Island Life

Ahora!  The cute days of stopping in at the local little restaurants for coffee and holding hands on the cobblestone streets of Granada has passed and now we undertake a far more serious adventure:  Isla de Ometepe.  Described as “a fantasy island” in our guidebook, this island with two volcanoes is known its beauty, wildlife and having the only freshwater shark on the planet.   All well and good.  When I booked our trip I didn’t have a lot of time (you know Sam and I can’t be bothered with planning vacations in advance!), so I just picked the most popular thing listed to do on trip advisor and found rooms.  The most popular thing to do in Ometepe at the moment is to stay on a horse farm, so did it matter to me that neither of us ride worth anything?  No friends, it did not.  

We left Granada by taxi and had a beautiful ride with our driver pointing out the different crops that were growing: sugar cane, bananas, etc.  

I call this "Banana Trees from a Car Window"

Then we took a ferry to the island.   

A view of one of the volcanoes from the ferry

We got listen to the entire music video collection spanning several decades of one popular singer all the way out, and we got some yummy sport cola.  We were happy campers.

 

 The taxi from where the ferry landed to our horse ranch took another hour and a half.  This is where I started to get a little concerned.  At first it was fine.  We got to share the road with a herd of cows (which wasn’t a new thrill for me, since driving out near Fairfield in Idaho I often run into a herd of cows) and that made me feel at home.   

Then we took a turn and entered, truly, the worst rode I have ever been on, including some roads that cross rivers in the Sawtooths.  I said to myself, hmmm, this must be kind of remote…

An even stretch of road where I am able to take a picture

The road just kept going and going, and the further we went, the less we saw of anything like a town.  Then we got to our farm (which we will from now on refer to as the finca, since I’m working on my Spanish skills, which are quite comparable to my horse riding skills).  

A surprise awaited me at the finca, but to really understand, I must back up a little in my story.  When I booked reservations, I looked first at the pictures other travelers had taken and put up on trip advisor.  Amongst them was a picture of a friendly looking Nicaraguan man riding a horse, which I assumed was the owner of the operation.  Another was a picture of a pirate/carnival worker who I assumed was a slightly terrifying guest.  I bet you (being a reader of mysteries like myself) have already jumped ahead of me and figured this out.  That’s right, the pirate/carnival worker wasn’t actually just passing through…he was in charge.  

Our pirate here portrayed by Tom Hanks in Castaway

This just goes to show you how easy it is to believe what you want to believe.  When the cold hard truth faced me, I (being a world traveler) thought,  I want my mommy and I want to go home. Then he told us there was no power.  In fairness to him and the two ladies who worked with him, they offered to give us a discount on our room or to find another place for us to stay considering the inconvenience.  And everything around us was beautiful-the finca, our rooms, the views of both volcanoes.  So we decided to stay.  Still, a cloud of uneasiness fell over me as all the Lost episodes I ever watched began to churn around unhelpfully in the back of my brain.   

Later in the day the finca also lost water, but we were committed at that point, so we put a brave face on it and marched on.  

Sam gazes at the volcano and wonders about the days that lie ahead...

 Our first adventure was to go down the hill and find something for lunch.  Like little Dickens characters we went door to door asking for food at the homes of several unsuspecting Nicaraguans until we found a place that was actually a restaurant (again, walk a mile in our flip flops before you judge our restaurant spotting skills—it is harder than you think!).   We walked down to the lake and sat by the water before heading back to our room.  That first day was a little bit hard.  We were still in shock and to get through we read to each other by Kindle light (I know, that was terrible) until dinner time.  Dinner was ridiculously good.  While our pirate seemed to have had a bottle of rum before we got there, the food was absolutely wonderful and chatting with the Italian woman who made it (and who was the warmest of our hosts) made me sleep a little more easy under my mosquito net.