Excuse the itinerary

Those of you looking for a social commentary won´t find it here. What follows is almost strictly an itinerary of the last 3 days of my life...

Saturday: Woke up around 7:30 to eat breakfast, check my email and finish packing. Said goodbye to my host family, which was so strange. It was a warm goodbye, but detached all the same. I guess it has to be. Went and met Caroline and her brother Joseph at their hostel. I wasn´t sure how travelling with them would be, but Joseph has one of the happiest laughs I´ve ever heard and it worked out really well. We bussed from Granada to Rivas along with a dozen other foreigners and a guy playing a guitar and urging us to break free from the constraints of "Catholicism and coca cola". He also ranted for a good 10 minutes about how before the Spaniards came, all the indigenous tribes lived in peace and how we need to expel the foreigners who come here looking to use the locals for their own entertainment. He also said we should create a world without borders or passports. I held my tongue. We got to Rivas and from there taxied to San Jorge. The driver pulled a fast one and overcharged us by 20 córdobas, which was more irritating than anything else. Oh, well. Got on the ferry and sat down below with the few life jackets, the anchor and the highly necessary beer cooler. Got to Moyogalpa, on Isla de Ometepe, and ended up splitting the cost of a van with 4 British girls and 2 British guys to our hostel about an hour away.

Isla de Ometepe is actually being considered for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It´s formed out of 2 volcanoes and supposedly fulfilled an ancient indian prophecy of finding 2 joined mountains in the middle of the lake. It´s also crazy beautiful. However, I realized this weekend that I don´t like the idea of being on an island. Too much can go wrong, especially when half the island is an active volcano.

We all slept in a dorm room at our hostel, Finca Magdalena, which is an old coffee plantation. Our beds were more or less tall plastic cots. Caroline actually ripped through hers on the 2nd night, which may help to explain the phenomenal grudge all the F.M. staff seemed to hold against us. Caroline, Joseph and I walked around the grounds and looked at some petroglyphs (indigenous stone art) until it started pouring rain. We then went back and ordered dinner from the hostel, at which point we realized that the F.M. kitchen is in fact a black hole where food orders go in and are never seen again. Fortunately, we had a good time talking until our food arrived. The British kids were completely hilarious, especially the guys, which was good because we all spent the entire weekend together.

Sunday: I slept like a rock all night. Everyone else said they woke up around 10 times. We were supposed to meet our guides for the volcano hike around 7:30, but we didn´t end up leaving until about 8 (that´s known as the latin hour around here). We hiked Maderas, which is the smaller of the 2 volcanoes. Small is a relative word. It was supposed to be a 7-8 hour hike, but unfortunately 2 of the girls hurt themselves pretty badly and it took us almost 10 hours of walking, which was broken up by frequent water, snack and (for our guides) lollypop and smoke breaks. The first 5 uphill hours redefined the term "muddy scramble", the last 5 were more or less a series of coordinated falls down the mountain. There was a crater lake at the top where we stopped for lunch, which was so beautiful. It rained on us on the way down and we were all definitely ready to be done, but I would said it was worth it in the end. The area was so lush and green, broken by red flowers and spider webs. We heard loads of howler monkeys (which the English guys insisted were cows, just to piss me off) and passed above the cloud line. When we got back we all hit the cold showers, then ordered coffee, tea, beer and dinner. The coffee kept me up until about 2 a.m., unfortunately, but a few of us stayed up talking until around 11. Caroline and Joseph went to bed early and left me alone for almost 2 hours to fend off British attacks on my "lazy" American English. We laughed a whole lot and I´m so thankful for that.

Monday: The others went back to Moyogalpa to catch the ferry and go their separate ways, but I decided I wasn´t done with old Ometepe quite yet. So, I had the van driver drop me on the beach between the 2 volcanoes in a town called Playa Santo Domingo. I hated saying goodbye to the others, but going to the ferry would only have been delaying the inevitable since we would all be splitting on the other side anyhow. I checked into a hostel called Hospedaje Buena Vista, which was right on the beach. I´d like to point out that even though the island is in the middle of a lake, it´s such a huge lake that it really does look like the ocean from shore. I ended up getting a 2nd breakfast at Buena Vista, then walked to a swimming hole with an English girl named Lucy. We swam and read for a few hours until the rain came, then went back to the hostel where I spent the rest of the day reading and writing in a hammock. I was sharing a room with 2 German guys, so I ate dinner with them and then Lucy, the Germans and I talked for awhile before going to bed. One of the Germans, Janni, downed 3 liters of beer without breaking a sweat. When I expressed my concern for his health, they both just laughed and said "We´re German!" It was their turn to be horrified later when I confessed to owning a gun, though.

Woke up this morning around 7 (I just can´t sleep in here) and caught a bus with the Germans back to the ferry. After the ferry I caught a bus to Managua, then a shuttle to León, where I currently am. It´s been a long day of travel, so I´m glad to be here. I found a hostel called Hostel Bigfoot that seems pretty cool (and it´s only $6 per night!) and tomorrow I´m planning on walking around the city and booking a few volcano hikes for myself.

Thanks for all your interest, emails and prayers. I´m tired right now but I´m doing good. Travelling alone is definitely a new experience and I´m still on the fence as to whether or not I like it, but I´m so thankful for all the opportunities I´ve been given and for everything I´ve seen already. Now I am going to find dinner and then hopefully find someone to laugh with at Bigfoot.