. Easily one of the hardest hikes I've done and completely volcanoed out for the next forever.

I  still can't figure out which volcano was better. Both completely off the charts and different.