Isle de Ometepe in Nicaragua is the second official candidate for wonder of the natural world I´ve had a chance to visit on this trip. (Lago Atilan was the first.) It´s a stunning island in the middle of lake Nicaragua, with two volcanoes rising out of the water, one of which is active, the other of which has a crater lake at the top (making for, as some of you have heard once or twice, the most interesting geographic formation I can imagine: a lake, on a vocano, in a like, on an isthms, in between two oceans).
Alas, the only real regret of my trip thus far is that I wasn´t able to summit Volcán Maderas or to reach the lake at the top. As it turns out, using the public buses and dirt roads, two days on the island isn´t enough time to make it the 45km to the base, hike up the vocano, and get off the island in time to make my flight home on Saturday. And, since I mentally converted to the Cordoba price scale a few days ago, paying the 800 odd Cs to hire a private taxi back to the docks seems unjustifiable. (To put things in perspective, two nights in a pretty decent hotel is costing me just over 200. To further put that into perspective, that equates to a little under $7 per night.)
To make up for this, I rented a bike and rode out to a small lagoon on the island, about 10km away from the town I´m staying in. So, I can now check off the lake within a lake box. And, this morning I hiked up Volcán Concepción, the active (and slightly taller volcano), which means I can check off the volcano on the island box as well. I´m not remembering symbolic logic all that well, but I think by some sort of transitive-communitive-interoperability-wtftk property, I can now claim to have also been to the top of the volcano with the lake.
Even if I can´t, the official (and final) volcano count is now three. And, Concepción had the added advantage of being a hike through a great big bosque, which I think means forest, but appeared a lot more jungle like to me! In that bosque, I got to hike up through the clouds, see a ridiculous number of butterflies, new fruits, giant green plants, views of the other side of the lake, and... monkeys! The trip is truly complete!
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Entonces tu llegaste finalmente al lago que me describiste quando te visite en Boston! Casi esqueci de tu blog - solamente lo re-descubri hoy, pero voy a ler sobre todas las aventuras que has pasado en la America Central! Un abrazo de tu amiga Cori :-)
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