Our Triptastic Trip: Ometepe Omegod there are so many bugs here

Ometepe. Is that native for creepy crawlies everywhere? It should be. I can’t even begin to count how many centipede things I’ve squished in our room (probably ~50). Spiders too. The one on our door tonight was so fast it was impossible to smash it. We think we have everything out tonight so we sprayed OFF along the underside of the door and stuffed it with a towel. Haha. The centipedes are the worst. Luckily they are small ones at less than an inch. Still it’s gross. Both Coraleigh and I slept like crap the first night having bug attack dreams.

I spent a good hour before bed searching the room with our flashlight and smashing about 30 centipedes. They like the concrete on the patio for some reason so they just wander under the door I think and were congregating in the corner. The one corner had about 15 of them. So nasty.

We asked the owner about it and he said he hadn’t noticed and that bugs are everywhere here. He said it changes day to day, which it did. Tonight there were basically no centipedes (I must have wiped out their race, haha). Last night at dinner there was like an ant parade going on along the wall so he moved these people’s table away. He also mentioned that it was “nothing” and that sometimes they come in billions. So many that the walls look like they are a different color, then you come back 10 minutes later and they are gone. I’m just glad I don’t live here. It’s pretty, but Ometepe is about as remote as it gets in Nicaragua. It took us 1.5 hours to get to our hotel from only about 20 miles away. The roads are horrible. The power is constantly going out or fading in and out. Last night we had no water. When you walk the roads you have to walk around pigs, chickens, mud holes, smoking banana trucks, cattle herds, and horses. There is also massive poverty and some people live in shacks made of metal roofing and logs. We heard some statistic like 70% of Nicaragua lives below the extreme poverty level and the average income is around $2000 a year. Still though, everyone is super nice and always says “hola” to you when you’re passing by.

First thing I have to talk about beside the bugs is the ride out here. As I mentioned, it was a long bumpy ride; the funniest part was the music. We rode in this 4x4 van, but it had a video screen and the guys driving popped in a burnt DVD. We were trying to see what they were watching so they flipped down the screen for us in the back. It was all music videos, but they were seriously retarded. Here these guys were jamming out to this music like it was the newest and best thing, but it was MC Hammer, Ace of Base, Milli Vanilli, and other awesome early 90s videos I had never even seen. We were cracking up so I had to mention it. Addition: On our ride back to the ferry today it was such a contrast. Guns and Roses and Metallica videos mixed with Celine Dion and Toni Braxton. Weird.

The room here at El Encanto is clean and looks pretty cool, and the food in the restaurant is good. We picked it based on tripadvisor reviews and everything they said is right. I don’t think the bugs are worse here than they would be anywhere else; it’s just the island. Once again we are the only people in the hotel. There were some super weird Canadian “accoontants” here the first night, but they left in the morning. Being the only people is getting old and I think we are going to try and meet up with some people we met at Laguna de Apoyo when we get to San Juan del Sur.

The “ferry” here was more like a crappy converted fishing boat. It smoked and chugged across the lake on a luckily calm afternoon in about an hour. This lake is massive and it feels like you are in the ocean when you’re on it or look from the island. Upon arriving at and upon exiting the ferry we were mobbed by taxi, tour, restaurant, hotel, you name it hawkers. It was super annoying and something that is very different from Costa Rica. In Costa Rica you will almost never find a hand out begging, a guilt trip for a tip, or people trying to annoyingly sell you crap or get you in their hotel. Of course Nicaragua is far poorer, but just the culture is different between the two. It’s more like Mexico here, but still not as bad since tourism is still relatively new.

Anyway, there are some nice things here on Ometepe too. With all the creepy crawlies come lots of good things like butterflies. They are also everywhere and have such varying colors. We’ve seen lots of birds and lizards as well. More Jesus lizards, geckos, salamanders, green ones, brown ones. The views of the volcanoes are also pretty cool, although they’re covered in clouds most of the time. Apparently Concepcion is nearly perpetually cloudy because it emits hot sulfur gas and that mixes with the air forming its “hat”. It was nice and clear yesterday afternoon, though.

The first day we walked to the Ojo de Agua. It was a pretty long walk from here, about 6k, and it was blazing hot. It felt that much better to jump into the clear and fresh spring water pool when we got there. Ojo de Agua means eye of water and just describes the pools of water there, although they are kinda manmade now with concrete sides. The bottom is still rock and sand, though, and the water comes straight from a cold mineral spring under the volcano. They have a little area built around it with a restaurant and some chairs. It was beautiful and not what we were expecting. When we finally made it there (we followed this gross dirt/mud path through a banana farm and fields) it seemed like we had come across an amazing oasis. We were expecting Ojo de Agua to be a dirt hole with some nasty green water. It was not, as you can see from the pictures.

If you don’t mind the bugs, then Ometepe is a neat place with a lot of history. We have petroglyphs right in front of our room that are 2300 years old. Also if you like hiking there are 2 big volcanoes, one being active and extremely steep. If you’re into the rustic hiking nature thing, this is your place. If you can’t deal with insane amounts of bugs, then don’t come here. Haha. It feels like we’ve seen more species of bugs in the past two days than in our entire lives. Huge flying beetles that sound like airplanes, swarms of hundreds of dragonflies (the second picture on the right below), ants, centipedes, wasps the length of your pinky finger, termites, tons of annoying spiders floating on webs that are constantly getting stuck to your face or legs, jumping spiders, fast spiders, hairy neon blue spiders, flat super fast spiders, praying mantis, grasshoppers, giant black bees as big as silver dollars, dung beetles, moths, butterflies, and then of course your standard gnats, flies, and mosquitos. I’m sure there are a bunch here I missed, but you get the idea.

Today we went a place called Finca Magdelena which is an old coffee farm and now hostel as well. On the way there it started to rain a little bit, but we thought it would pass in a few minutes since it’s hardly rained here. It dumped on us and we were soaked like we jumped in a pool by the time we got there (over 2 miles walking). The people there gave us towels luckily, and of course it stopped raining right when we got there. We sat down and had some chocolate cake and Coraleigh bought some locally made organic honey in a rum bottle for only 2 bucks. Overall, pretty boring. I guess it’s OK if you’re a guitar toting smelly hippie. They seemed to enjoy making residence there. We walked back and spent the afternoon reading and taking some pictures down at the lake around sunset.

Overall impression is that if you’re looking to do some hiking and want a truly rustic experience (yes the old lady is trimming her toenails with a machete) with absolutely no tourist traps, then Ometepe is for you. We have mixed reviews to say the least, but it’s still a very beautiful and nearly untainted and authentic place.