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!