Ometepe Island, Nicaragua

Isla Ometepe – Nicaragua

 Our experience started excellently. A powerful 250 cc motorbike with which I felt free riding through the streets of this beautiful island and accompanied throughout my journey by 2 volcanoes that constantly watched our movements. There are many shops around the island for rent. We started by visiting a place called Ojo de Agua which is a place where there are some natural water springs and artificially built 2 pools where you can bathe. Nothing to write home about but they were quite refreshing.

 After almost 2 hours of driving and being located in the northern part of the island, I felt that something was not right with the throttle and suddenly something blew up and the bike stopped. We were in the middle of nowhere as this island has very few neighbourhoods and between them, there is almost nothing except the odd house. We had no mobile phone, we didn’t know what had happened and we had no choice but to push the bike to the nearest house which cost us a few drops of sweat. We were quite lucky as we arrived at a lovely family’s house.

 They were always willing to help us and lent us a mobile phone to call the mechanics. While they were arriving we were able to learn a lot about the Nicaraguan culture on this island. We were introduced to each of the members of this family and also got to meet all the animals that lived with them, rabbits, parrots, chickens, ducks, dogs etc. They invited us to lunch and gave us fruit from one of the trees they had. We had to wait for almost 2 hours which was not an obstacle as we were having a great time.

 After this little mishap, we took our motorbike again and headed towards a fantastic place on this island called Punta Jesus Maria. This is a small stretch of land where the two streams of the lake meet. Having a beautiful volcano behind us, the colours that were created in the sky and at the same time being able to see the currents of this lake was quite enchanting. By this time it was already dark so we decided to rest and leave early the next day to complete the southern part of the island that we had missed.

 The island is inhabited by many types of animals of all species, among them are scorpions and spiders. That night we saw a huge spider (it was not a tarantula), but nothing serious. The next day before going out again on the bike I saw a scorpion very close to the suitcase that wanted to get into my clothes. I made a stupid decision to try to kill it with my flip-flop. The moment I put my flip-flop on it, the tip of its tail managed to prick my finger, leaving me in pain for a couple of hours. According to the owner of the hostel, stripping the scorpion and then putting its liquid on my wound would help the pain to subside, so that’s what we did.

 We decided to start our tour on the south side of the island which was also quite entertaining. Lots of pigs, cattle and chickens in the streets. And it was always nice to be able to witness at least one volcano during the whole tour.