CHAPTER 12
With the tribulations of Honduras behind us, we decided to stop in Leon, Nicaragua to collect ourselves. We parked in front of a bustling hotel/restaurant and went in to inquire about a room. Not 2 seconds after walking through the door, we heard a “HEY!” Wouldn’t you know it, our British friends Tim and Amy we had met in El Salvador where right there having a drink. We caught up and made plans to hang out the next day. Tim and Amy left to their hotel, and we were about to leave also, when two guys sitting at the table next to us asked Kacey if she was from Colorado (she was wearing here CSU t-shirt). She said yes and we got to talking. They were Noah and Erik, from Boulder (about an hour away from where we went to college) and they were driving their VW Westfalia van down to Argentina, just like us! What a small world it is- after driving 7000 miles to a small town that nobody has heard of, in a country that nobody goes to, and you run into people that you easily could have met walking down the street at home. The six of us had dinner together the next evening, and said we should all keep in touch as we made our way south. The following day, I removed our lockbox and refrigerator from the back seat of our truck, Tim and Amy piled in, and we were off to Granada. After a scenic drive through the virgin countryside, and a few tense moments navigating through the capital, Managua- a dirty, decrepit, run-down city that offered no reason to stop- and we pulled into the colonial city of Granada.
Once again we were shocked- right in front of the hotel we stopped at was the white Westfalia with Colorado plates. We found “the boys” (as we had began calling them), and all went out to dinner. By this time, we figured it was fate that we kept running into each other, and decided to all travel together to the Island of Ometepe the next day.
Isla Ometepe is an hourglassed shaped volcanic island lying in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. As we approached it on the ferry, the twin volcanoes that make up the island, slowly materialized out of the haze. With swaying palm trees along the coast which gave way to dense jungle that worked its way up the sides of the mountains, and low clouds ringing the volcanic peaks, the whole scene had a decidedly pre-historic feeling. The volcanoes are connected by a narrow isthmus of land, along which a few hotels and resorts have set up shop. The ferry let down its rickety metal draw bridge onto the waiting pier, we drove our trucks off, and started the one hour trip to the hotels. Both Erik and Noah, and ourselves had intended to camp on the island, but when we got to the most promising looking hotel on isthmus, it was raining hard, and the idea of setting up the tent and sitting in it all afternoon didn’t sound too appealing. Tim, being the master negotiator that he is, managed to secure the hotel’s family cottage for an amazing rate- a giant one room cabin with a loft. I don’t know if we were all actually really excited to be sleeping six to a room, or if everyone was just too hesitant or embarrassed to speak up (I, for one, am over the whole dorm room experience while traveling)- but it ended up being a lot of fun, almost like summer camp or something. Erik and Noah ended up leaving the island before us- their wife and girlfriend, respectfully, were coming down to meet them in Costa Rica for a week on the beach. The rest of us spent our time relaxing in the sun, swimming in the giant fresh water lake, and one day we even made a circuitous trek to a 1000 ft waterfall that cascades from the top of the southern volcano.
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