Welcome to the last post of Nicaragua.
We slept like babies. Yesterday really drained us. This morning was special. We headed out at 0745 and drove to the centre of Granada to a place called Café de las Sonrisas. This is a special place with a great story. It is a social project set up 18yrs ago by Antonio Prieto Bunuel from Barcelona Spain to provide work to local people of disability, especially the deaf and blind but also includes people with Autism. Antonio came to Nicaragua for a holiday and was hosted by a deaf person who could not find work except to guide people through Granada. He was taken by the guide and Granada that he decided to stay and help people like this guide. Antonio sat us down and explained his life story here with Ben translating. Awesome. He started by trying to find work for the disabled but could not. He explained that 70% of men leave their wives if they have disabled kids and 96% of disabled people in Nicaragua have no jobs and will likely never have one. Sad so Antonio put his thinking hat on. We will invent our own jobs. He noticed that many tourists were asking for hummocks but no one made them. So he and his disabled crew would make them. He googled the hand-driven weaving process and taught everyone and they made their first batch – sadly it did not turn out well but tourists still bought them. Antonio was not happy. Tourists should buy them because they liked them and not because they felt sorry for the disabled who made them. For this reason he shut shop for several months until they perfected the manufacturing process. Re-opened and now they are completely self-sufficient. They also opened a café and restaurant with the profits. Over 38 disabled currently work there with another 100+ educated in weaving and hospitality to work for others. What a guy.
In another 2hrs we reached the Port of San Jorge (St George) to catch the car ferry to the port village of Moyogalpa on Ometepe Island. This is like Jurassic Park meets a Swiss Lake. Ometepe is an island formed by two volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicaragua. IT IS THE ONLY FRESHWATER LAKE ISALND WITH TWO VOLCANOES ON EARTH !!! The two volcanoes (known as Volcán Concepción and Volcán Maderas) are joined by a low isthmus to form one island in the shape of an hourglass, dumbbell or peanut. Ometepe has an area of 276 square kilometres. It is 31 kilometres long and 5-10 kilometres wide. The island has an economy based on livestock, agriculture, and tourism. Plantains are the major crop. The slower car ferry takes 75min to make the 15km trip. On that occasion it was super windy and the waves big. On arrival we rode in a van 13km to our lakeside retreat. Wonderful. Little wooden cabins right on the shore. I opened my island account at 230pm with a 2km swim in the lake. It was OK but very murky. I hit flat volcanic rocks a few times. After the swim it was time for blogging until a local guide came at 630pm to organise our activities for tomorrow. Because Ometepe is in the middle such a huge open lake there are many sudden gusts of wind. It happened to me in the water and now on land. Concepcion Volcano rises up 1610m right in front of our retreat. An amazing view as you will see below. It last erupted in 2010 with no lava flow – just a release of ash and gas but enough to evacuate the island. The only downside of our retreat is no other restaurants or stores/supermarkets – you have to eat here but the food was good and not too expensive. Shared a few beers with the group after dinner but got off to sleep early so I could run at 6am.
My 2km run through and past San Jose del Sur was one of the easiest so far. Amazing having a huge volcano on one side of you and lake on the other. I got back with plenty of time to prep for the 0830 departure of today’s activities of hiking and kayaking. The hike was easy. 20min drive to start with a 165m rise over just 1.6km. Easy. There is a viewpoint at the end of both volcanoes but Concepcion, right in front of us, was obscured by cloud. In another 20min we were on Maderas side of the island in a bay in between the two volcanoes. It is here that we jumped in kayaks and began our 1.5hr paddle through the marshlands in this bay. Magnificent views of both volcanoes this time with their summits almost showing. The birdlife here is abundant and the great thing about it is that you can get very close to the birds. No zoom camera needed. We even saw a Caiman Alligator !!! It was incredibly hot and humid and we piled on the sunscreen to avoid burning up. Antonia did very well. We travelled a total of 3.25km. It was great to have a dip on our return and photograph both volcanoes without any cloud. Then it was lunchtime at a nearby beachside hotel restaurant and I hit the lake for a quick swim and snooze. On our way home we stopped at a local store for coke and opposite was my favourite church so far – painted fluoro orange !!! My favourite colour – it is the second last photo of this post. That night was the best group night of the journey to date. The group managed to polish off four 750mL bottles of Nicaraguan Rum with coke while I sank 2L of wine to celebrate what had turned out to be one of the best days of the trip. Nicaragua is a strict country with no Maya ruins but plenty of natural geography to offer.
Enjoy the incredible sights of Omepete Island and bid farewell to Nicaragua…
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