Kaleb’s Travels

This entry is about Ometepe a very nice island in the middle of the lake of Nicaragua. It’s also about our friend Leah visiting us from Australia.

On the day that Leah was supposed to arrive from Australia I was very excited. But, when I got home from school and Dad and Bridget said that she hadn't arrived yet because her plane was delayed. I came in through the door and, when I got in, Leah jumped out from behind the door and scared me to bits!

We did lots of fun stuff with her like we went to the Laguna (except this time Leah and I did a lots of kayaking). We went up Mombacho again. It was pretty much the same except there were people parasailing from the top! We went to the Sanfransisco museum and that was the same (I’ve been to the Sanfransico museum before but I haven't written about it yet). We also did a tour of the isletas which was fun. We got to see the monkeys again and this time I got to drink to Sprite because they had no fresca at the restaurant! We went to lots of different restaurants, We went to Jimmy Three Fingers, Tele Pizza, the Safari Lounge, Melba Cafe and Euro Cafe. We also went to the post office which we had to find because it had moved and I finally sent my post card to my old school.

After all this we went to Ometepe. Ometepe comes from the Nahuatl language and means two peaks. It's an island made from two volcanoes in the middle of the biggest lake in the Central America: which is be called Lago de Nicaragua, Lago Cocibolca and Lago de Granada. Concepción is one of the volcanoes and it is active and Maderas is dormant. Concepción is 1,700 meters high and the 2nd biggest volcano in Nicaragua, and Maderas is 1,400 meters high.

We were driven by a friend of our landlord to Rivas and then San Jorge and then caught a ferry to the island. I found the drive to San Jorge boring because I didn't do much because I didn't have much to do. It took about an hour and a half and that made it even more boring.

When we got to the dock where you catch the ferry, we found out we would either have to wait ages for the big ferry or we could take a smaller boat. We decided to take the smaller boat. When we got on the boat we found that it was quite rickety but it was fun because I got to see a guy cutting a watermelon with a machete.

We also got to see the two volcanoes from the boat and they were both really cool there was one that was active and one dormant.

When we arrived on the island a man called Carlos had come from the hotel to pick us up. He drove us to the hotel which was called Villa Paraíso. The drive to the hotel was pretty bumpy. Our cabaña was small but very nice. There were birds called urracas all over the place and they are pretty funny because when they eat they always drop their food and get some more. They are blue and white and sometimes with a bit of black. The beach of the lake was nice. There was a volleyball net and I played against Leah once and then Dad once. They both only just beat me each time but that’s okay because I had fun. Dad and I made sandcastles and one of them was so big that it survived the tide but then the second night it broke! I liked the food from the hotel restaurant.

On the second day there, we did a hike with Carlos to a waterfall and that was very nice. There were butterflies all over the place. Apparently, there had been big landslides in the heavy rain the week before and Carlos said it was very different from the last time he had been there. The hike was my second favorite thing we did in Ometepe.

My favorite thing was the horse riding, which we did on the third day. We started across the road from the hotel and rode on the beach and then up into the forest and up the volcano. We saw petroglyphs which are rock carvings over two thousand years old! The horses were all good. We gave our horses names: I called my horse Krom, Dad called his Jefe (which means boss in Spanish), Leah called her one Brown Beauty and Bridget called her one Misty. There were lots and lots of animals and they were all really beautiful, my favorite animals were the pigs and piglets because they’re just so cute. There were also lots of trees and they were very beautiful and green.

After we had spent three nights in Ometepe we decided to head to San Juan del Sur. On our the way back to San Jorge we caught the big ferry. It was nice there was a better view aswell I liked it it was better than the boat on the way there. When we got back to San Jorge we caught a taxi to San Juan del Sur but I'll talk about that in my next entry.

I think I would love to go back to Ometepe because it was so beautiful and I really loved it.