Need Greating in Nicarauga: Ometepe

So to finish my Ometepe post .... I hope you have a while, I have a feeling this is going to be a long one. So .... after our early morning bus ride - can you pick the non-morning people? ;)

.... there we were crossing Lake Nicaragua (or Lago Cocibolca or Mar Dulce (Sweet Sea) to the locals), which happens to be the 19th largest lake in the world and the 9th largest in the Americas. It has an area of 8264 km ²and at its deepest is about 26m deep.

Apparently Carribean pirates used to frequent the lake and from there were able to attack Granada on three occasions. Given that Porl has Captain Morgan somewhere in his family line he felt like he was coming home, lol. As well as pirates, bull sharks have been seen in these waters although it is a fresh water lake.

But now it was time to leave the water and head to the land. As the ferry approaches Ometepe the Maderas volcano looked beautiful ...

as did the island itself ...

Ramero, Sade and I had a great plan for getting to our hostel on the back of Zac's truck ...

While Dio took his life into his hands ... just kidding Ant :P

But then everyone had the same idea so Porl and I decided to give up our ride and walk and enjoy the wildlife along the way.

After about 10 mins walk we met the others at a local restaurant, where Zaira discovered the jukebox, or whatever you call the modern version of a jukebox these days ....

Zac, Paul Danger Henry and Ant found some great food ....

Amazing what can be cooked up over an open fire!

Then the peeps from our hostel turned up to transfer us to where we were staying Hotel (using that term lightly) Casa Istiam.

We were all able to book into the same place which was good, given that there were thirty of us. The rooms were basic but fine, clean and not too expensive and the hostel is right across the road from the beach. The staff took a little warming up but before long we got some smiles out of them and by the time we left the manager was saying how much they had all enjoyed having us to stay and how she'd like to offer us all a discount if we ever came back :)

Isabel (from Mexico) and I in front of the hostel.

Porl soon got to meet some of the locals.

And the flora and fauna was beautiful.

After freshening up we set out to visit some of the locals, we were here to visit English speakers with a Bible interest. This young man didn't speak English, he did however play the trumpet quite well. He was a bit too shy for me to take a little video but was happy enough to pose for a picture.

As you can probably tell from the odd water drop on the camera lens we had to dodge the odd shower, the island is beautiful and green no doubt due to a fairly high rainfall and here you can see rice growing.

Just before finishing off our afternoon we got caught in a swarm of gnats ... not easy to capture in a photo but if you look carefully you should be able to see them.

Here's Jane and Kieran trying not to swallow too many.

After walking a few miles, visiting the locals we headed back to the hostal for a yummy dinner of fried fish, caught in the lagoon.

Porl was pretty pleased when he saw his dinner arrive.

The next day we headed off to visit a different part of the island, here we are waiting at the bus stop across the road from the hostel.

The bus was pretty crampled.

Paul and Jane hung on for dear life.

And it may look like Isabel and Sophia got lucky with a seat but in fact .....

... there was not seat and they were perched on the frame work.

It wasn't long before poor Sophie was feeling a little worse for wear and brought up her breakfast, poor little thing :(

We bused to Alta Gracia and spent the day visiting the locals in that town who were all lovely and friendly and once again we met quite a few people who spoke English and who were keen to learn more from the Bible in English. As we live so far away I arranged for a few of them to study online so we'll see how that goes. Three of the people I met have already contacted me and one young man has already had two studies which he seems to be really enjoying.

Here are some local kids who were happy to have their photo taken.

This gentleman invited us to sit down and have a chat and then kindly gave us a couple of tamales to eat when we left, I think they were his breakfast, aw!

Speaking of aw, aw my two lovely boys! :)

One of the funniest things that happened was that Porl met a little street urchin and had a little chat with him, he showed him one of the brochures and shared a muesli bar with him. (probably a 'you had to be there' moment but I'll give it a shot anyways) So the boy was quite quiet and Porl was trying to get a conversation going and asked him, ¿cómo se llama? which means 'what's your name?' although literally it means 'how are you called?' and when the little boy didn't answer Porl wanted to asked him 'don't you have a name?' but instead said - '¿no tiene llama?' which means 'don't you have a llama?' - ask you can imagine the little boy looked rather perplexed and instead of telling Porl what pets he did have, he asked for some money and headed off to eat his muesli bar.

Another funny thing that happened was that we got serenaded on the street but a rather inebriated local. He seemed quite taken with our little Mexican friend Isabel and told us he was a poet and had written the words to his songs although Isabel later told us that she recognized the songs. Still he definitely seemed heartfelt in his rendition I'll give him that. Here's a snippet of what we got to enjoy .... Kieran's face is a classic :)

We also met this lovely old brother and sister, they were so cute, with about 4 teeth between them and so excited to have us visit. They were the original witnesses in Alta Gracia and are still going strong. The old brother was going hard out when we arrived chopping his wood up with a machete, he quickly ran off to put a shirt on for the picture, cute!! :)

After meeting everyone else back at the hostel we grabbed our togs and headed about 2k up the road to El Ojo del Agua. A beautiful natural spring swimming pool that is fed from an underwater spring.

It costs $3 or $4 to get in, depending on the size of your group but was a nice little treat, amazing how three or four dollars seems so much when you're on a tight budget lol. So we enjoyed a lovely swim and just above the pool is a bar and restaurant so we went all out and the afternoon was finished off nicely with a lovely mango daquiri for me and a beer for Porl.

There were a couple of monkeys leaping about in the tall trees above our head, they weren't easy to get a shot of but if you look carefully you should be able to see them.

The boys has some bomb competitions ....

and then they put on a synchronized diving show, very impressive ....

Then the boys decided to have a swimming race which Damo won although the old fullas Porl and Pete put on a pretty good show and were close on his heels. Chase did some impressive cheating, running along the side of the pool and thought that he should have first place for his ingenuity.

That night we walked up the street a bit to a side of the road local restaurant and had a few laughs and a basic Nicaraguan meal of rice, beans and chicken.