COLD WAR KIDS - WE USED TO VACATION

Nicaragua Part 3

"Two weeks paid vacation, won't heal the damage done, I need another one."

At some point these postings, especially as they pertain to Nica. are going to turn more introspective. These lyrics by Cold War Kids, a great band to check out by the way, are a hint of the future. But it's too late for anything very deep tonight.

In case you don't know the Cold War Kids, you can check out this song We Used to Vacation... either right above or below this post. I couldn't figure out how to imbed in the post. If anyone knows, please clue me in. I'm a newbie.

Do yourself a favor, check out the song you've wasted 5 minutes in worse ways, besides you are probably at work now anyway.

So maybe today just some basics about the trip.

Why did we choose Nicaragua? Well, we traveled to Costa Rica in 2002 for our honeymoon. We both really liked Costa Rica. Shortly after returning I read an article about traveling to Nicaragua. The article said things like, explore places that wouldn't be legal in the U.S. (i.e. live volcanoes, etc) and it's what Costa Rica was 15 years ago. Additionally, my wife is fluent in Spanish, so we're comfortable traveling to Latin and/or South America.

Don't worry there was a 2.5 foot wall keeping us from falling in. These pics don't do justice it was dusk. Just google volcan masaya.

Is it safe? Nica is either the safest or second safest (depending on the source) country in central america. Not so safe right now is El Salvadore (due mostly to gangs) and Guatamala. My wife is also not real keen on Mexico City.

It felt safe here.

This is laguna de apoyo. A lake formed in an ancient crater. It is over 200m deep of very clean water. No motorized boats allowed. Hot springs of 45C feed it. The water all around stays at about 85 F.

These guys weren't too scary either.

This was a little scary. We went soaring over a coffee plantation.

All the time I was in Kentucky I never met anyone named Jethro. We go to Nicaragua and hire a tour guide who's name was.... Jethro. He's the one in the Brewers t-shirt. A gift from me.

Do people travel there? We weren't sure. Once we got there we realized there were a fair number of tourists, more than we expected actually. However, our home base Granada, only has about 100,000 people with a fairly small downtown so travelers really stick out. At first this was dissapointing. As time went on we grew to enjoy this, it was easy to have conversations with other travelers. Most of the travelers we met were European or Canadian with a few Americans sprinkled in.

NIcaragua Part 2

Sorry about my lengthly diatribe in the first post. I actually wrote 5 pages in a journal about that hike the day after we comleted it. I wanted to remember every painful second. If you want the whole thing give me a shout.

In this post I'll try and stick to the original plan. Pictures with brief explanations.

The view from our cabana at Villa Paraiso, on Isla de Ometepe.

There were cows being led on the beach one morning.

We took horses through a banana plantation to an awesome swimming hole the day after the hike. The water was warm, clean and clear. We ended up first meeting Sara and Melissa here, two women from Chicago that would become great friends.

I really didn't enjoy my first 2-3 days in Nicaragua. In fact I was wondering whether I would rather have been elsewhere. But somewhere between the swimming hole and this scene on the beach on our way back to the hotel, Nicaragua got under my skin and my love affair began.

This picture was taken from the ferry as looking back at Concepcion Volanoe as we were leaving Ometepe to return to Granada.

Nicaragua Part 1

In order to best share pictures of Nicaragua that actually mean something I thought perhaps a blog would be better than just having you sign into flicker or snapfish or whatever you use. If you want more photos just let me know and I'll give you the site for that.

I plan on posting more on Nicaragua. The intent of this post is to simply scratch the surface of the trip and allow you to see pictures. Future posts, when I have more energy, will tell you what the pictures can't convey.

To bring everyone up to speed. Ann and I recently spent 8 days in Nicaragua. We just returned on August 15. Yes it is very safe, the people are extraordinary, we weren't the only tourists there and it is pretty inexpensive (except for the flight.)

We spent the bulk of our time in Granada (5 nights). Here's more information and a map. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granada,_Nicaragua

We also spent three nights on La Isla de Ometepe. An island in the middle of lake nicaragua, the 20th largest lake in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nicaragua The island is bordered my Concepcion Volcano on one end and Maderas Volcano on the other. Concepcion is still active. The only way to arrive at Ometepe is via ferry which travels from the mainland several times a day. The length of trip varies depending on where you depart from. Our trip was about an hour.

This is the ferry we took and the view of the island from the mainland.

While on the island, we took a ridiculous hike up Maderas Volcano. We had to be careful about our hiking because I recenly hurt my knee. It remains unstable so I was very concerned. Our guidebook described the hike as tested and approved by overweight chain smokers. We figured we were safe. WE WERE WRONG.

Here's pictures of our ordeal (is it un pc to say Mein Kumpf because that's how it felt). 5 hour climb, 3.5 hours back down, we covered 1.4 Km up in roughly a total 5 km hike. That meant we went up 1 meter for roughly every two steps forward.

This was our "trail." We had to hire a guide as recommended by our book so we didn't get lost and die.

So instead of dying I just wanted to die.

2 km into the hike was a great view of the other volcanoe across the island.

The hike "finished" at this lake at the top of the volcanoe. The lake formed out of a crater created when the volcanoe exploded.

After we saw this we had to turn around and start back down the mountain. I seriously did not know how I was going to make it back down. My knee was in pain and my other leg started to cramp from overcompensating.

With 2 Km left it started to downpour. As hard of rain as I have seen in my life. The kind that fills the gutters in the streets. Except coming down the mountain there were no gutters. Instead our trail was the gutter. Our trail went from being muddy to being a river 6" deep that looked like melted milk chocolate flowing. We had to walk right through it or we would have been trapped on the mountain in the dark.

This is how we looked when we finished.