Ometepe

Imagine... I was on the last leg of an 11 hour trip to Omatepe Island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. My friend Sarah and I were waiting around in Altagracia, a sleepy little town for the 1:30PM bus to Balgue, the nearest town to Finca Magdalena, where we were going to stay. We climbed into the back of the blue and white striped school bus and the only seats left were a pile of bags of cement lined up along the back. We sat down, and 2 gringos came in, a couple. The woman tried to sit on the two stalks of green plantains on the seat in front of us, but decided it best to move them first. Her boyfriend sat next to me on the cement bags. As we slowly began chugging away from the park, we began chatting... the usual, where are you from, how long are you traveling. Not only did we have the same destination, we found that we were both from Chicago, and both from Logan Square!!! Only 2 blocks away... The bus ride, which should have taken an hour, ended up taking 2.5. We slowly bumped along a rocky pot-holed dirt road, at angles that made me question just how much a bus can tip without falling over. At one point, everyone filed out of the bus as they tried to pull it out of a huge hole. We drove by farms of banana and cacao, an isthmus with black sandy beaches, small villages, a river where women were scrubbing their clothes on rocks, until we finally reached Balgue. From there, the four of us climbed a winding dirt road to the farm, stopping to watch some howler monkeys in the trees above us. When we finally reached the farm and turned to look behind us, my jaw dropped at the breathtaking view... Beyond the red, pink and orange hibiscus flowers and orange tiled rooves of the white stucco buildings of the farms we could see the misty waters of the Lake, beyond which lay the Volcan Concepcion, circled by a ring of clouds at the top. A green peninsula dotted with trees jutted out into the lake... an image straight out of paradise. This picture really doesn't do it justice...

Sarah and I stayed in a barn on the second floor, on cots. Talking further with our new friends, I discovered that we have many of the same friends in common... Crazy small world!! The next day we all hiked up to the top of the volcano Maderas- 4 hours up and 3 hours down. At the top was a lake, with black sands. We were in a cloud forest and it looked like we had reached the end of the world...