Blog 11 – Ometepe Island: Always Brake for Pigs

Sorry it’s been a while since our last post, and we’ve got a little bit behind. Today’s entry goes back to the beginning of December, and we’ll try and catch some up over the next couple of weeks!

So on from our adventures at the lake, we jumped in a taxi, the driver of which chased and then flagged down what at only lunch time really shouldn’t have been the last bus of the day. Getting on it was obvious we weren’t the only ones who had rushed to make this bus, and were in for our most packed ride so far, barely enough space to breathe, let alone move, as we headed south. Of course this didn’t deter the usual parade of people squeezing their way through selling various random things, including some kind of delicious peanut flapjack.

About an hour or so later and we were getting on a ferry from the port just outside Rivas mid-afternoon. The boat ride was pretty choppy in parts for a lake, although admittedly a pretty huge lake.

We just managed to snap this cheerful shot before things took a turn for the worse and Becki came down with a case of sea-sickness (or I guess lake-sickness in this case). Perhaps in hindsight climbing up to the very top deck of the boat where the swaying was most severe was a mistake.

It took about an hour and half to cross the 5 mile stretch, and as we drew closer we were treated to one of the most impressive sights of our trip as the twin volcanic peaks of Ometepe loomed larger and larger on the horizon.

Arriving in the town of Moyogalpa, our first stop was at a pizza place on the main street where we could sit and watch the sunset. Refuelled and with Becki recovered now her feet were firmly on the ground, we wandered off to find Yogi’s Hostel which a passing friendly guy on a moped told us was the best deal in town (although it would later transpire he was also the owner of the hostel so possibly his review wasn’t entirely unbiased).


Waking up the next morning, our plan had been to rent some bikes and explore the island, but unfortunately Becki woke up unable to move her neck, so perhaps bouncing our way over semi-paved streets wasn’t going to be the best idea. Instead we took it easy, and explored closer to home, getting to know the town. One thing we discovered; in Ometepe old tires double as bus stops.

The next day with Becki needing to give her back and neck another day to recover, I inevitably set off to climb the main volcano: Concepcion. Probably the single hardest climb I’ve ever done, starting at sea-level in tropical humidity we climbed pretty steep tracks cut through the jungle, using tree-roots and vines to pull ourselves up for over two hours, before the route levelled out to our first view-point. Well I say first view point, it was in fact the only view-point the rest of way up, as from here on we entered the layer of cloud that near-perpetually surrounds the top of the peak.


Unfortunately we couldn’t make it all the way to the summit, the winds had picked up too much and as almost sheer slope the last few hundred meters was completely unclimbable. We tried to encourage our guide to let us try but when he spotted his friend coming back down accompanying two Swiss rock climbers complete with climbing gear all saying it was impossible the decision had been made.

So back down we went, taking a longer but more gradual path down the other side of Concepcion, a nice path cut out for us by a dried up river of lava from the most recent eruption. There were plenty of sights along the way; we passed by a family of howler monkeys playing in the trees, and walked through a swarm of 30-40 white butterflies that swirled around us, before coming out onto a ridge and getting some spectacular views across the whole eastern side of the island. Due to poor internet, I’ve had no luck uploading the video of this view, but it will appear here and on Facebook as soon as we get somewhere with a relatively decent WiFi.

The next day, and with Becki fully recovered we got ourselves some bikes and set off to explore. A few km along the road we saw a turn that my volcano guide yesterday had said leads to a little beach which almost no-one knows about so we decided to check it out. He was right, 2km down this dirt road we came out onto a deserted spit of sand. With no-one about we took the opportunity to leave the bikes and jump in for a swim.

After our swim we cycled around some more, stopped in a place called Los Angeles which I have to say is a lot less showy than TV had led me to believe. Then we got into a game with a truck full of kids where we kept overtaking each other, and they found it hilarious to shout ‘hola!’ to us, and when we replied with the same, for some reason it was (as Becki would say) “lols all round”.

One last bicycle adventure, after dropping Becki off at the hostel I found a massive hill, which although an absolute mission to get up, meant on the way back down you could go ridiculously fast. Like when you were 10 years old and no human being had ever cycled as fast as you were right now. 

One Final Thought: You know how when you’re taking driving lessons, your instructor will tell you that if an animal runs out into the road in front of you it’s dangerous to try and swerve to miss it, so the correct thing to do is just keep going and run it down. Well there should definitely be an exception to that rule when you are an 80kg person on a bike, and the animal is a 200kg pig.