Isla de Omotepe, Nicaragua

Isla de Omotepe is an island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. It consists of two large volcanoes connected by a low lying isthmus, and is ringed by small towns and villages. It was heartily recommended to us by friends so we added it to our itinerary when we were planning our trip. In order to get there, we had to take a bus from Granada to Rivas, another bus from Rivas to San Jorge, and then a ferry to San Jose del Sur.

After packing up our things and bidding farewell to Gerry, we walked south from our hotel into the market of Granada. The shiny facade presented for the tourists quickly faded as we moved further from the central park. The market was crowded, noisy, smelly, and super-duper busy, but even there, people were cleaning up the garbage and rotting produce from the street, which was very nice to see. We took a wrong turn down one of the very narrow side 'streets', backtracked, and found a vacant dirt lot filled with old American school buses. I asked one of the ladies at a market stall if this was the bus to Rivas, she gave me a toothless smile, and said 'Si.' We found the correct bus, climbed inside, and proceeded to sweat our brains out. It was very, very HOT in Nicaragua during our visit. On this particular day, the temperature was around 95 with about 70% humidity, very little breeze, and no cloud cover. After about 10 minutes, Liam said he had to go to the bathroom, so I took him off the bus and asked one of the guys that sorta kinda seemed like he worked for the bus company (nobody was wearing a uniform or any other sort of identifying clothing, badge etc) and he said we needed to go three doors down. We walked back through the market, and I saw a door into what looked like a weird house/store combo. We walked inside the dimly lit room, and saw three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs. I asked if this was the location of the bathroom for the bus 'terminal', she said yes, I paid the 5 Cordobas for each of us, and then she led us through the rest of her house, past several relatives busy doing various household chores, into her back yard, past some chickens, and showed us a crude shack with two doors. Inside was a concrete box with a hole in it leading down to a deep pit. The smell was indescribable. But, we did our thing, thanked her, and made our way back to the bus.

The bus ride itself got a bit more comfortable after we started moving and the air was flowing through the open windows. The ride took a little over an hour, and we had a stroke of luck upon arrival in Rivas--the bus to San Jorge pulled up right behind us! We thanked the driver, husteld out of our bus and on to the one behind us, and were on our way. About 15 minutes later we were cooling our heels in the waiting area for the ferry.

The Nicaraguans have an interesting mix of vessels on Lake Nicaragua. Some of them are ancient wooden boats that look like they could fall apart at any moment, and others appear to be relatively modern and in decent shape. In the latter category is a car/passenger ferry called the Che Guevarra, and that made me smile.

Any Ballard hipster would be proud to ride this ferry

Our boat was an old Dutch (!) ferry, and all of the signs were in Dutch and English, and occasionally German and French too, but nothing in Spanish. The entire vessel was a bizarre mixture of modern European naval engineering and half-assed Nicaraguan improvisation. For example, the plumbing on the toilets did not work, but they had installed brand new flat panel TVs throughout the ferry. There were also posters for Daniel Ortegas political party, which was just weird to see.

Pretty much every language but Spanish

The boys on the ferry

We arrived at San Jose del Sur and took a taxi to our hotel, which is located on an old farm just outside of the little town. We were shown to our room, a simple upstairs setup with three beds and a great view of the lake. We dropped off our things and headed for dinner at the hotel restaurant.

The menu selections were not great. I get the distinct impression that Isla de Omotepe is definitely still figuring out the whole tourist thing, not only because they are about 20 years behind in food, but for many other reasons that became apparent over the next day and a half.

While we were ordering dinner we met Will, a Nicaraguan from Omotepe who is the resident guide at the hotel. His English was extremely good, and we learned that he spent several years in the States with his stepfather. He told us he was organizing a kayaking tour of the Isthmian River the next day, and said we would see lots of cool birds and other wildlife. He showed us a video on his phone that he'd taken from a previous tour, and it looked really great--a nice, calm, flat, broad river with lush green vegetation overhanging the water. We signed up.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 and did some birding at the nearby ecological reserve. The first bird we saw was a magpie jay, which all of us had been hoping to see. They are beautiful birds that look exactly as their name would suggest--the body of a blue jay with the very long tail of a magpie. They also have a bizarre, quail-like feather sticking up on their heads, making them appear a bit Seussian. We were all delighted to see them at last, and it turns out they are all over the island. Unfortunately, we did not see very many other birds, just a few tanagers and the usual aquatic species. The boys did find an incredible number of small frogs (actually they were probably toads) and that was pretty interesting.

We met Will at 7:30 for the tour and were joined by Jeanne and Michelle, two friends from New York city. We got into an SUV and started driving towards the eastern half of the island, where the Madera volcano is located.

One of the interesting things about Isla de Omotepe is that pretty much no matter where you go, it feels like you are in the middle of a large farm. The people who live on the island let their animals roam all over the place, so there are horses, cows, bulls, pigs, goats, dogs, chickens, turkeys--you name it--everywhere you look. You can also see and smell these animals feces everywhere you go and everywhere you look--on the beach, on the road, on the hotel grounds, on the paths, everywhere. And boy does it stink.

So, after dodging just about every kind of livestock imaginable, we made it to the kayak launching site. I had been under the impression that we would start off close to the river, but it turned out that we had to kayak about 3 km on the lake to get to the mouth of the river. This was actually fine with us, because we wanted to get good views of the two volcanoes, but unfortunately, the two girls from NYC had never kayaked before. It was extremely windy out on the lake, and they had a very hard time. It took us much longer than Will anticipated to get to the river, and when we arrived, he could not find the river mouth.

This was not good. So, we beached the kayaks, and started walking along the shore. He explained to us that it's been unusually dry and that the rainy season was about 4-5 weeks late. The lake level was very low, and the river was not actually flowing all the way to the lake, which is why he could not find it.

Unfortunatley he also could not find it as we were hiking. So he called a local guy, who eventually met us on the lake shore. We had to stand in the full sun this whole time because the one bit of shade was taken up by some very ornery looking cows and their calfs. The local guy showed Will where the river channel was, and we started hiking.

The river was gone. The channel was bone dry, with no water in it at all. Eventually we came to a tiny, sad looking little pool, but by this time we had been kayaking, hiking, and standing in full sun at 95 degrees for over three hours, and we were all done. We told Will it was time to head back. I felt a little bad for him, but at the same time, I also feel like he should have known that THE RIVER HE WAS GUIDING US TO WAS GONE.

Will stopped to buy some honey on the way and we met this farmer and his 'pet' (actually wild) yellow-naped parrot

Liam paddling in our kayak on Lake Nicaragua, Concepcion volcano in the background

Amy and Lochlan kayaking in Lake Nicaragua

The fam on the shore of Isla de Omotepe with Concepcion volcano in the background

The 'river'

We found some water!

Paddling back, starting to melt

The white faced monkeys were super cute

More cuteness

Evaluating their likeness for accuracy

Liam at the springs

The boys cooling down with some coconuts

Playing on the beach on departure day

Our room was on the top of the building on the right

We had lunch at the kayak launching site, which was pretty good, and then we drove back towards the hotel. Along the way we stopped near a stretch of forest. Will got out of the SUV and said, "look guys, monkeys!"

There was a troop of white-faced monkeys, and he took out a container of sliced bananas and gave each of us a chance to feed the monkeys. He explained that this troop frequently hangs out at that particular location and they are fed by the guests of the hotels along that stretch of road. He said that ordinarily it is strongly discouraged to feed the monkeys, but this particular troop has been sort of 'adopted' by the local community because they are plagued by a genetic defect that gives many of them a cleft palette that can make it dificult for them to forage successfully in the wild. We got some great shots of the monkeys and then continued on to the Ojo de Agua, a natural spring.

The spring was very cool--beautiful clear water ringed by huge trees. The water was cool and refreshing and a welcome change after the roasting heat of the kayak trip. We spent a couple of hours relaxing, and a large group of howler monkeys climbed around the trees on the other side of the springs from us, including several babies. They were very cute.

We made it back to the hotel, and had a quick family meeting. We all discussed our impressions of Omotepe and agreed that it was not living up to our expecations--it smelled awful, there were many fewer birds than we were hoping for, the food was not great, and there just wasn't much to do. We decided to leave a day early and add an extra day to our time in Monteverde, Costa Rica.

Unfortunatley, I was not feeling well that evening. Every joint in my body ached, I felt nauseous, and it seemed like I had a raging fever. I drank a ton of water, took a cold shower, and went to bed by 6:30. I slept for about 12 hours and felt much better in the morning. Amy said it was likely heat exhaustion from the tour. Regardless of the cause, I was happy to be feeling closer to normal. We paid our bill, took a taxi to the ferry dock, and caught the 7:30 am boat for San Jorge.