Ometepe – Day 1 : fresh water dips

Today, we discovered lake Nicaragua!

We started slow, because why not : we got up late and ate breakfast in our really nice common area. We did some accounting and online search, before deciding how and when to move. While I was watching Youtube videos of french news told by a funny guy, Ben actually went to the hairdresser ! It will probably help us getting into the US and now, he has this footballer haircut that every young person here has.

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We ate in a local place and took (at the last moment) a bus to the Punta Jesus Maria. As the name doesn’t indicate in english, it’s a spit of sand in the lake, from which you can go swimming, and since it’s the most western point of the island, it’s the perfect spot for sunset-watching.

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We left in the middle of the afternoon in a crowded bus. Here, they are former American school buses, sometimes still yellow but sometimes repainted with colorful patterns. It’s always hot as hell in there, though. He dropped us off on the main road, which is paved and goes almost all around the volcano. From there, we walked on a pretty and shaded road until a desk asked us for a dollar to go further (which we paid).

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Once a the tip, we let our stuff down and looked at the place. The shame is, we are at the very beginning of dry season, which means the lake is at its highest level after all the rains from rainy season, and so the spit is at its shortest. When the lake is shallower, the spit forms a sand walkway that you can walk (almost with dry feet) for a kilometer. Today was more like 10m with a few steps in the lake where a tree was growing in the way, but it was nice anyway ! We bathed for a time, watching a volcano on the other side of the lake (I think it’s Masaya but it needs to be checked… The one on which we are, the main island, is Concepcion, and tomorrow we will go to Maderas.)

Since we were on a spit in the lake, we also had more recoil to see the volcano on which we are (Concepcion, if you’re following), so we took a picture, and by some miracle, it doesn’t even have a cloud on its tip !

The water was (again) at a very nice temperature, but not very clear, and after being in different seas, it was weird for us to be in fresh water again. It’s much more convenient to get dressed again afterwards, but it doesn’t float that good… When the sun went down, we bought some beers and talked on the beach with our dutch hostel neighbors (that we randomly met here) and a nice Australian couple.

Finally, we went at the extreme tip of the spit for the main event, and we were not the only ones, but it was still nice !

We knew we were not getting into the last bus, because it was going before sundown, so we decided to hitch a ride on the main road. On the way, on our shaded road that was now really dark, we passed between fields lighted by fireflies whirling in the grasses, it was wonderful, they were thousands (but totally impossible to photograph). We arrived safely in Moyogalpa, main city where we will sleep again tonight, and our nice driver offered us a discount if we rented him scooters tomorrow (which is not that good with luggage but…)

We thought we would do the blog when we got back a the hostel, but our dutch friends invited us for drinks, and we all ate together afterwards, so it was great !

See you tomorrow, X

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