Isla de Ometepe

It is 9:20 pm on Friday evening and we are in the hostel Costa Azul in Santo Domingo on Ometepe Island. I have been trying to fall asleep for one hour now (yes it is true: our biological clock has changed so much for the last one month that we are going to sleep at around 8-9 every night. This is probably due to the fact that we are almost every day exhausted and also the sun sets at 6:30 every evening, and we are getting up at 6:30 -7)but the ventilador is so laud, it is no cooling me down at all and there are also many strange insects which make me constantly flick as they are buzzing around my ears or landing on any parts of my body. We finally moved out from our Camping Matilda after 4 weeks. We were surfing most of the time although in the third week I suffered from a minor injury and couldn't walk for a week. We got to the island by an old lancha – kind of old boat from San Jorge. It was an hour's trip pretty pleasant with the view of two volcanoes which dominate the island's landscape. The highest one : Concepcion (around 1600 m.) is still active but the Maderas one (around 1350 m.)is apparently good for hiking. The road from the ferry port to Santo Domingo was pretty bumpy, curvy and dusty (as most roads in here) which actually gives it a special atmosphere and we of course travelled it by our favourite chicken bus (it took us 3 hours of 40 km road). We decided to check the most beautiful beach on the island according to the Lonely Planet guide book. I do not really want to be critical but from now on we decided to ignore what the guidebook says as we do not agree with most of their's descriptions. The beach is mediocre, it is sandy but grey sand is dominating and the town is as big as around 20 dwellings. We checked one of the local comedores and they have nice chicken and Tona for 40 cordobas;). The plan is to rent out bikes and try out some of the jungle routes and also climb the volcano. In Nicaragua you do not have to look for information as the information comes to you first so we got all the answers we wanted tonight from some locals, tourists and other strange types. Fist we will rent some the best in the city bikes though tomorrow;)))

We are after the cycle trip. We did a circle round the Maderas volcano. We rented bikes for 6 $ each. The road was very difficult for our bikes: bumpy, sandy, stony. Generally what the volcano trew out during the eruption it stayed there and hence the road. It took us 6 hours to do the circle around the Maderas Volcano and we were really exhausted after it. We ended our trip in “Ojo del Agua” a small swimming pool with natural , crystal -clear water from the spring. We really deserved it. Next day we decided to head back to the land and do the volcano climbing somewhere else (my leg is still not reay for serious climbing). We went to Masaya – a town with an artesania market and stayed there for one night before going north to the mountains to cool down a bit in apparently cooler climate.