How to climb a volcano

San Juan Del Sur – Isla de Ometepe (Nicaragua) - Granada

On Friday night there was a big party at the hostel . In the morning two guys were kicked out for breaking the rules, dismissing the night guard’s pleads for silence and keeping everyone awake. I slept through all of it. Poor Will and Claire didn’t, and they had to get up early to catch a bus to Ometepe. I didn’t go with them as I wanted to take my time and do laundry etc, before heading to Ometepe.

I walked around the town, there was some kind of art fair in the park and live music. And random monkey people.

I got a 15-min neck & shoulder massage for 60 cordobas - that´s about 3 dollars. It did the trick. I had some lunch before catching a local bus to Rivas. So one of those ex-American yellow school buses again (or "Canadian Blue Bird", as it says on the bus) . I need to take a photo at some point... It´s always such a painful experience that a photos are the last thing in my mind when I´m on board! And did I mention that such thing as gentlemen or manners really don´t exist here when it comes to fighting for space in the bus? Young men are quite happy to sit down and let the old ladies to stand, people don´t queue, they push, and slapping seems to be generally accepted as a means of making room. Then there are the sellers who get on at every stop, push their way up and down the aisle trying to sell ice, sweets and lots of unrecognisable food items as well as other crap. Fair enough, they need to make their living somehow, but it´s hard not to think that if the bus is jam packed as it is, please don´t even think about it!!! ...There are separate shuttles for tourists but they cost about 15 times more. Local buses are so cheap here. The 2-hour journey to Rivas was 15 or 20 cordobas I think - so less than 2 dollars.

Rivas was a horrible place. I got off the bus, realised that I didn´t actually have a clue how to get to the next point. The bus station was chaotic, dirty, noisy - not a sort of place I wanted to spend too much time on my own. I couldn´t spot any other gringos around, nor taxis. Oops. Finally someone approached me. "Taxi? taxi?" Obviously not licensed, but I did what a responsible traveller would never dream of doing and just hopped on.

Luckily he didn´t rob me and I got to San Jorge, where I had to catch a ferry to Ometepe, in less than 10 minutes. He did brutally over-charge me, but it was still less than a taxi driver would charge for starting the engine in London.

Ometepe looked beautiful in the distance.


On the ferry journey I was reading a local newspaper in English, and learned a bit more about the Finland-Nicaragua relationships.


It was an hour´s ferry journey, and I finally stepped on the volcanic soil of Ometepe at about 5 o´clock in the afternoon (there was some waiting around as the motor was broken). I ´d sort of made a plan to go to a certain place on the island, but my plans changed again at the last minute as I was talking to an American woman who lives on the Island. I decided to head to a backpacker resort called Hacienda Merida on the southern part of the island, and was very fortunate to share a taxi with three others so it wasn´t too expensive.

Ometepe is an island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua consisting of two volcanoes, shaped like the number 8. The ferry arrived on the top left side of the upper loop, and I stayed on the left hand side of the lower loop.

By the time I got to Merida it was already pitch black. I was feeling very tired and was happy to pay a couple of dollars extra for my own room - well it was a dorm but no-one else was staying there. Actually it looked like no-one else had been staying there for a very long time - it was a bit dusty and there were quite a few spider webs scattered around. No surprising really, as the building was kind of half-open and we were in the middle of a jungle. I had a shower anyway, and as I came out of the shower I spotted a huge hairy spider under my bed. Or it could´ve been a scorpion. What ever it was, I didn´t like the look of it AT ALL, and I´m not usually that fussed about the creepy crawlies. Suddenly the thought of being alone in this room for the whole night didn´t seem that attractive anymore, and it didn´t take me long to downgrade to a shared dorm with about 10 other people.

After dinner it was time to decide what to do on the following day. There are a few things to do on the island, one of which is hiking a volcano (one of which is active). One of the volcanos (Conception) takes at least 10 hours to get on the top, and the other one (Maderas) less than half of that. But it´s very hot (think 40 degrees C) and very steep, and according to the book tourists die on the climbs every year. So climbing a volcano was one of the activities I´d already decided definitely NOT to do.

So don´t ask my why and how, but within 15 minutes I´d signed up for a volcano hike. The "easier" one though (Volcano Maderas). What the hell. If I was to die here, at least climbing a volcano would be a cooler way to go than being bitten by a tarantula.

There were a few people at the camp who´d done the climb that day, and the girls I spoke to said it was the worst thing they´d done in their lives, and it was just madness. Apparently at first it´s very hot, then you get to the cloudforest where it´s a bit cooler but it´s full of insects and you get covered in ticks. It gets very muddy and towards thew end you need to use all four limbs to climb up the steep wall, to reach the top, from where there is no view whatsoever - it´s all covered in clouds. Hmmm...

It was five of us doing the climb, so we psyched each other up and got up at 6.30 in the morning to get ready. We had a nutritionally balanced breakfast of porridge, granola, fruit and coffee and packed our bags with snacks and water. We had two guides booked, and off we went.

The path was very rocky, and the ground was dry. We started the incline, and it had started to get hot already. I was chatting to a Swedish girl Sofia. My right foot slipped under the rocks, and I fell. Nothing bad, nothing serious - if only there hadn´t been a barbed fence to keep the cattle away on the side of the path. As I fell, I instinctively reached out my right hand, and hit the fence. Autch. There was a bit of blood. It hurt. I could see a deep cut on the right hand, just under a finger.

That was the end of my volcano climb.

I was in a shock a little bit and felt dizzy. After sitting down for a few minutes and talking to the guides I decided to turn back. It wasn´t even a huge cut, but I needed two fully functioning hands for the climb, and it just wasn´t going to happen now. Hand wrapped in tissue paper, I turned back and returned to the camp.

I felt shit. Someone kindly cleaned the cut and bandaged it, and I started to think of alternative things to do. But I didn´t want to do anything else. I wanted to climb a volcano!

From my hammock I watched a couple of boys packing their bags. They were going to hire a sailing boat to take them to the mainland, but they needed one more person to be able to do it. I couldn´t leave yet, surely not - I´d only been on the island for less than 20 hours. But I was over Ometepe by now. I was graving civilization. Sailing out straight to San Jorge with two blokes seemed like a much more attractive option than waiting until the morning to make my own way - a 3 hour bus journey followed by the ferry.

I ran to pack my bags. Cheerio, Ometepe and your stupid volcanos!

It was to be a three-hour sail to the mainland. A three-hour sail on a beautiful, hot sunny day sounded like the best idea I´d ever had. I had this picture in my head of sunbathing on the deck, feeling free as a bird.



I´d always loved sailing. I´d never been sea sick in my life.

There´s a first time for everything.

It was a small boat, and a very big lake which had bull sharks in it. The boat was rocking quite a bit. I´d just had a cheese sandwich, and as the boat nearly capsized a couple of times (or at least it looked like it) my stomach started turning.

I went to lie down in the cabin, and didn´t get up until we reached San Jorge.

Oh well. We made it to Rivas and me and one of the guys continued to Granada from there. It was another hot, sweaty and bumpy school bus ride, standing up for 1, 5 h, but was so happy to be on solid ground again and felt great.

We checked into hostel Oasis and I treated myself to my own room with a big, comfy double bed. The hostel was AMAZING. It truly was a little oasis.


I had a quick dip in the cute little pool they had and bumped into a couple of Dutch girls from SJDS. We went out for dinner (pizza, not my choice but it still tasted damn good, and did I mention the ice cold beer?)

Sampled some local rum with a bunch of Dutch people, and slowly but surely I started to get a feeling that I´d had a very lucky escape. Maybe one day I´ll climb a volcano, but it wasn´t my time just yet.