Chilling In Nicaragua

I´m forgetting what I have been up to......but I can tell you I am in Nicaragua.

I just got into Granada, but the last 2 days were on a Volcanic Island called Ometepe.

It's the biggest lacustrine island in the world. It's placed inside Cocibolca lake and it's created by two big active volcanoes, Conceptión 1610 mts high and Maderas 1394 mts high. Its surface is about 270 square kilometers and it has 35000 inhabitants approximately. The most part of Ometepe inhabitants work in farming.

Its name derives from the Aztec language and it means Ome= two and Tepelth=hills, due to the mountains formed by the two volcanos. The volcanic activity, through the deposition of volcanic ash, has made the soil of the plains extremely fertile, permitting constant planting without fallowing. The island has probably been inhabited since 2000-2500 B.C.

Lots of trees is what I saw. Also lots of horses. Parked in front of houses....kind of like cars. The narrow highway was also pretty cool with these interlocking blocks that were used to make the road.

We stayed at this really remote hotel called Finca Santa Domingo. Room 7, the small dump of a room. Yuck. We had a shower curtain as the bathroom door. One fan in the room that was useless as it did not blow air on the two beds, due to the positioning of the beds (the room was a very wierd shape and very small). We had it blowing into the bathroom door (shower curtain).

I hated that room.

The Hotel itself was not too bad due to okay food and drinks. You simply had to order and charge to your room. We were right on the playa and also had a few hammocks out front. You couldn´t really lie on the beach due to all these crazy bugs....they kind of looked liked crickets...but I have no idea what they were. Double yuck.

It took us forever to get to this place. We left on Monday morning and had to take a few shuttles and a boat to arrive around 6 pm. Some of the shuttles were an "upgrade" so we had to pay an additional $5.00 USD each.

Crossing over the border was easy.....didn´t take too long and was a much better experience than when I last had to walk over a border with a backpack (Thailand to Cambodia). Cost was $7.00 US and then another $1.00 US for the final door.

We crossed the border while they were tallying up the votes for a new President:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_general_election,_2006

I´m not into politics, so I didn´t pay much attention to it.

I guess the outcome is not what the USA wanted, so it will be interesting to see what happens to this country. Maybe it is a good thing I am visiting it now.

We didn´t do much the night we got in, other than have dinner and then a few people had drinks. The next day was just a chill out day at the hotel....drinking and relaxing.

We all needed it!

Life is so hard.