San Carlos & Solentiname Islands

So we left Omtepe and had to take an overnight 10hr ferry to San Carlos.  It was pretty cramped in the cabin where the seats were, so we set up camp outside on the deck.  A hammock or a bed roll/cushion would have gone a long way on the steel deck, but we managed all the same.  This was our section we staked out using our backpacks as pillows.  Jillene of course had to take the picture mid yawn... :)

Arriving at San Carlos, a small but clean little town that doesn't offer much, but certainly isn't an unpleasant place to spend a day or two when waitin for a boat.

Then we were off to the Solentiname Islands.  A quiet tropical island with more wildlife than we'd seen of all of Nicaragua put together, and no services.  There was power for about 4hrs every evening...

Our first sunset...

A little reading in the hammock... still a little tired from the overnight ferry from Omtepe!

 This guy walked by near my feet when I was eating my breakfast.  About the size of my hand, this is by far the biggest tarantula's I've ever seen.  Not that I've seen many...

 We spent our days walking around the ilsands.  This is San Fernando, the first island we visited.

 Home made water purification...

 I wouldn't want to trip and fall into this tree.

More high water!

 More walking!

 Petrogliphs... ancient rock carvings.

 At night toads/frogs (I don't know which) would litter the paths and you had to be carefull not to step on any.  I swear this guy was as big as my head.  HUGE!

 One thing we've noticed here, every family of every guest house we've stayed in has pet birds.  Without exception, everyone has a pet bird!  This is Martina, our favorite. Lots of personality, and I swear it thought it was a dog...  Now we've moved to Macaron, about 15mins away by boat. A little bigger island, a few more people, but still no services what so ever.  No power (only solar and batteries), nothing...

More stuff...

Laundy station

 Stuff hanging from trees... Jillene liked this picture, not sure why.

And thats it... we're off to head up the Rio San Juan and make our way to the Caribbean.  We're really looking forward to it.  We'll have to rely on unrelieble boat schedules, and boats that get cancelled a lot apparently, so hopefully everything goes as planned!

 Omtepe was the next destination after Laguna De Apoyo... it was a fun day getting there where we went medium of transportation to another.  First a taxi, to a bus, to another taxi, to a ferry, and then finally another bus... We were pretty spent by the time we arrived, but it was all worth it.

Omtepe is an island formed from 2 volcanoes with a narrow strip of land inbetween the 2.

 

The largest is Concepcion...

 

The smaller one is Maderas...

 And this is what the 2 look like together.

 They're active, but not currently a concern.  But I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry!

 A veiw of Concepcion during our epic walk from Santa Domingo (where we spent our first night) to the Maderas side of the island

 Water levels are crazy high at the moment... this demonstrates a little.

 We did a hike to a waterfall here.  This is Volcan Maderas, and we hiked to just below the cloud line where there was a waterfall.  It was hot and sticky, but we enjoyed a nice waterfall shower when we got there.

 A picture from the path...

The waterfall...not huge but worth the hike.

And another picture showing the high water levels.  Not a light post out in the lake!  We could have and really should have stayed in Omtepe longer, as there was still lots to see.  But boat schedules scared us out, and we made our way to San Carlos and the Solentiname Islands.  We might just have to go back to Omtepe when we head back down south on the pacific coast.  If not then, one day in the future I'm sure....

Laguna De Apoyo

 After Masaya we were off to Laguna De Apoyo.  Considering the bedlam at home before we left, and the fact that we had moved around and been seeing a lot of sites during our first 4-5 days in Nicaragua, we were ready to slow it down a bit.  And Laguna De Apoyo proved to be a good place to do it.  We spent 3 days and 3 nights here, and it was everything we needed.  I can' t say we experience much Nicaragua culture, but it was a nice relaxing break.  Everyday we went for a walk/hike returning after lunch, and then we'd spend the rest of the day in the facilities of 'Paradiso' the great little hotel we stayed in.

Laguna De Apoyo I should explain is a fresh water lake that has formed in the crater of a Volcanoe.  It tastes/feels a bit salty or 'sulphury', but is very clean and pleasant to swim in.  It can be a bit windy there, but nothing too terrible.

 We walked out of our room onto this patio... The best thing, we had the whole hotel to ourselves for 2 of the 3 nights we stayed.

Our first walk (about the half the circumference of the crater) led us to this little debauchery.  This 4WD truck apparently only had 2WD functioning and got stuck in the soft sandy road.  I'll tell you, he sure wasn't concerned about 'babying' the thing out and just kept digging himself deeper.  We worked for a bit, but we did eventually get him sorted!

 Day 2 hike, up to the crater Rim and a town called Catarina.  This is about halfway up.

View of another volcanoe Volcan Mombacho (I think) from the Catarina lookout

View of Laguna De Apoyo from Catarina... our hotel would be right below us on the water slightly to the left.

 And a few more of the pictures and the facilities we enjoyed in the afternoons...

Yup that's a bar behind those hammock seats!

Masaya

Masaya was more our style.  There wasn't much going on outside the Market during the day, it's Central Park in the evening, and the 'New Market/Bus Station' which was about as fun as it sounds, but either way it was a breath of fresh air in comparison to Grenada.  Much fewer tourists here, and those who did make it really only came for the day...

Above is the market... had a great meal in here that I wish I had taken a picture of.  Baho; really good but I ate it before I thought to pull out the camera!  :)  

 From here we went to see Volcana Masaya (thats spanish for Volcanoe in case you couldn't crack the code).  I liked it, but apparently we lost all ability to take a decent phote while we were there...

 There were 2 craters, on active, one dormant.  I'll give you one guess which one this crater is...

And another favourable memory of Masaya, they had really cold beer!  A super cool idea, all the Tona fridges here have digital displays that show the temperature so you can compare different vendors along the way!  These guys are still holding the gold medal, cause if my memory serves me correctly they were -6.1 degrees.  I think silver is way behind at -4.7 degrees.  In 30 degree hot humid temperatures I'll tell you, 'gold medal beer' tastes great!

Grenada

We made a quick get away out of Grenada after 1 day and 2 nights, and our first destination was Grenada.  It was a nice city, but a little too nice.  Didn't feel very 'real' and certianly didn't give us the impression that this was what Nicaragua was all about.  In short we only spent about 30 hours here and covered the sites fairly quickly.  Don't get me wrong, was pretty city with some pretty buildings and impressive architecture, however with the nicely painted buildings and churches came hundreds of tourists.  And thus tourist retaurants and bars.  We wanted to eat and live next to a local, not gringos from Europe and the States...

There were island tours, and volcanoes that to see out of the city, but we decided we didn't want Grenada to be our base.  We were excited to see the 'real Nicaragua'...

 But that didn't stop us from snapping a few pictures that we'll share with you...

 Okay...

 The beach... Note this is a fresh water lake, not the ocean.

 A great majority of the foreigners in Grenada seemed to be missionaries here to save the souls of the locals and go home feeling really good about themselves.  I have some opinions about some of the things they do, and the behaviour we witnessed, but it is probably better disscussed in person and not posted online!  Above is a group of such missionaries we discovered baptizing a local on the beach as we went for a stroll...

 More churches....

And finally our hotel.  It was actually pretty cool.  We called it our 'palace' room for the night although it certainly didn't come with any luxuries.  It had a nice common area, but the most laughable/enjoyable part was the room!

 

This picture doesn't do it any justice, but the ceilings were crazy high, and the room was probably the size of my garage!  It was mostly empty space but, those were 10ft doors and at least 14-15ft ceilings.  And yeah... We had WIFI so I took advantage and did some work making a few calls.  It's not always a holiday... :)