Local Music (Chaco Verde, Isla Ometepe)

Journal Entry 1/6/10 9:00am

When you are on an island you better hope that nothing goes wrong.

I can see wind turbines in the distance reminding me that I am surrounded by land, I´m in the middle of an enormous lake in Nicaragua, but it might as well be the middle of the ocean. A man would be a fool to try and swim the distance to shore. Luckily it is paradise and I have no desire to leave.

The place is Isla Ometepe and location is the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the wind is violent but the sunsets are amazing. I arrived yesterday afternoon with a French and Finnish couple whom I´d met on the bus back in Liberia, a lovely couple, Franc and Helena. We got to the Nicaraguan border at about noon and it was as chaotic as I´d imagined it to be. We waited in line for a bit to obtain our exit stamps, then we walked 1km to the Nicaraguan fron and got syphoned through checkpoints and chainlink mazes until we came to another set of lines where we stood for half an hour to get our stamps to enter Nicaragua. Helena then talked a cab driver into taking us to the ferry in San Jorge for ten bucks, quite the steal. The ride there was beautiful and we passed towering wind turbines and marvelled at their size that close up. Despite the beauty, it was quickly noticeable how much poorer this country is then Costa Rica. After all it is the second poorest country in Central America behind Haiti. A lot of the people still use horse drawn carts for transportation, whipping depressed, emaciated horses, carrying loads for to big for there size. All very sad, but nonetheless we arived to our destination and ran to the dock to catch our ferry, on the way noticing a couple howler monkeys chained to a tree, I could barely look. Our ferry wasn´t leaving for another couple hours so we opted for the tugboat like Lancha, which was not very big at all and I read that it was quite a rough ride which it was indeed. It was only an hour ride and it´s all worth it when you see the two towering volcanoes jutting out of the water silohuetted against the cloudy sky like some island in a fantasy novel, breathtaking. The minute we hopped off the boat I fell in love with the island, more carribean then pacific coast and friendly as all hell. We caught a cab to Chaco Verde and at some point Helena asked the driver if the music he was listening to was local, he said,¨No, you heard of Cypress Hill?¨HA! Guess you had to be there. We checked into neighboring hotels and had dinner that evening together, discussing politics, French/American relations, and travelling. A great couple that I wish all the best. We exchanged information and bid a fond farewell. The day ended with an icecold beer while I watched the sunset over the mountains across the lake, while the clouds danced in the red light.