Ometepe 2

Wake entirely destroyed by yesterday, delayed reaction and vague recollection of night wakening with severe cramp screams. Breakfast is coffee and eggs scrambled with onion, tomato and chilli, a cure to my drinking ills, if not my physical ones. Chat around the morning, the lakeside views encourage only pacivity.

Turn down offer of a rock walk and instead trek back down the hill into town, to the worlds smallest cyber cafe, a stone building with one laptop, blasting out house music at an irritating volume. Realise there are no busses on Sundays which limits travel options. Lunch in a shack, fried chicken etc. The chicken is good, some kind of spice batter improves matters and the meat succulent. Talk briefly to a German guy biking around the island, briefly stranded by the appearance of rain, takes him 10 minutes to restart the bike. Amusing to me. Then up the hill once more and decide to get a taxi with Will and Stephen, a couple of Americans from yesterday who know of a calming place on the opposite side of things.

A bumpy 90 minute ride to clean cut lawns and more lakeside. Volcano views again, my legs wincing at the memory. Stay at a biological centre which almost has a retirment home feel, luxury living. The weather turns damp and the smell of spring fills the Sunday afternoon. Go for a lonesome walk in search of something, but whatever it is I´m looking for I find nothing but mud and the night closes in and I´ve no flashlight and so walk back, following the fireflies, to a room with AC and a matress that isn´t made of cotton wool.

Breakfast is good. The usual, but the cheese that tastes like it may have once belonged inside a cow. Stephen and Will discuss US healthcare and I listen whilst trying to regain my senses. We walk to a waterfall, 3k, the first 2 mild, the final more stones and wet dirt. Starts bright and descends to drizzle then downpour, my waterproofs left at home.

The waterfall itself impressive, 35 ft of water starting as trickle and turning into a wall of water into a shallow pool below. A childhood adventure movie feel. Stomp around the ice cool pool, attempting to remove the last of Saturday´s mud from my combats and boots, and shower in the water, exhilerating after the hike.

On return I have several options for the day. Merida, or Moyogalpa, or something in between. The fly in the ointment, only two busses leave a day, the first long ago, the second at 3:30 but I have movement urges at 1PM and so pay up and hit the road, hiking Merida way, plan to stop at anything of interest. The track gruelling with my backpack. Get to the end of Merida without even realising it was ever there. Sit for a while under a large tree which interrupts the rain, waiting for a bus that doesn´t arrive and so it gets to 4 and I decide my only option is to hike on to San Domingo by nightfall, wait out the evening and then head ferrywards the next day.

A brief foray into accidental hitchhiking, a man in a minivan offers me a lift. I claim no money, a lie. He takes me anyway, drops me at the point where the islands meet. I still haven´t decided on what to do. Start walking to Balguay, but give up 2 minutes later and decide a bus may still come. Wait in a restaurant where the staff speak no english but attempt communication anyway. The weather now horrendous, wind blowing rain horizontal. 45 minutes behind schedule the last bus arrives. It´s going nowhere near where I want to go, back to Thursday´s entrance port, but I´m drained and it´s darkening so get it anyway. Stay in a new hotel, Short food wanderings and an early night.