Ometepe

I'd like to start off by apologizing to anyone who had the misfortune of witnessing my salsa dance/walk home yesterday afternoon! Actually, I chickened out before I left the cafe, but I did sing a few versus of Nothing at All by Air Supply along with the t.v. when I got home. It's so normal here that nobody even batted an eye. Clearly, very tolerant people.

This past weekend I visited Ometepe, a beautiful volcanic island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. I would like to write about the beautiful view of the volcanoes as we approached the island by boat, but unfortunately the waves were a bit too large for my liking and I spent the trip paniking over where I was going to find more plastic bags to accomodate my sea sickness. However, my travel buddy assured me that it was in fact a spectacular view!

Once arriving on solid land, my Austrian friend from school, Claudia, and I took a pickup truck from the port city to a village on the north side of the island. Sitting in the back we got a great view of both volcanic peaks on the island and of the local villages and banana fields. We checked into a hotel and as we were putting our bags down a young boy came to the door to say hi. At first we just said hola and kept unpaking, but when I looked up I realized it was one of the kids from the language school's boys program. It turns out five of the kids and the two directors of the school were on a weekend bike trip around the island. We said hi to everybody and chatted for a while, but didn't expect to really see the group much.

The next morning we got up early to meet our pick up driver for a tour around the island. As we rode in the back of the truck I hung my small towel in the wind in hopes it would dry and couldn´t help but feel like a Sandanista with a flag. The driver said I was only missing a gun and I would have passed for Ortega. We visited three gorgeous beaches, did a canopy zip line tour through a jungle surrounded by two different types of monkies, swam in a natural spring, hiked, and enjoyed some local beer while watching the sun set. This Spanish studying stuff is pretty hard work!

When we got back to the hotel, Alex one of the kids from our school´s group was yelling our names and riding his bike towards us. He said he saw us drive by while the group was eating dinner and wanted us to join him. He said they were right around the corner which turned out to mean about ten blocks away, but we ran along side his bike and pulled up a chair to join the group for a super yummy typical Nica dinner. Unfortunately, one of the kiddos had crashed his bike that morning on a steep downhill section and got stitches in two different parts of his head, chipped a tooth, and was covered in road rash. So, the next day we took him and his sick with the flu little brother (ages 10 and 12) back to Granada with us while the rest of the group continued on their journey. It was a bit tedious hauling the bike with us on the ferry, in the taxis, and on the buses but both kids were real troopers. I can´t imagine how miserable it must have been for those kiddos to travel sick and injured with two gringos with lousy Spanish that they barely knew. But they didn´t complain at all and were really patient with us, so it all turned out well!